The Brown Mouse

“I never wanted to be a school-teacher as bad,” continued the shooter of trouble, “as I did when this farmer got to the low place in the road with the fair Bettina this afternoon when they was comin’ home from school. The water was all over the road – ”

“Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster,” said Pete. “I bet him it would overflow.”

“Well, if I was in the professor’s place, I’d be glad to pay the bet,” said the worldly lineman. “And I’ll say this for him, he rose equal to the emergency and caved the emergency’s head in. He carried her across the pond, and her a-clingin’ to his neck in a way to make your mouth water. She wasn’t a bit mad about it, either.”

“I’d rather have a good cigar any ol’ time,” said Pete. “Nothin’ but a yaller-haired kid – an’ a Dane at that. I had a dame once up at Spirit Lake – ”

“Well, I must be drivin’ on,” said the lineman. “Got to get up a lecture for Professor Irwin to-morrow – and maybe I’ll be able to meet that yaller-haired kid. So long!”

The county superintendent recognized at once the educational importance of the matter, when one of her country teachers adopted the policy of calling in everybody available who could teach the pupils anything special, and converting the school into a local Chautauqua served by local lecturers. She made a run of ten miles to hear the trouble shooter’s lecture. She saw the boys and some of the girls give an explanation of the telephone and the use of it. She heard the teacher give as a language exercise the next day an essay on the ethics and proprieties of eavesdropping on party lines; and she saw the beginning of an arrangement under which the boys of the Woodruff school took the contract to look after easily-remedied line troubles in the neighborhood on the basis which paid for a telephone for the school, and swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating for general purposes. Incidentally, she saw how really educational was the work of the day, and that to which it led.

She had no curiosity to which she would have confessed, about the relations between Jim Irwin and his “star pupil,” that young Brunhilde – Bettina Hansen; but her official duty required her to observe the attitude of pupils to teachers – Bettina among them. Clearly, Jim was looked upon by the girls, large and small, as a possession of theirs. They competed for the task of keeping his desk in order, and of dusting and tidying up the schoolroom. There was something of exaltation of sentiment in this. Bettina’s eyes followed him about the room in a devotional sort of way; but so, too, did those of the ten-year-olds. He was loved, that was clear, by Bettina, Calista Simms and all the rest – an excellent thing in a school.

All the same, Jennie met Jim rather oftener after the curious conversation between those rather low fellows, Pete and the trouble shooter. As autumn approached, and the time came for Jim to begin to think of his trip to Ames, Colonel Woodruff’s hint that she should assume charge of the problem of Jim’s clothes for the occasion, came more and more often to her mind. Would Jim be able to buy suitable clothes? Would he understand that he ought not to appear in the costume which was tolerable in the Woodruff District only because the people there were accustomed to seeing him dressed like a tramp? Could she approach the subject with any degree of safety? Really these were delicate questions; and considering the fact that Jennie had quite dismissed her old sweetheart from the list of eligibles – had never actually admitted him to it, in fact – they assumed great importance to her mind. Once, only a little more than a year ago, she had scoffed at Jim’s mention of the fact that he might think of marrying; and now she could not think of saying to him kindly, “Jim, you really must have some better clothes to wear when you go to Ames!” It would have been far easier last summer.

Somehow, Jim had been acquiring dignity and unapproachability. She must sidle up to the subject. She did. She took him into her runabout one day as he was striding toward town in that plowed-ground manner of his, and gave him a spin over to the fair grounds and two or three times around the half-mile track.

“I’m going to Ames to hear your speech,” said she.

“I’m glad of that,” said Jim. “More of the farmers are going from this neighborhood than ever before. I’ll feel at home, if they all sit together where I can talk at them.”

“Who’s going?” asked Jennie.

“The Bronsons, Con Bonner and Nils Hansen and Bettina,” replied Jim. “That’s all from our district – and Columbus Brown and probably others from near-by localities.”

“I shall have to have some clothes,” said Jennie.

Jim failed to respond to this, as clearly out of his field. They were passing the county fair buildings, and he began expatiating on the kind of county fair he would have – a great county exposition with the schools as its central thought – a clearing house for the rural activities of all the country schools.

“And pa’s going to have a suit before we go, too,” said Jennie. “Here are some samples I got of Atkins, the tailor. Which would be the most becoming do you think?”

Jim looked the samples over carefully, but had little to say as to their adaptation to Colonel Woodruff’s sartorial needs. Jennie laid great stress on the excellent quality of one or two samples, and carefully specified the prices of them. Jim exhibited no more than a languid and polite interest, and gave not the slightest symptom of ever having considered even remotely the contingency of having a tailor-made suit. Jennie sidled closer to the subject.

“I should think it would be awfully hard for you to get fitted in the stores,” said she, “you are so very tall.”

“It would be,” said Jim, “if I had ever considered the matter of looks very much. I guess I’m not constructed on any plan the clothing manufacturers have regarded as even remotely possible. How about this county fair idea? Couldn’t we do this next fall? You organize the teachers – ”

Jennie advanced the spark, cut out the muffler and drowned the rest of Jim’s remarks in wind and dust.

“I give it up, dad,” said she to her father that evening.

“What?” queried the colonel.

“Jim Irwin’s clothes,” she replied. “I think he’ll go to Ames in a disgraceful plight, but I can’t get any closer to the subject than I have done.”

“Oh, then you haven’t heard the news,” said the colonel. “Jim’s going to have his first made-to-measure suit for Ames. It’s all fixed.”

“Who’s making it?” asked Jennie.

“Gustaf Paulsen, the Dane that’s just opened a shop in town.” “A Dane?” queried Jennie. “Isn’t he related to some of the neighbors?”

“A brother to Mrs. Hansen,” answered the colonel.

“Bettina’s uncle!”

“Ratherly,” said the colonel jocularly, “seeing as how Bettina’s Mrs. Hansen’s daughter.”

Clothes are rather important, but the difference between a suit made by Atkins the tailor, and one built by Gustaf Paulsen, the new Danish craftsman, could not be supposed to be crucially important, even when designed for a very dear friend. And Jim was scarcely that – of course not! Why, then, did the county superintendent hastily run to her room, and cry? Why did she say to herself that the Hansens were very good people, and well-to-do, and it would be a fine thing for Jim and his mother, – and then cry some more? Colonel failed to notice Jennie’s unceremonious retirement from circulation that evening, and had he known all about what took place, he would have been as mystified as you or I.

CHAPTER XVIII

JIM GOES TO AMES

The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was left struggling in the water. It was in the rapids just above the cataract – and poor Jim could not swim a stroke. Helpless, terrified, gasping, he floated to destruction, and Jennie Woodruff was not able to lift a hand to help him. To see any human being swept to such an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent to witness the drowning of one of her best – though sometimes it must be confessed most insubordinate – teachers, under such circumstances, is unspeakable; and when that teacher is a young man who was once that county superintendent’s sweetheart, and falls in, clothed in a new made-to-order suit in which he looks almost handsome despite his manifest discomfort in his new cravat and starched collar, the experience is something almost impossible to endure. That is why Jennie gripped her seat until she must have scratched the varnish. That is why she felt she must go to him – and do something. She could not endure it a moment longer, she felt; and there he floated away, his poor pale face dipping below the waves, his sad, long, homely countenance sadder than ever, his lovely – yes, she must confess it now, his eyes were lovely! – his lovely blue eyes, so honest and true, wide with terror; and she unable to give him so much as a cry of encouragement!

And then Jim began to swim. He cast aside the roll of manuscript which he had held in his hand when the waters began to rise about him, and struck out for the shore with strong strokes – wild and agitated at first, but gradually becoming controlled and coordinated, and Jennie drew a long breath as he finally came to shore, breasting the waves like Triton, and master of the element in which he moved. There was a burst of applause, and people went forward to congratulate the greenhorn who had really made good.

Jennie felt like throwing her arms about his neck and weeping out her joy at his escape, and his restoration to her. Her eyes told him something of this; for there was a look in them which reminded him of fifteen years ago. Bettina Hansen was proud of him, and Con Bonner shook his hand and said that he agreed with him. Neither Bettina nor Con had noticed the capsizing of the boat or saw the form of Jim as it went drifting toward the cataract. But Jim knew how near he had been to disaster, and knew that Jennie knew. For she had seen him turn pale when he came on the platform to make his address at the farmers’ meeting at Ames, had seen him begin the speech he had committed to memory, had observed how unable he was to remember it, had noted his confusion as he tried to find his manuscript, and then his place of beginning in it – and when his confusion had seemingly quite overcome him, had seen him begin talking to his audience just as he had talked to the political meeting that time when he had so deeply offended her, and had observed how he won first their respect, then their attention, then apparently their convictions.

To Jennie’s agitated mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort him in his failure. His only solace was the look in Jennie’s eyes.

“Young man,” said an old farmer who wore thick glasses and looked like a Dutch burgomaster, “I want to have a little talk with you.”

“This is Mr. Hofmyer of Pottawatomie County,” said the dean of the college.

“I’m glad to meet you,” said Jim. “I can talk to you now.”

“No,” said Jennie. “I know Mr. Hofmyer will excuse you until after dinner. We have a little party for Mr. Irwin, and we shall be late if we don’t hurry.”

“Where can I see you after supper?” asked Mr. Hofmyer.

Easy it was to satisfy Mr. Hofmyer; and Jim was carried off to a dinner given by County Superintendent Jennie to Jim, the dean, Professor Withers, and one or two others – and a wonderfully select and distinguished company it seemed to Jim. Jennie seized a moment’s opportunity to say, “You did beautifully, Jim; everybody says so.”

“I failed!” said. Jim. “You know I failed. I couldn’t remember my speech. I can’t stay here feasting. I want to get out in the snow.”

“You made the best address of the meeting; and you did it because you forgot your speech,” insisted Jennie.

“Does anybody else think so?”

“Why, Jim! You must learn to believe in what you have done. Even Con Bonner says it was the best. He says he didn’t think you had it in ye!”

This advice from her to “believe in what you have done,” – wasn’t there something new in Jennie’s attitude here? Wasn’t his belief in what he was doing precisely the thing which had made him such a nuisance to the county superintendent? However, Jim couldn’t stop to answer the question which popped up in his mind.

“What does Professor Withers say?” he asked.

“He’s delighted – silly!”

“Silly!” How wonderful it was to be called “silly” – in that tone.

“I shouldn’t have forgotten the speech if it hadn’t been for this darned boiled shirt and collar, and for wearing a cravat,” urged Jim in extenuation.

“You ought to ’ve worn them around the house for a week before coming,” said Jennie. “Why didn’t you ask my advice?”

“I will, next time, Jennie,” said Jim. “I didn’t suppose I needed a bitting-rig – but I guess I did!”

Jennie ran away then to ask Nils Hansen and Bettina to join their dinner party. She had a sudden access of friendliness for the Hansens. Nils refused because he was going out to see the college herds fed; but at Jennie’s urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs, Bettina consented. Jennie was very happy, and proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean devoted himself to Bettina – and Jim found out afterward that this inquiring gentleman was getting at the mental processes of a specimen pupil in one of the new kind of rural schools, in which he was only half inclined to believe. He thanked Jim for his speech, and said it was “most suggestive and thought-provoking,” and as the party broke up slipped into Jim’s hand a check for the honorarium. It was not until then that Jim felt quite sure that he was actually to be paid for his speech; and he felt a good deal like returning the check to the conscience fund of the State of Iowa, if it by any chance possessed such a fund. But the breach made in his financial entrenchments by the expenses of the trip and the respectable and well-fitting suit of clothes overcame his feeling of getting something for nothing. If he hadn’t given the state anything, he had at least expended something – a good deal in fact – on the state’s account.

CHAPTER XIX

JIM’S WORLD WIDENS

Mr. Hofmyer was waiting to give Jim the final convincing proof that he had produced an effect with his speech.

“Do you teach the kind of school you lay out in your talk?” he asked.

“I try to,” said Jim, “and I believe I do.”

“Well,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “that’s the kind of education I b’lieve in. I kep’ school back in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the scholars measure things, and weigh things, and apply their studies as fur as I could.”

“All good teachers have always done that,” said Jim. “Froebel, Pestalozzi, Colonel Parker – they all had the idea which is at the bottom of my work; ‘learn to do by doing,’ and connecting up the school with life.”

“M’h’m,” grunted Mr. Hofmyer, “I hain’t been able to see how Latin connects up with a high-school kid’s life – unless he can find a Latin settlement som’eres and git a job clerkin’ in a store.”

“But it used to relate to life,” said Jim, “the life of the people who made Greek and Latin a part of everybody else’s education as well as their own. Latin and Greek were the only languages in which anything worth much was written, you know. But now” – Jim spread out his arms as if to take in the whole world – “science, the marvelous literature of our tongue in the last three centuries! And to make a child learn Latin with all that, a thousand times richer than all the literature of Latin, lying unused before him!”

“Know any Latin?” asked Mr. Hofmyer.

Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning what he knows nothing about.

“I – I have studied the grammar, and read Cæsar,” he faltered, “but that isn’t much. I had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard, and it didn’t go very well.”

“I’ve had all the Latin they gave in the colleges of my time,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “if I do talk dialect; and I’ll agree with you so far as to say that it would have been a crime for me to neglect the chemistry, bacteriology, physics, engineering and other sciences that pertain to farmin’ – if there’d been any such sciences when I was gettin’ my schoolin’.”

“And yet,” said Jim, “some people want us to guide ourselves by the courses of study made before these sciences existed.”

“I don’t, by hokey!” said Mr. Hofmyer. “I’ll be dag-goned if you ain’t right. I wouldn’t ’a’ said so before I heard that speech – but I say so now.”

Jim’s face lighted up at this, the first convincing evidence that he had scored.

“I b’lieve, too,” went on Mr. Hofmyer, “that your idee would please our folks. I’ve been the stand-patter in our parts – mostly on English and – say German. What d’ye say to comin’ down and teachin’ our school? We’ve got a two-room affair, and I was made a committee of one to find a teacher.”

“I – I don’t see how – ” Jim stammered, all taken aback by this new breeze of recognition.

“We can’t pay much,” said Mr. Hofmyer. “You have charge of the dis-cip-line in the whole school, and teach in Number Two room. Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal to ye?”

Appeal to him! Why, eighteen months ago it would have been worth crawling across the state after, and now to have it offered to him – it was stupendous. And yet, how about the Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens and Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start on the upward path to usefulness and real happiness? How could he leave the little, crude, puny structure on which he had been working – on which he had been merely practising – for a year, and remove to the new field? Jim was in exactly the same situation in which every able young minister of the gospel finds himself sooner or later. The Lord was calling to a broader field – but how could he be sure it was the Lord?

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Jim Irwin, “but – ”

“If you’re only ’fraid you can’t,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “think it over. I’ve got your post-office address on this program, and we’ll write you a formal offer. We may spring them figures a little. Think it over.”

“You mustn’t think,” said Jim, “that we’ve done all the things I mentioned in my talk, or that I haven’t made any mistakes or failures.”

“Your county superintendent didn’t mention any failures,” said Mr. Hofmyer.

“Did you talk with her about my work?” inquired Jim, suddenly very curious.

“M’h’m.”

“Then I don’t see why you want me,” Jim went on.

“Why?” asked Mr. Hofmyer.

“I had not supposed,” said Jim, “that she had a very high opinion of my work.”

“I didn’t ask her about that,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “though I guess she thinks well of it. I asked her what you are tryin’ to do, and what sort of a fellow you are. I was favorably impressed; but she didn’t mention any failures.”

“We haven’t succeeded in adopting a successful system of selling our cream,” said Jim. “I believe we can do it, but we haven’t.”

“Wal,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “I d’know as I’d call that a failure. The fact that you’re tryin’ of it shows you’ve got the right idees. We’ll write ye, and mebbe pay your way down to look us over. We’re a pretty good crowd, the neighbors think.”

CHAPTER XX

THINK OF IT

Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received from the great agricultural college more real education in this one trip than many students get from a four years’ course in its halls; for he had spent ten years in getting ready for the experience. The great farm of hundreds of acres, all under the management of experts, the beautiful campus, the commodious classrooms and laboratories, and especially the barns, the greenhouses, gardens, herds and flocks filled him with a sort of apostolic joy.

“Every school,” said he to Professor Withers, “ought to be doing a good deal of the work you have to do here.”

“I’ll admit,” said the professor, “that much of our work in agriculture is pretty elementary.”

“It’s intermediate school work,” said Jim. “It’s a wrong to force boys and girls to leave their homes and live in a college to get so much of what they should have before they’re ten years old.”

“There’s something in what you say,” said the professor, “but some experiment station men seem to think that agriculture in the common schools will take from the young men and women the felt need, and therefore the desire to come to the college.”

“If you can’t give them anything better than high-school work,” said Jim, “that will be so; but if the science and art of agriculture is what I think it is, it would make them hungry for the advanced work that really can’t be done at home. To make the children wait until they’re twenty is to deny them more than half what the college ought to give them – and make them pay for what they don’t get.”

“I think you’re right,” said the professor.

“Give us the kind of schools I ask for,” cried Jim, “and I’ll fill a college like this in every congressional district in Iowa, or I’ll force you to tear this down and build larger.”

The professor laughed at his enthusiasm.

More nearly happy, and rather shorter of money than he had recently been, Jim journeyed home among the companions from his own neighborhood, in a frenzy of plans for the future. Mr. Hofmyer had dropped from his mind, until Con Bonner, his old enemy, drew him aside in the vestibule of the train and spoke to him in the mysterious manner peculiar to politicians.

“What kind of a proposition did that man Hofmeister make you?” he inquired. “He asked me about you, and I told him you’re a crackerjack.”

“I’m much obliged,” replied Jim.

“No use in back-cappin’ a fellow that’s tryin’ to make somethin’ of himself,” said Bonner. “That ain’t good politics, nor good sense. Anything to him?”

“He offered me a salary of seventy-five dollars a month to take charge of his school,” said Jim.

“Well,” said Con, “we’ll be sorry to lose yeh, but you can’t turn down anything like that.”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I haven’t decided.”

Bonner scrutinized his face sharply, as if to find out what sort of game he was playing.

“Well,” said he, at last, “I hope you can stay with us, o’ course. I’m licked, and I never squeal. If the rist of the district can stand your kind of thricks, I can. And say, Jim” – here he grew still more mysterious – “if you do stay, some of us would like to have you be enough of a Dimmycrat to go into the next con’vintion f’r county superintendent.”

“Why,” replied Jim, “I never thought of such a thing!”

“Well, think of it,” said Con. “The county’s close, and wid a pop’lar young educator – an’ a farmer, too, it might be done. Think of it.”

It must be confessed that Jim was almost dazed at the number of “propositions” of which he was now required to “think” – and that Bonner’s did not at first impress him as having anything back of it but blarney. He was to find out later, however, that the wily Con had made up his mind that the ambition of Jim to serve the rural schools in a larger sphere might be used for the purpose of bringing to earth what he regarded as the soaring political ambitions of the Woodruff family.

To defeat the colonel in the defeat of his daughter when running for her traditionally-granted second term; to get Jim Irwin out of the Woodruff District by kicking him up-stairs into a county office; to split the forces which had defeated Mr. Bonner in his own school district; and to do these things with the very instrument used by the colonel on that sad but glorious day of the last school election – these, to Mr. Bonner, would be diabolically fine things to do – things worthy of those Tammany politicians who from afar off had won his admiration.

Jim had scarcely taken his seat in the car, facing Jennie Woodruff and Bettina Hansen in the Pullman, when Columbus Brown, pathmaster of the road district and only across the way from residence in the school district, came down the aisle and called Jim to the smoking-room.

“Did an old fellow named Hoffman from Pottawatomie County ask you to leave us and take his school?” he asked.

“Mr. Hofmyer,” said Jim, “ – yes, he did.”

“Well,” said Columbus, “I don’t want to ask you to stand in your own light, but I hope you won’t let him toll you off there among strangers. We’re proud of you, Jim, and we don’t want to lose you.”