CHAPTER XVIIIJIM 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 almostimpossible 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 abouthis 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 stopto 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 deandevoted 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 XIXJIM’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 ahigh-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 readCæsar,” 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 asto 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-officeaddress 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’vedoneall 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’dcall 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 XXTHINK 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 Jimto 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 PottawatomieCounty 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.”
Proud of him! Sweet music to the underling’s ears! Jim blushed and stammered.
“The fact is,” said Columbus, “I know that Woodruff District job hain’t big enough for you any more; but we can make it bigger. If you’ll stay, I believe we can pull off a deal to consolidate some of them districts, and make you boss of the whole shooting match.”
“I appreciate this, Clumb,” said Jim, “but I don’t believe you can do it.”
“Well, think of it,” said Columbus. “And don’t do anything till you talk with me and a few of the rest of the boys.”
“Think of it” again!
A fine home-coming it was for Jim, with the colonel waiting at the station with a double sleigh, and the chance to ride into the snowycountry in the same seat with Jennie—a chance which was blighted by the colonel’s placing of Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad rear seat, and Jim in front with himself. A fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and past fine farmsteads snuggled into their rectangular wrappages of trees set out in the old pioneer days. The colonel would not allow him to get out and walk when he could really have reached home more quickly by doing so; no, he set the Hansens down at their door, took Jennie home, and then drove the lightened sleigh merrily to the humble cabin of the rather excited young schoolmaster.
“Did you make any deal with those people down in the western part of the state?” asked the colonel. “Jennie wrote me that you’ve got an offer.”
“No,” said Jim, and he told the colonel about the proposal of Mr. Hofmyer.
“Well,” said the colonel, “in my capacity of wild-eyed reformer, I’ve made up my mind that the first four miles in the trip is to make the rural teacher’s job a bigger job. It’s got to be a man’s size, woman’s size job, or we can’tget real men and real women to stay in the work.”
“I think that’s a statesmanlike formulation of it,” said Jim.
“Well,” said the colonel, “don’t turn down the Pottawatomie County job until we have a chance to see what we can do. I’ll get some kind of a meeting together, and what I want you to do is to use this offer as a club over this helpless school district. What we need is to be held up. Do the Jesse James act, Jim!”
“I can’t, Colonel!”
“Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?”
“I want to treat everybody fairly,” said Jim, “including Mr. Hofmyer. I don’t know what to do, hardly.”
“Well, I’ll get the meeting together,” said the colonel, “and in the meantime, think of what I’ve said.”
Another thing to think of! Jim rushed into the house and surprised his mother, who had expected him to arrive after a slow walk from town through the snow. Jim caught her in his arms, from which she was released a moment later, quite flustered and blushing.
“Why, James,” said she, “you seem excited. What’s happened?”
“Nothing, mother,” he replied, “except that I believe there’s just a possibility of my being a success in the world!”
“My boy, my boy!” said she, laying her hand on his arm, “if you were to die to-night, you’d die the greatest success any boy ever was—if your mother is any judge.”
Jim kissed her, and went up to his attic to change his clothes. Inside the waistcoat was a worn envelope, which he carefully opened, and took from it a letter much creased from many foldings. It was the old letter from Jennie, written when the comical mistake had been made of making him the teacher of the Woodruff school. It still contained her rather fussy cautions about being “too original,” and the sage statement that “the wheel runs easiest in the beaten track.” It was written before the vexation and trouble he had caused her; but he did not read the advice, nor think of the coolness which had come between them—he read only the sentence in which Jennie had told ofher father’s interest in Jim’s success, ending with the underscored words, “I’m for you, too.”
“I wonder,” said Jim, as he went out to do the evening’s tasks, “I wonder if sheisfor me!”
CHAPTER XXIA SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP
Young McGeehee Simms was loitering along the snowy way to the schoolhouse bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. He had been allowed to act as Water Superintendent of the Woodruff School as a reward of merit—said merit being an essay on which he received credit in both language and geography on “Harvesting Wheat in the Tennessee Mountains.” This had been of vast interest to the school in view of the fact that the Simmses were the only pupils in the school who had ever seen in use that supposedly-obsolete harvesting implement, the cradle. Buddy’s essay had been passed over to the class in United States history as the evidence of an eye-witness concerning farming conditions in our grandfathers’ times.
The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff’s hired man, halted Buddy at the door.
“Mr. Simms, I believe?” he said.
“I reckon you must be lookin’ for my brother, Raymond, suh,” said Buddy.
“I am a-lookin’,” said Pete impressively, “for Mr. McGeehee Simms.”
“That’s me,” said Buddy; “but I hain’t been doin’ nothin’ wrong, suh!”
“I have a message here,” said Pete, “for Professor James E. Irwin. He’s what-ho within, there, ain’t he?”
“He’s inside, I reckon,” said Buddy.
“Then will you be so kind and condescendin’ as to stoop so low as to jump so high as to give him this letter?” asked Pete.
Buddy took the letter and was considering of his reply to this remarkable speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, passed on, rather congratulating himself on having staged a very good burlesque of the dignified manners of those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.
“Please come to the meeting to-night,” ran the colonel’s note to Jim; “and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If wecan’t meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you won’t hear yourself talked about—I should recommend nine-thirty and war-paint.”
“Please come to the meeting to-night,” ran the colonel’s note to Jim; “and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If wecan’t meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you won’t hear yourself talked about—I should recommend nine-thirty and war-paint.”
It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility of the situation rather sickened Jim of the task of teaching. How could he impose conditions on the whole school district? How could the colonel expect such a thing of him? And how could any one look for anything but scorn for the upstart field-hand from these men who had for so many years made him the butt of their good-natured but none the less contemptuous ridicule? Who was he, anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful men—he who had been for all the years of his life at their command, subservient to their demands for labor—their underling? Only one thing kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home—the colonel’s matter-of-fact assumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How could he flee, when this old soldier was fightingso valiantly for him in the trenches? So Jim went to the meeting.
The season was nearing spring, and it was a mild thawy night. The windows of the schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing the presence of a crowd of almost unprecedented size, and the sashes had been thrown up for ventilation and coolness. As Jim climbed the back fence of the school-yard, he heard a burst of applause, from which he judged that some speaker had just finished his remarks. There was silence when he came alongside the window at the right of the chairman’s desk, a silence broken by the voice of Old Man Simms, saying “Mistah Chairman!”
“The chair,” said the voice of Ezra Bronson, “recognizes Mr. Simms.”
Jim halted in indecision. He was not expected while the debate was in progress, and therefore regarded himself at this time as somewhatde trop. There is no rule of manners or morals, however, forbidding eavesdropping during the proceedings of a public meeting—and anyhow, he felt rather shiveringlycurious about these deliberations. Therefore he listened to the first and last public speech of Old Man Simms.
“Ah ain’t no speaker,” said Old Man Simms, “but Ah cain’t set here and be quiet an’ go home an’ face my ole woman an’ my boys an’ gyuhls withouten sayin’ a word fo’ the best friend any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin.” (Applause.) “Ah owe it to him that Ah’ve got the right to speak in this meetin’ at all. Gentlemen, we-all owe everything to Mr. Jim Irwin! Maybe Ah’ll be thought forrard to speak hyah, bein’ as Ah ain’t no learnin’ an’ some may think Ah don’t pay no taxes; but it will be overlooked, I reckon, seein’ as how we’ve took the Blanchard farm, a hundred an’ sixty acres, for five yeahs, an’ move in a week from Sat’day. We pay taxes in our rent, Ah reckon, an’ howsomever that may be, Ah’ve come to feel that you-all won’t think hard of me if Ah speak what we-uns feel so strong about Mr. Jim Irwin?”
Old Man Simms finished this exordium with the rising inflection, which denoted a direct question as to his status in the meeting. “Goon!” “You’ve got as good a right as any one!” “You’re all right, old man!” Such exclamations as these came to Jim’s ears with scarcely less gratefulness than to those of Old Man Simms—who stammered and went on.
“Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentlemen an’ ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin found us, we was scandalous pore, an’ we was wuss’n pore—we was low-down.” (Cries of “No—No!”) “Yes, we was, becuz what’s respectable in the mountings is one thing, whar all the folks is pore, but when a man gets in a new place, he’s got to lift himse’f up to what folks does where he’s come to, or he’ll fall to the bottom of what there is in that there community—an’ maybe he’ll make a place fer himse’f lower’n anybody else. In the mountings we was good people, becuz we done the best we could an’ the best any one done; but hyah, we was low-down people becuz we hated the people that had mo’ learnin’, mo’ land, mo’ money, an’ mo’ friends than what we had. My little gyuhls wasn’t respectable in their clothes. My childern was igernant, an’ triflin’, but I was the most triflin’ of all. Ah’ll leave it to Colonel Woodruff if Iwas good fer a plug of terbacker, or a bakin’ of flour at any sto’ in the county. Was I, Colonel? Wasn’t I perfectly wuthless an’ triflin’?”
There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst of which the colonel’s voice was heard saying, “I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I guess you were, but——”
“Thankee,” said Old Man Simms, as if the colonel had given a really valuable testimonial to his character. “I sho’ was! Thankee kindly! An’now, what am I good fer? Cain’t I get anything I want at the stores? Cain’t I git a little money at the bank, if I got to have it?”
“You’re just as good as any man in the district,” said the colonel. “You don’t ask for more than you can pay, and you can get all you ask.”
“Thankee,” said Mr. Simms gravely. “What Ah tell you-all is right, ladies and gentlemen. An’ what has made the change in we-uns, ladies and gentlemen? It’s the wuk of Mr. Jim Irwin with my boy Raymond, the best boy any man evah hed, and my gyuhl, Calista, an’ Buddy, an’ Jinnie, an’ with me an’ my olewoman. He showed us how to get a toe-holt into this new kentry. He teached the children what orto be did by a rentin’ farmer in Ioway. He done lifted us up, an’ made people of us. He done showed us that you-all is good people, an’ not what we thought you was. Outen what he learned in school, my boy Raymond an’ me made as good crops as we could last summer, an’ done right much wuk outside. We got the name of bein’ good farmers an’ good wukkers, an’ when Mr. Blanchard moved to town, he said he was glad to give us his fine farm for five years. Now, see what Mr. Jim Irwin has done for a pack o’ outlaws and outcasts. Instid o’ hidin’ out from the Hobdays that was lay-wayin’ us in the mountings, we’ll be livin’ in a house with two chimleys an’ a swimmin’ tub made outen crock’ryware. We’ll be in debt a whole lot—an’ we owe it to Mr. Jim Irwin that we got the credit to git in debt with, an’ the courage to go on and git out agin!” (Applause.) “Ah could affo’d to pay Mr. Jim Irwin’s salary mysr’f, if Ah could. An’ there’s enough men hyah to-night that say they’ve been money-he’ped by his teachin’ the school tomake up mo’ than his wages. Let’s not let Mr. Jim Irwin go, neighbors! Let’s not let him go!”
Jim’s heart sank. Surely the case was desperate which could call forth such a forlorn-hope charge as that of Old Man Simms—a performance on Mr. Simms’ part which warmed Jim’s soul. “There isn’t a man in that meeting,” said he to himself, as he walked to the schoolhouse door, “possessed of the greatness of spirit of Old Man Simms. If he’s a fair sample of the people of the mountains, they are of the stuff of which great nations are made—if they only are given a chance!”
Colonel Woodruff was on his feet as Jim made his way through the crowd about the door.
“Mr. Irwin is here, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “and I move that we hear from him as to what we can do to meet the offer of our friends in Pottawatomie County, who have heard of his good work, and want him to work for them; but before I yield the floor, I want to say that this meeting has been worth while just to have been the occasion of our all becomingbetter acquainted with our friend and neighbor, Mr. Simms. Whatever may have been the lack of understanding, on our part, of his qualities, they were all cleared up by that speech of his—the best I have ever heard in this neighborhood.”
More applause, in the midst of which Old Man Simms slunk away down in his seat to escape observation. Then the chairman said that if there was no objection they would hear from their well-known citizen, whose growing fame was more remarkable for the fact that it had been gained as a country schoolmaster—he need not add that he referred to Mr. James E. Irwin. More and louder applause.
“Friends and neighbors,” said Jim, “you ask me to say to you what I want you to do. I want you to do what you want to do—nothing more nor less. Last year I was glad to be tolerated here; and the only change in the situation lies in the fact that I have another place offered me—unless there has been a change in your feelings toward me and my work. I hope there has been; for I know my work is good now, whereas I only believed it then.”
“Sure it is!” shouted Con Bonner from a front seat, thus signalizing that astute wire-puller’s definite choice of a place in the bandwagon. “Tell us what you want, Jim!”
“What do I want?” asked Jim. “More than anything else, I want such meetings as this—often—and a place to hold them. If I stay in the Woodruff District, I want this meeting to effect a permanent organization to work with me. I can’t teach this district anything. Nobody can teach any one anything. All any teacher can do is to direct people’s activities in teaching themselves. You are gathered here to decide what you’ll do about the small matter of keeping me at work as your hired man. You can’t make any legal decision here, but whatever this meeting decides will be law, just the same, because a majority of the people of the district are here. Such a meeting as this can decide almost anything. If I’m to be your hired man, I want a boss in the shape of a civic organization which will take in every man and woman in the district. Here’s the place and now’s the time to make that organization—an organization the object of which shall beto put the whole district at school, and to boss me in my work for the whole district.”
“Dat sounds good,” cried Haakon Peterson. “Ve’ll do dat!”
“Then I want you to work out a building scheme for the school,” Jim went on. “We want a place where the girls can learn to cook, keep house, take care of babies, sew and learn to be wives and mothers. We want a place in which Mrs. Hansen can come to show them how to cure meat—she’s the best hand at that in the county—where Mrs. Bonner can teach them to make bread and pastry—she ought to be given a doctor’s degree for that—where Mrs. Woodruff can teach them the cooking of turkeys, Mrs. Peterson the way to give the family a balanced ration, and Mrs. Simms induct them into the mysteries of weaving rag rugs and making jellies and preserves—you can all learn these things from her. There’s somebody right in this neighborhood able to teach anything the young people want to learn.
“And I want a physician here once in a while to examine the children as to their health, and a dentist to look after their teeth and teachthem how to care for them. Also an oculist to examine their eyes. And when Bettina Hansen comes home from the hospital a trained nurse, I want her to have a job as visiting nurse right here in the Woodruff District.
“I want a counting-room for the keeping of the farm accounts and the record of our observation in farming. I want cooperation in letting us have these accounts.
“I want some manual training equipment for wood-working and metal working, and a blacksmith and wagon shop, in which the boys may learn to shoe horses, repair tools, design buildings, and practise the best agricultural engineering. So I want a blacksmith and handyman with tools regularly on the job—and he’ll more than pay his way. I want some land for actual farming. I want to do work in poultry according to the most modern breeding discoveries, and I want your cooperation in that, and a poultry plant somewhere in the district.
“I want a laboratory in which we can work on seeds, pests, soils, feeds and the like. For the education of your children must come out of these things.
“I want these things because they are necessary if we are to get the culture out of life we should get—and nobody gets culture out of any sort of school—they get it out of life, or they don’t get it at all.
“So I want you to build as freely for your school as for your cattle and horses and hogs.
“The school I ask for will make each of you more money than the taxes it will require would make if invested in your farm equipment. If you are not convinced of this, don’t bother with me any longer. But the money the school will make for you—this new kind of rural school—will be as nothing to the social life which will grow up—a social life which will make necessary an assembly-room, which will be the social center, because it will be the educational center, and the business center of the countryside.
“I want all these things, and more. But I don’t expect them all at once. I know that this district is too small to do all of them, and therefore, I am going to tell you of another want which will tempt you to think that I am crazy. I want a bigger district—one that willgive us the financial strength to carry out the program I have sketched. This may be a presumptuous thing for me to propose; but the whole situation here to-night is presumptuous on my part, I fear. If you think so, let me go; but if you don’t, please keep this meeting together in a permanent organization of grown-up members of the Woodruff school, and by pulling together, you can do these things—all of them—and many more—and you’ll make the Woodruff District a good place to live in and die in—and I shall be proud to live and die in it at your service, as the neighborhood’s hired man!”
As Jim sat down there was a hush in the crowded room, as if the people were dazed at his assurance. There was no applause, until Jennie Woodruff, now seen by Jim for the first time over next the blackboard, clapped her gloved hands together and started it; then it swept out through the windows in a storm. The dust rose from stamping feet until the kerosene lamps were dimmed by it. And as the noise subsided, Jim saw standing out in frontthe stooped form of B. B. Hamm, one of the most prosperous men in the district.
“Mr. Chairman—Ezra Bronson,” he roared, “this feller’s crazy, an’ from the sound of things, you’re all as crazy as he is. If this fool scheme of his goes through, my farm’s for sale! I’ll quit before I’m sold out for taxes!”
“Just a minute, B. B.!” interposed Colonel Woodruff. “This ain’t as dangerous as you think. You don’t want us to do all this in fifteen minutes, do you, Jim?”
“Oh, as to that,” replied Jim, “I just wanted you to have in your minds what I have in my mind—and unless we can agree to work toward these things there’s no use in my staying. But time—that’s another matter. Believe with me, and I’ll work with you.”
“Get out of here!” said the colonel to Jim in an undertone, “and leave the rest to your friends.”
Jim walked out of the room and took the way toward his home. A horse tied to the hitching-pole had his blanket under foot, and Jim replaced it on his back, patting him kindly andtalking horse language to him. Then he went up and down the line of teams, readjusting blankets, tying loosened knots, and assuring himself that his neighbors’ horses were securely tied and comfortable. He knew horses better than he knew people, he thought. If he could manage people as he could manage horses—but that would be wrong. The horse did his work as a servant, submissive to the wills of others; the community could never develop anything worth while in its common life, until it worked the system out for itself. Horse management was despotism; man-government must be like the government of a society of wild horses, the result of the common work of the members of the herd.
Two figures emerged from the schoolhouse door, and as he turned toward his home after his pastoral calls on the horses, they overtook him. They were the figures of Newton Bronson and the county superintendent of schools.
“We were coming after you,” said Jennie.
“Dad wants you back there again,” said Newton.
“What for?” inquired Jim.
“You silly boy,” said Jennie, “you talked about the good of the schools all of the time, and never said a word about your own salary! What do you want? They want to know?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Jim in the manner of one who suddenly remembers that he has forgotten his umbrella or his pocket-knife. “I forgot all about it. I haven’t thought about that at all, Jennie!”
“Jim,” said she, “you need a guardian!”
“I know it, Jennie,” said he, “and I know who I want. I want——”
“Please come back,” said Jennie, “and tell papa how much you’re going to hold the district up for.”
“You run back,” said Jim to Newton, “and tell your father that whatever is right in the way of salary will be satisfactory to me. I leave that to the people.”
Newton darted off, leaving the schoolmaster standing in the road with the county superintendent.
“I can’t go back there!” said Jim.
“I’m proud of you, Jim,” said Jennie. “This community has found its master. They can’tdo all you ask now, nor very soon; but finally they’ll do just as you want them to do. And, Jim, I want to say that I’ve been the biggest little fool in the county!”