The Brown Mouse

CHAPTER XIII
FAME OR NOTORIETY

The office of county superintendent was, as a matter of course, the least desirable room of the court-house. I say “room” advisedly, because it consisted of a single chamber of moderate size, provided with office furniture of the minimum quantity and maximum age. It opened off the central hall at the upper end of the stairway which led to the court room, and when court was in session, served the extraordinary needs of justice as a jury room. At such times the county superintendent’s desk was removed to the hall, where it stood in a noisy and confusing but very democratic publicity. Superintendent Jennie might have anticipated the time when, during the March term, offenders passing from the county jail in the basement to arraignment at the bar of justice might be able to peek over her shoulders and criticize her method of treating examination papers. On the twenty-fifth of February, however, this experience lurked unsuspected in her official future.

Poor Jennie! She anticipated nothing more than the appearance of Messrs. Bronson, Peterson and Bonner in her office to confront Jim Irwin on certain questions of fact relating to Jim’s competency to hold a teacher’s certificate. The time appointed was ten o’clock. At nine forty-five Cornelius Bonner and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five per cent. of the chairs therein. At nine fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard, weather-beaten and seedy as ever, and looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept since his sweetheart stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon Peterson and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by Wilbur Smythe, attorney-at-law, who carried under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation of the school laws of the state, and Throop on Public Officers. At nine fifty-six, therefore, the crowd in Jennie’s office exceeded its seating capacity, and Jennie was in a flutter as the realization dawned upon her that this promised to be a bigger and more public affair than she had anticipated. At nine fifty-nine Raymond Simms opened the office door and there filed in enough children, large and small, some of them accompanied by their parents, and all belonging to the Woodruff school, to fill completely the interstices of the corners and angles of the room and between the legs of the grownups. In addition there remained an overflow meeting in the hall, under the command of that distinguished military gentleman, Colonel Albert Woodruff.

“Say, Bill, come here!” said the colonel, crooking his finger at the deputy sheriff.

“What you got here, Al!” said Bill, coming up the stairs, puffing. “Ain’t it a little early for Sunday-school picnics?”

“This is a school fight in our district,” said the colonel. “It’s Jennie’s baptism of fire, I reckon … and say, you’re not using the court room, are you?”

“Nope,” said Bill.

“Well, why not just slip around, then,” said the colonel, “and tell Jennie she’d better adjourn to the big room.”

Which suggestion was acted upon instanter by Deputy Bill.

“But I can’t, I can’t,” said Jennie to the courteous deputy sheriff. “I don’t want all this publicity, and I don’t want to go into the court room.”

“I hardly see,” said Deputy Bill, “how you can avoid it. These people seem to have business with you, and they can’t get into your office.”

“But they have no business with me,” said Jennie. “It’s mere curiosity.”

Whereupon Wilbur Smythe, who could see no particular point in restricted publicity, said, “Madame County Superintendent, this hearing certainly is public or quasi-public. Your office is a public one, and while the right to attend this hearing may not possibly be a universal one, it surely is one belonging to every citizen and taxpayer of the county, and if the taxpayer, qua taxpayer, then certainly a fortiori to the members of the Woodruff school and residents of that district.”

Jennie quailed. “All right, all right!” said she. “But, shall I have to sit on the bench!”

“You will find it by far the most convenient place,” said Deputy Bill.

Was this the life to which public office had brought her? Was it for this that she had bartered her independence – for this and the musty office, the stupid examination papers, and the interminable visiting of schools, knowing that such supervision as she could give was practically worthless? Jim had said to her that he had never heard of such a thing as a good county superintendent of schools, and she had thought him queer. And now, here was she, called upon to pass on the competency of the man who had always been her superior in everything that constitutes mental ability; and to make the thing more a matter for the laughter of the gods, she was perched on the judicial bench, which Deputy Bill had dusted off for her, tipping a wink to the assemblage while doing it. He expected to be a candidate for sheriff, one of these days, and was pleasing the crowd. And that crowd! To Jennie it was appalling. The school board under the lead of Wilbur Smythe took seats inside the railing which on court days divided the audience from the lawyers and litigants. Jim Irwin, who had never been in a court room before, herded with the crowd, obeying the attraction of sympathy, but to Jennie, seated on the bench, he, like other persons in the auditorium, was a mere blurry outline with a knob of a head on its top.

She couldn’t call the gathering to order. She had no idea as to the proper procedure. She sat there while the people gathered, stood about whispering and talking under their breaths, and finally became silent, all their eyes fixed on her, as she wished that the office of county superintendent had been abolished in the days of her parents’ infancy.

“May it please the court,” said Wilbur Smythe, standing before the bar. “Or, Madame County Superintendent, I should say …”

A titter ran through the room, and a flush of temper tinted Jennie’s face. They were laughing at her! She wouldn’t be a spectacle any longer! So she rose, and handed down her first and last decision from the bench – a rather good one, I think.

“Mr. Smythe,” said she, “I feel very ill at ease up here, and I’m going to get down among the people. It’s the only way I have of getting the truth.”

She descended from the bench, shook hands with everybody near her, and sat down by the attorney’s table.

“Now,” said she, “this is no formal proceeding and we will dispense with red tape. If we don’t, I shall get all tangled up in it. Where’s Mr. Irwin? Please come in here, Jim. Now, I know there’s some feeling in these things – there always seems to be; but I have none. So I’ll just hear why Mr. Bronson, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Bonner think that Mr. James E. Irwin isn’t competent to hold a certificate.”

Jennie was able to smile at them now, and everybody felt more at ease, save Jim Irwin, the members of the board and Wilbur Smythe. That individual arose, and talked down at Jennie.

“I appear for the proponents here,” said he, “and I desire to suggest certain principles of procedure which I take it belong indisputably to the conduct of this hearing.”

“Have you a lawyer?” asked the county superintendent of the respondent.

“A what?” exclaimed Jim. “Nobody here has a lawyer!”

“Well, what do you call Wilbur Smythe?” queried Newton Bronson from the midst of the crowd.

“He ain’t lawyer enough to hurt!” said the thing which the dramatists call A Voice.

There was a little tempest of laughter at Wilbur Smythe’s expense, which was quelled by Jennie’s rapping on the table. She was beginning to feel the mouth of the situation.

“I have no way of retaining a lawyer,” said Jim, on whom the truth had gradually dawned. “If a lawyer is necessary, I am without protection – but it never occurred to me …”

“There is nothing in the school laws, as I remember them,” said Jennie, “giving the parties any right to be represented by counsel. If there is, Mr. Smythe will please set me right.”

She paused for Mr. Smythe’s reply.

“There is nothing which expressly gives that privilege,” said Mr. Smythe, “but the right to the benefit of skilled advisers is a universal one. It can not be questioned. And in opening this case for my clients, I desire to call your honor’s attention – ”

“You may advise your clients all you please,” said Jennie, “but I’m not going to waste time in listening to speeches, or having a lot of lawyers examine witnesses.”

“I protest,” said Mr. Smythe.

“Well, you may file your protest in writing,” said Jennie. “I’m going to talk this matter over with these old friends and neighbors of mine. I don’t want you dipping into it, I say!”

Jennie’s voice was rising toward the scream-line, and Mr. Smythe recognized the hand of fate. One may argue with a cantankerous judge, but the woman, who like necessity, knows no law, and who is smothering in a flood of perplexities, is beyond reason. Moreover, Jennie dimly saw that what she was doing had the approval of the crowd, and it solved the problem of procedure.

There was a little wrangling, and a little protest from Con Bonner, but Jennie ruled with a rod of iron, and adhered to her ruling. When the hearing was resumed after the noon recess, the crowd was larger than ever, but the proceedings consisted mainly in a conference of the principals grouped about Jennie at the big lawyers’ table. They were talking about the methods adopted by Jim in his conduct of the Woodruff school – just talking. The only new thing was the presence of a couple of newspaper men, who had queried Chicago papers on the story, and been given orders for a certain number of words on the case of the farm-hand schoolmaster on trial before his old sweetheart for certain weird things he had done in the home school in which they had once been classmates. The fact that the old school-sweetheart had kicked a lawyer out of the case was not overlooked by the gentlemen of the fourth estate. It helped to make it a “good story.”

By the time at which gathering darkness made it necessary for the bailiff to light the lamps, the parties had agreed on the facts. Jim admitted most of the allegations. He had practically ignored the text-books. He had burned the district fuel and worn out the district furniture early and late, and on Saturdays. He had introduced domestic economy and manual training, to some extent, by sending the boys to the workshops and the girls to the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers who allowed those privileges. He had used up a great deal of time in studying farm conditions. He had induced the boys to test the cows of the district for butter-fat yield. He was studying the matter of a cooperative creamery. He hoped to have a blacksmith shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime, where the boys could learn metal working by repairing the farm machinery, and shoeing the farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative laundry in connection with the creamery. He hoped to see a building sometime, with an auditorium where the people would meet often for moving picture shows, lectures and the like, and he expected that most of the descriptions of foreign lands, industrial operations, wild animals – in short, everything that people should learn about by seeing, rather than reading – would be taught the children by moving pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped to open to the boys and girls the wonders of the universe which are touched by the work on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented farmers of them, able to get the most out of the soil, to sell what they produced to the best advantage, and at the same time to keep up the fertility of the soil itself. And he hoped to teach the girls in such a way that they would be good and contented farmers’ wives. He even had in mind as a part of the schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one day build, an apartment in which the mothers of the neighborhood would leave their babies when they went to town, so that the girls could learn the care of infants.

“An’ I say,” interposed Con Bonner, “that we can rest our case right here. If that ain’t the limit, I don’t know what is!”

“Well,” said Jennie, “do you desire to rest your case right here?”

Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.

“Now, Mr. Irwin,” said she, “while you have been following out these very interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of teaching the things called for by the course of study?”

“What is the course of study?” queried Jim. “Is it anything more than an outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading: why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of language than by writing about things they have found out in relation to some of the sciences which are laid under contribution by farming? Everything they do runs into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than the course requires. There isn’t any branch of study – not even poetry and art and music – that isn’t touched by life. If there is we haven’t time for it in the common schools. We work out from life to everything in the course of study.”

“Do you mean to assert,” queried Jennie, “that while you have been doing all this work which was never contemplated by those who have made up the course of study, that you haven’t neglected anything?”

“I mean,” said Jim, “that I’m willing to stand or fall on an examination of these children in the very text-books we are accused of neglecting.”

Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full minute, and at the clock. It was nearly time for adjournment.

“How many pupils of the Woodruff school are here?” she asked. “All rise, please!”

A mass of the audience, in the midst of which sat Jennie’s father, rose at the request.

“Why,” said Jennie, “I should say we had a quorum, anyhow! How many will come back to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, and bring your school-books? Please lift hands.”

Nearly every hand went up.

“And, Mr. Irwin,” she went on, “will you have the school records, so we may be able to ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?”

“I will,” said Jim.

“Then,” said Jennie, “we’ll adjourn until nine o’clock. I hope to see every one here. We’ll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr. Irwin, please remember that you state that you’ll stand or fall on the mastery by these pupils of the text-books they are supposed to have neglected.”

“Not the mastery of the text,” said Jim. “But their ability to do the work the text is supposed to fit them for.”

“Well,” said Jennie, “I don’t know but that’s fair.”

“But,” said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, “we don’t want our children brought up to be yust farmers. Suppose we move to town – where does the culture come in?”

The Chicago papers had a news item which covered the result of the examinations; but the great sensation of the Woodruff District lay in the Sunday feature carried by one of them.

It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of Jennie Woodruff – the latter authentic, and the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently the portrait of a lumber-jack. There was also a very free treatment by the cartoonist of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the intention of shooting up the school board in case the decision went against the schoolmaster.

“When it became known,” said the news story, “that the schoolmaster had bet his job on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed and alleged to have been studiously neglected, the excitement rose to fever heat. Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds being eight to five on General Proficiency against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and his school. And the way those rural kids rose in their might and ate up the text-books was simply scandalous. There was a good deal of nervousness on the part of some of the small starters, and some bursts of tears at excusable failures. But when the fight was over, and the dead and wounded cared for, the school board and the county superintendent were forced to admit that they wished the average school could do as well under a similar test.

“The local Mr. Dooley is Cornelius Bonner, a member of the ‘board.’ When asked for a statement of his views after the county superintendent had decided that her old sweetheart was to be allowed the priceless boon of earning forty dollars a month during the remainder of his contract, Mr. Bonner said, ‘Aside from being licked, we’re all right. But we’ll get this guy yet, don’t fall down and fergit that!’

“‘The examinations tind to show,’ said Mr. Bonner, when asked for his opinion on the result, ‘that in or-r-rder to larn anything you shud shtudy somethin’ ilse. But we’ll git this guy yit!’”

“Jim,” said Colonel Woodruff, as they rode home together, “the next heat is the school election. We’ve got to control that board next year – and we’ve got to do it by electing one out of three.”

“Is that a possibility?” asked Jim. “Aren’t we sure to be defeated at last? Shouldn’t I quit at the end of my contract? All I ever hoped for was to be allowed to fulfill that. And is it worth the fight?”

“It’s not only possible,” replied the colonel, “but probable. As for being worth while – why, this thing is too big to drop. I’m just beginning to understand what you’re driving at. And I like being a wild-eyed reformer more and more.”

CHAPTER XIV
THE COLONEL TAKES THE FIELD

Every Iowa county has its Farmers’ Institute. Usually it is held in the county seat, and is a gathering of farmers for the ostensible purpose of listening to improving discussions and addresses both instructive and entertaining. Really, in most cases, the farmers’ institutes have been occasions for the cultivation of relations between a few of the exceptional farmers and their city friends and with one another. Seldom is anything done which leads to any better selling methods for the farmers, any organization looking to cooperative effort, or anything else that an agricultural economist from Ireland, Germany or Denmark would suggest as the sort of action which the American farmer must take if he is to make the most of his life and labor.

The Woodruff District was interested in the institute however, because of the fact that a rural-school exhibit was one of its features that year, and that Colonel Woodruff had secured an urgent invitation to the school to take part in it.

“We’ve got something new out in our district school,” said he to the president of the institute.

“So I hear,” said the president – “mostly a fight, isn’t it?”

“Something more,” said the colonel. “If you’ll persuade our school to make an exhibit of real rural work in a real rural school, I’ll promise you something worth seeing and discussing.”

Such exhibits are now so common that it is not worth while for us to describe it; but then, the sight of a class of children testing and weighing milk, examining grains for viability and foul seeds, planning crop rotations, judging grains and live stock was so new in that county as to be the real sensation of the institute.

Two persons were a good deal embarrassed by the success of the exhibit. One was the county superintendent, who was constantly in receipt of undeserved compliments upon her wisdom in fostering really “practical work in the schools.” The other was Jim Irwin, who was becoming famous, and who felt he had done nothing to deserve fame. Professor Withers, an extension lecturer from Ames, took Jim to dinner at the best hotel in the town, for the purpose of talking over with him the needs of the rural schools. Jim was in agony. The colored waiter fussed about trying to keep Jim in the beaten track of hotel manners, restored to him the napkin which Jim failed to use, and juggled back into place the silverware which Jim misappropriated to alien and unusual uses. But, when the meal had progressed to the stage of conversation, the waiter noticed that gradually the uncouth farmer became master of the situation, and the well-groomed college professor the interested listener.

“You’ve got to come down to our farmers’ week next year, and tell us about these things,” said he to Jim. “Can’t you?”

Jim’s brain reeled. He go to a gathering of real educators and tell his crude notions! How could he get the money for his expenses? But he had that gameness which goes with supreme confidence in the thing dealt with.

“I’ll come,” said he.

“Thank you,” said the Ames man, “There’s a small honorarium attached, you know.”

Jim was staggered. What was an honorarium? He tried to remember what an honorarium is, and could get no further than the thought that it is in some way connected with the Latin root of “honor.” Was he obliged to pay an honorarium for the chance to speak before the college gathering? Well, he’d save money and pay it. The professor must be able to understand that it couldn’t be expected that a country school-teacher would be able to pay much.

“I – I’ll try to take care of the honorarium,” said he. “I’ll come.”

The professor laughed. It was the first joke the gangling innovator had perpetrated.

“It won’t bother you to take care of it,” said he, “but if you’re not too extravagant it will pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars over.”

Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium was paid to the person receiving the honor, then. What a relief!

“All right,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be glad to come!”

“Let’s consider that settled,” said the professor. “And now I must be going back to the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes next. I tell you, the winter wheat crop has been – ”

But Jim was not able to think much of the winter wheat problem as they went back to the auditorium. He was worth putting on the program at a state meeting! He was worth the appreciation of a college professor, trained to think on the very matters Jim had been so long mulling over in isolation and blindness! He was actually worth paying for his thoughts.

Calista Simms thought she saw something shining and saint-like about the homely face of her teacher as he came to her at her post in the room in which the school exhibit was held. Calista was in charge of the little children whose work was to be demonstrated that day, and was in a state of exaltation to which her starved being had hitherto been a stranger. Perhaps there was something similar in her condition of fervent happiness to that of Jim. She, too, was doing something outside the sordid life of the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have been glad to die for them – and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of the town girls who passed about among the exhibits, she was poorly dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of wellbeing and happiness in Calista’s soul at the feeling of her whole clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the “boughten” cloak she wore – and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have understood Calista’s joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson’s eyes were on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the passions quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.

“Hello, Calista!” said Jim. “How are you enjoying it?”

“Oh!” said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. “Ah’m enjoying myse’f right much, Mr. Jim.”

“Any of the home folks coming in to see?”

“Yes, seh,” answered Calista. “All the school board have stopped by this morning.”

Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie Woodruff. When Jim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended hand, he felt the repulsion of their attitudes and sheered off on some pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.

They resumed their talk.

“I’m a Dimocrat,” said Con Bonner, “and you fellers is Republicans, and we’ve fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn’t divide on party lines.”

“The fight about the teacher,” said Haakon Peterson, “is a t’ing of the past. All our candidates got odder yobs now.”

“Yes,” said Ezra Bronson. “Prue Foster wouldn’t take our school now if she could get it”

“And as I was sayin’,” went on Bonner, “I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin. An’ bein’ the cause of his gittin’ the school, I’d like to be on the board to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I won’t run, and if the right feller is named, I’ll line up what friends I got for him.” “You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can,” said Peterson. “I tank you better run.”

“What say, Ez?” asked Bonner.

“Suits me all right,” said Bronson. “I guess we three have had our fight out and understand each other.”

“All right,” returned Bonner, “I’ll take the office again. Let’s not start too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?”

“Suits me,” said Bronson.

“Wery well,” said Peterson.

“I don’t like the way Colonel Woodruff acts,” said Bonner. “He rounded up that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn’t he?”

“I tank not,” replied Peterson. “I tank he was yust interested in how Yennie managed it.”

“Looked mighty like he was managin’ the demonstration,” said Bonner. “What d’ye think, Ez?”

“Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with,” said Bronson. “I reckon he was just interested in Jennie’s dilemmer. It ain’t reasonable that Colonel Woodruff after the p’litical career he’s had would mix up in school district politics.”

“Well,” said Bonner, “he seems to take a lot of interest in this exhibition here. I think we’d better watch the colonel. That decision of Jennie’s might have been because she’s stuck on Jim Irwin, or because she takes a lot of notice of what her father says.”

“Or she might have thought the decision was right,” said Bronson. “Some people do, you know.”

“Right!” scoffed Bonner. “In a pig’s wrist! I tell you that decision was crooked.”

“Vell,” said Haakon Peterson, “talk of crookedness wit’ Yennie Woodruff don’t get wery fur wit’ me.”

“Oh, I don’t mean anything bad, Haakon,” replied Bonner, “but it wasn’t an all-right decision. I think she’s stuck on the guy.”

The caucus broke up after making sure that the three members of the school board would be as one man in maintaining a hostile front to Jim Irwin and his tenure of office. It looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a little district wherein there were scarcely twenty-five votes. The three members of the board with their immediate friends and dependents could muster two or three ballots each – and who was there to oppose them? Who wanted to be school director? It was a post of no profit, little honor and much vexation. And yet, there are always men to be found who covet such places. Curiously there are always those who covet them for no ascertainable reason, for often they are men who have no theory of education to further, and no fondness for affairs of the intellect. In the Woodruff District, however, the incumbents saw no candidate in view who could be expected to stand up against the rather redoubtable Con Bonner. Jim’s hold upon his work seemed fairly secure for the term of his contract, since Jennie had decided that he was competent; and after that he himself had no plans. He could not expect to be retained by the men who had so bitterly attacked him. Perhaps the publicity of his Ames address would get him another place with a sufficient stipend so that he could support his mother without the aid of the little garden, the cows and the fowls – and perhaps he would ask Colonel Woodruff to take him back as a farm-hand. These thoughts thronged his mind as he stood apart and alone after his rebuff by the caucusing members of the school board.

“I don’t see,” said a voice over against the cooking exhibit, “what there is in this to set people talking? Buttonholes! Cookies! Humph!”

It was Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs. Bronson, whose attitude was that of a person torn between conflicting influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle Peterson that while he was still loyal to the school board, and hence perforce opposed to Jim Irwin, and resentful to the decision of the county superintendent, his adhesion to the institutions of the Woodruff District as handed down by the fathers was not quite of the thick-and-thin type. For he had suggested that Jennie might have been sincere in rendering her decision, and that some people agreed with her: so Mrs. Bronson, while consorting with the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness when the school and its work was condemned. Was not her Newton in charge of a part of this show! Had he not taken great interest in the project? Was he not an open and defiant champion of Jim Irwin, and a constant and enthusiastic attendant upon, not only his classes, but a variety of evening and Saturday affairs at which the children studied arithmetic, grammar, geography, writing and spelling, by working on cows, pigs, chickens, grains, grasses, soils and weeds? And had not Newton become a better boy – a wonderfully better boy? Mrs. Bronson’s heart was filled with resentment that she also could not be enrolled among Jim Irwin’s supporters. And when Mrs. Bonner sneered at the buttonholes and cookies, Mrs. Bronson, knowing how the little fingers had puzzled themselves over the one, and young faces had become floury and red over the other, flared up a little.