“I am a member of a party of southern educators – state superintendents in the main,” the letter ran, “en tour of the country to see what we can find of an instructive nature in rural school work. I assure you that we are being richly repaid for the time and expense. There are things going on in the schools here in northeastern Missouri, for instance, which merit much study. We have met Professor Withers, of Ames, who suggests that we visit your schools, and especially the rural school taught by a young man named Irwin, and I wonder if you will be free on next Monday morning, if we come to your office, to direct us to the place? If you could accompany us on the trip, and perhaps show us some of your other excellent schools, we should be honored and pleased. The South is recreating her rural schools, and we are coming to believe that we shall be better workmen if we create a new kind rather than an improvement of the old kind.”
There was more of this courteous and deferential letter, all giving Jennie a sense of being saluted by a fine gentleman in satin and ruffles, and with a plume on his hat. And then came the shock – a party of state officials were coming into the county to study Jim Irwin’s school! They would never come to study Wilbur Smythe’s law practise – never in the world – or her work as county superintendent – never! – and Jim was getting seventy-five dollars a month, and had a mother to support. Moreover, he was getting more than he had asked when the colonel had told him to “hold the district up!” But there could be no doubt that there was something to Jim – the man was out of the ordinary. And wasn’t that just what she had been looking for in her mind?
Jennie wired to her southerner for the number of his party, and secured automobiles for the trip. She sent a note to Jim Irwin telling of the prospective visitation. She would show all concerned that she could do some things, anyhow, and she would send these people on with a good impression of her county.
She was glad of the automobiles the next Monday morning, when at nine-thirty the train discharged upon her a dozen very alert, very up-to-date, very inquisitive southerners, male and female, most of whom seemed to have left their “r’s” in the gulf region. It was eleven when the party parked their machines before the schoolhouse door.
“There are visitors here before us,” said Jennie.
“Seems rather like an educational shrine,” said Doctor Brathwayt, of Mississippi. “How does he accommodate so many visitors in that small edifice?”
“I am not aware,” said Jennie, “that he has been in the habit of receiving so very many from outside the district. Well, shall we go in?”
Once inside, Jennie felt a queer return of her old aversion to Jim’s methods – the aversion which had caused her to criticize him so sharply on the occasion of her first visit. The reason for the return of the feeling lay in the fact that the work going on was of the same sort, but of a more intense character. It was so utterly unlike a school as Jennie understood the word, that she glanced back at the group of educators with a little blush. The school was in a sort of uproar. Not that uproar of boredom and mischief of which most of us have familiar memories, but a sort of eager uproar, in which every child was intensely interested in the same thing; and did little rustling things because of this interest; something like the hum at a football game or a dog-fight.
On one side of the desk stood Jim Irwin, and facing him was a smooth stranger of the old-fashioned lightning-rod-agent type – the shallower and laxer sort of salesman of the kind whose sole business is to get signatures on the dotted line, and let some one else do the rest. In short, he was a “closer.”
Standing back of him in evident distress was Mr. Cornelius Bonner, and grouped about were Columbus Brown, B. B. Hamm, Ezra Bronson, A. B. Talcott and two or three others from outside the Woodruff District. With envelopes in their hands and the light of battle in their eyes stood Newton Bronson, Raymond Simms, Bettina Hansen, Mary Smith and Angie Talcott, the boys filled with delight, the girls rather frightened at being engaged in something like a debate with the salesman.
As the latest-coming visitors moved forward, they heard the schoolmaster finishing his passage at arms with the salesman.
“You should not feel exasperated at us, Mr. Carmichael,” said he in tones of the most complete respect, “for what our figures show. You are unfortunate in the business proposition you offer this community. That is all. Even these children have the facts to prove that the creamery outfit you offer is not worth within two thousand dollars of what you ask for it, and that it is very doubtful if it is the sort of outfit we should need.”
“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars – ” began Carmichael hotly, when Jim waved him down.
“Not with me,” said Jim. “Your friend, Mr. Bonner, there, knows what chance there is for you to bet even a thousand cents with me. Besides, we know our facts, in this school. We’ve been working on them for a long time.”
“Bet your life we have!” interpolated Newton Bronson.
“Before we finish,” said Jim, “I want to thank you gentlemen for bringing in Mr. Carmichael. We have been reading up on the literature of the creamery promoter, and it is a very fine thing to have one in the flesh with whom to – to – demonstrate, if Mr. Carmichael will allow me to say so.”
Carmichael looked at Bonner, made an expressive motion with his head toward the door, and turned as if to leave.
“Well,” said he, “I can do plenty of business with men. If you men want to make the deal I offer you, and I can show you from the statistics I’ve got at the hotel that it’s a special deal just to get started in this part of the state, and carries a thousand dollars of cut in price to you. Let’s leave these children and this he school-ma’am and get something done.”
“I can’t allow you to depart,” said Jim more gently than before, “without thanking you for the very excellent talk you gave us on the advantage of the cooperative creamery over the centralizer. We in this school believe in the cooperative creamery, and if we can get rid of you, Mr. Carmichael, without buying your equipment, I think your work here may be productive of good.”
“He’s off three or four points on the average overrun in the Wisconsin co-ops,” said Newton.
“And we thought,” said Mary Smith, “that we’d need more cows than he said to keep up a creamery of our own.”
“Oh,” replied Jim, “but we mustn’t expect Mr. Carmichael to know the subject as well as we do, children. He makes a practise of talking mostly to people who know nothing about it – and he talks very well. All in favor of thanking Mr. Carmichael please say ‘Aye.’”
There was a rousing chorus of “Aye!” in which Mr. Carmichael, followed closely by Mr. Bonner, made his exit. B. B. Hamm went forward and shook Jim’s hand slowly and contemplatively, as if trying to remember just what he should say.
“James E. Irwin,” said he, “you’ve saved us from being skinned by the smoothest grafter that I ever seen.”
“Not I,” said Jim; “the kind of school I stand for, Mr. Hamm, will save you more than that – and give you the broadest culture any school ever gave. A culture based on life. We’ve been studying life, in this school – the life we all live here in this district.”
“He had a smooth partner, too,” said Columbus Brown. Jim looked at Bonner’s little boy in one of the front seats and shook his head at Columbus warningly.
“If I hadn’t herded ’em in here to ask you a few questions about cooperative creameries,” said Mr. Talcott, “we’d have been stuck – they pretty near had our names. And then the whole neighborhood would have been sucked in for about fifty dollars a name.”
“I’d have gone in for two hundred,” said B. B. Hamm.
“May I call a little meeting here for a minute, Jim?” asked Ezra Bronson. “Why, where’s he gone?”
“They’s some other visitors come in,” said a little girl, pulling her apron in embarrassment at the teacher’s absence.
Jim had, after what seemed to Jennie an interminable while, seen the county superintendent and her distinguished party, and was now engaged in welcoming them and endeavoring to find them seats, – quite an impossible thing at that particular moment, by the way.
“Don’t mind us, Mr. Irwin,” said Doctor Brathwayt. “This is the best thing we’ve seen on our journeyings. Please go on with the proceedin’s. That gentleman seems to have in mind the perfectin’ of some so’t of organization. I’m intensely interested.”
“I’d like to call a little meetin’ here,” said Ezra to the teacher. “Seein’ we’ve busted up your program so far, may we take a little while longer?”
“Certainly,” said Jim. “The school will please come to order.”
The pupils took their seats, straightened their books and papers, and were at attention. Doctor Brathwayt nodded approvingly as if at the answer to some question in his mind.
“Children,” said Mr. Irwin, “you may or may not be interested in what these gentlemen are about to do – but I hope you are. Those who wish may be members of Mr. Bronson’s meeting. Those who do not prefer to do so may take up their regular work.”
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Bronson to the remains of Mr. Carmichael’s creamery party, “we’ve been cutting bait in this neighborhood about long enough. I’m in favor of fishing, now. It would have been the biggest disgrace ever put on this district to have been swindled by that sharper, when the man that could have set us right on the subject was right here working for us, and we never let him have a chance. And yet that’s what we pretty near did. How many here favor building a cooperative creamery if we can get the farmers in with cows enough to make it profitable, and the equipment at the right price?”
Each man held up a hand.
“Here’s one of our best farmers not voting,” said Mr. Bronson, indicating Raymond Simms. “How about you, Raymond?”
“Ah reckon paw’ll come in,” said Raymond blushingly.
“He will if you say so,” said Mr. Bronson.
Raymond’s hand went up amid a ripple of applause from the pupils, who seemed glad to have a voter in their ranks.
“Unanimous!” said Mr. Bronson. “It is a vote! Now I’d like to hear a motion to perfect a permanent organization to build a creamery.”
“I think we ought to have a secretary first,” said Mr. Talcott, “and I nominate Mr. James E. Irwin for the post.”
“Quite correct,” said Mr. Bronson, “thankee, A. B. I was about to forgit the secretary. Any other nominations? No ’bjections, Mr. Irwin will be declared unanimously elected. Mr. Irwin’s elected. Mr. Irwin, will you please assume the duties?”
Jim sat down at the desk and began making notes.
“I think we ought to call this the Anti-Carmichael Protective Association,” said Columbus Brown, but Mr. Bronson interrupted him, rather frowningly.
“All in good time, Clumb,” said he, “but this is serious work.” So admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under bond, adjourned and dispersed.
“It’s a go this time!” said Newton to Jim.
“I think so,” said Jim, “with those men interested. Well, our study of creameries has given a great deal of language work, a good deal of arithmetic, some geography, and finally saved the people from a swindle. Rather good work, Raymond!”
“My mother has a delayed luncheon ready for the party,” said Jennie to Jim. “Please come with us – please!”
But Jim demurred. Getting off at this time of day was really out of the question if he was to be ready to show the real work of the school in the afternoon session.
“This has been rather extraordinary,” said Jim, “but I am very glad you were here. It shows the utility of the right sort of work in letter-writing, language, geography and arithmetic – in learning things about farming.”
“It certainly does,” said Doctor Brathwayt. “I wouldn’t have missed it under any consideration; but I’m certainly sorry for that creamery shark and his accomplice – to be routed by the Fifth Reader grade in farming!”
The luncheon was rather a wonderful affair – and its success was unqualified after everybody discovered that the majority of those in attendance felt much more at home when calling it dinner. Colonel Woodruff had fought against the regiment of the father of Professor Gray, of Georgia, in at least one engagement, and tentative plans were laid for the meeting of the two old veterans “some winter in the future.”
“What d’ye think of our school?” asked the colonel.
“Well,” said Professor Gray, “it’s not fair to judge, Colonel, on what must have been rather an extraordinary moment in the school’s history. I take it that you don’t put on a representation of ‘The Knave Unmasked’ every morning.”
“It was more like a caucus than I’ve ever seen it, daddy,” said Jennie, “and less like a school.”
“Don’t you think,” said Doctor Brathwayt, “that it was less like a school because it was more like life? It was life. If I am not mistaken, history for this community was making in that schoolroom as we entered.”
“You’re perfectly right, Doctor,” said the colonel. “Columbus Brown and about a dozen others living outside the district are calling Wilbur Smythe in counsel to perfect plans for an election to consolidate a few of these little independent districts, for the express purpose of giving Jim Irwin a plant that he can do something with. Jim’s got too big for the district, and so we’re going to enlarge the district, and the schoolhouse, and the teaching force, and the means of educational grace generally. That’s as sure as can be – after what took place this morning.”
“He’s rather a wonderful person, to be found in such a position,” said Professor Gray, “or would be in any region I have visited.”
“He’s a native product,” said the colonel, “but a wonder all the same. He’s a Brown Mouse, you know.”
“A – a – ?” Doctor Brathwayt was plainly astonished. And so the colonel was allowed to tell again the story of the Darbishire brown mice, and why he called Jim Irwin one. Doctor Brathwayt said it was an interesting Mendelian explanation of the appearance of such a character as Jim. “And if you are right, Colonel, you’ll lose him one of these days. You can’t expect to retain a Cæsar, a Napoleon, or a Lincoln in a rural school, can you?”
“I don’t know about that,” said the colonel. “The great opportunity for such a Brown Mouse may be in this very school, right now. He’d have as big an army right here as Socrates ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only judge of his own proper place.”
“I think,” said Mrs. Brathwayt, as they motored back to the school, “that your country schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he crushed that Mr. Carmichael was positively merciless. Did he know how cruel he was?”
“I think not,” said Jennie. “It was the truth that crushed Mr. Carmichael.”
“But that vote of thanks,” said Mrs. Brathwayt. “Surely that was the bitterest irony.”
“I wonder if it was,” said Jennie. “No, I am sure it wasn’t. He wanted to leave the children thinking as well as possible of their victim, and especially of Mr. Bonner; and there was really something in Mr. Carmichael’s talk which could be praised. I have known Jim Irwin since we were both children, and I feel sure that if he had had any idea that his treatment of this man had been unnecessarily cruel, it would have given him a lot of pain.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Brathwayt, “I think you are to be congratulated for having known for a long time a genius.”
“Thank you,” said Jennie. And Mrs. Brathwayt gave her a glance which brought to her cheek another blush; but of a different sort from the one provoked by the uproar in the Woodruff school.
There could be no doubt now that Jim was thoroughly wonderful – nor that she, the county superintendent, was quite as thoroughly a little fool. She to be put in authority over him! It was too absurd for laughter. Fortunately, she hadn’t hindered him much – but who was to be thanked for that? Was it owing to any wisdom of hers? Well, she had decided in his favor, in those first proceedings to revoke his certificate. Perhaps that was as good a thing to remember as was to be found in the record.
CHAPTER XXIII
AND SO THEY LIVED —
And so it turned out quite as if it were in the old ballad, that “all in the merry month of May,” and also “all in the merry green wood,” there were great doings about the bold little promontory where once stood the cabin on the old wood-lot where the Simms family had dwelt. The brook ran about the promontory, and laid at its feet on three sides a carpet of blue-grass, amid clumps of trees and wild bushes. Not far afield on either hand came the black corn-land, but up and down the bluffy sides of the brook for some distance on both sides of the King-dragged highway, ran the old wood-lot, now regaining much of the unkempt appearance which characterized it when Jim Irwin had drawn upon himself the gentle rebuke of Old Man Simms for not giving a whoop from the big road before coming into the yard.
But Old Man Simms was gone, with all the Simmses, now thoroughly established on the Blanchard farm, and quite happy in their new success. The cabin was gone, and in its place stood a pretty little bungalow, about which blossomed the lilacs and peonies and roses and other old-fashioned flowers, planted there long ago by some pioneer woman, nourished back to thriftiness by old Mrs. Simms, and carefully preserved during the struggles with the builders of the bungalow by Mrs. Irwin. For this was Mrs. Irwin’s new home. It was, in point of fact, the teacher’s house or schoolmanse for the new consolidated Woodruff District, and the old Simms wood-lot was the glebe-land of the schoolmanse.
Jim turned over and over in his mind these new applications of old, historic, significant words, dear to every reader of history – “glebe-land,” “schoolmanse” – and it seemed to him that they signified the return of many old things lost in Merrie England, lost in New England, lost all over the English-speaking world, when the old publicly-paid clergyman ceased to be so far the servant of all the people that they refused to be taxed for his support. Was not the new kind of rural teacher to be a publicly-paid leader of thought, of culture, of progress, and was he not to have his manse, his glebe-land, and his “living”? And all because, like the old clergymen, he was doing a work in which everybody was interested and for which they were willing to be taxed. Perhaps it was not so high a status as the old; but who was to say that? Certainly not Jim Irwin, the possessor of the new kind of “living,” with its “glebe-land” and its “schoolmanse.” He would have rated the new quite as high as the old.
From the brow of the promontory, a light concrete bridge took the pretty little gorge in the leap of a single arch, and landed the eye at the bottom of the front yard of the schoolhouse. Thus the new institution of life was in full view of the schoolmanse veranda, and yet shut off from it by the dry moat of the brook and its tiny meadow of blue-grass.
Across the road was the creamery, with its businesslike unloading platform, and its addition in process of construction for the reception of the machinery for the cooperative laundry. Not far from the creamery, and also across the road, stood the blacksmith and wheelwright shop. Still farther down the stream were the barn, poultry house, pens, hutches and yards of the little farm – small, economically made, and unpretentious, as were all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself, which was builded for the future.
And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks of the uses to which it was to be put – kitchen, nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater, moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training rooms, laboratory and counting-room and what-not, was wonderfully small – Colonel Woodruff said far too small – though it was necessarily so large as to be rather astonishing to the unexpectant passer-by.
The unexpectant passer-by this May day, however, would have been especially struck by the number of motor-cars, buggies and surreys parked in the yard back of the creamery, along the roadside, and by the driveway running to the schoolhouse. People in numbers had arrived by five o’clock in the afternoon, and were still coming. They strolled about the place, examining the buildings and grounds, and talking with the blacksmith and the butter-maker, gradually drawing into the schoolhouse like a swarm of bees into a hive selected by the queen. None of them, however, went across the concrete bridge to the schoolmanse, save Mrs. Simms, who crossed, consulted with Mrs. Irwin about the shrubbery and flowers, and went back to Buddie and Jinnie, who were good children but natchally couldn’t be trusted with so many other young ones withouten some watchin’.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
This was the cry borne to the people in and about the schoolhouse by that Hans Hansen who would be called Hans Nilsen. Hans had been to the top of the little hill and had a look toward town. Like a crew manning the rigging, or a crowd having its picture taken, the assemblage crystallized into forms determined by the chances of getting a glimpse of the bungalow across the ravine – on posts, fences, trees and hillocks. Still nobody went across the bridge, and when McGeehee Simms and Johnny Bonner strayed to the bridge-head, Mrs. Simms called them back by a minatory, “Buddy, what did I tell you? You come hyah!”
A motor-car came over the hillock, ran down the road to the driveway to the schoolmanse and drew up at the door. Out of it stepped Mrs. Woodruff and the colonel, their daughter, the county superintendent of schools, and Mr. Jim Irwin. Jennie was dressed in a very well-tailored traveling costume, and Jim in a moderately well-tailored business suit. Mrs. Irwin kissed her son and Jennie, and led the way into the house. Jennie and Jim followed – and when they went in, the crowd over across the ravine burst forth into a tremendous cheer, followed by a three-times-three and a tiger. The unexpectant passer-by would have been rather surprised at this, but we who are acquainted with the parties must all begin to have our suspicions. The fact that when they reached the threshold Jim picked Jennie up in his arms and carried her in, will enable any good detective to put one and one together and make a pair – which comes pretty near telling the whole story.
By this time it was nearly seven, and Calista Simms came across the charmed bridge as a despatch-bearer, saying that if Mr. Jim and Miss Jennie didn’t mind, dinner would be suhved right soon. It was cooked about right, and the folks was gettin’ right hungry – an’ such a crowd! There were fifteen in the babies’ room, and for a while they thought the youngest Hamm young one had swallowed a marble. She would tell ’em they would be right over; good-by.
There was another cheer as the three elderly and the two young people emerged from the schoolmanse and took their way over the bridge to the school side of the velvet-bottomed moat; but it did not terminate in three-times-three and a tiger. It was, in fact shut off like the vibration of a bell dipped in water by the sudden rush of the shouters into the big assembly-room, now filled with tables for the banquet – and here the domestic economy classes, with their mothers, sisters, female cousins and aunts, met them, as waiters, hat-snatchers, hostesses, floor-managers and cooks, scoring the greatest triumph of history in the Woodruff District. For everything went off like clockwork, especially the victuals – and such victuals!
There was quantity in meats, breads, vegetables – and there was also savor. There was plenty, and there was style. Ask Mrs. Haakon Peterson, who yearned for culture, and had been afraid her children wouldn’t get it if Yim Irwin taught them nothing but farming. She will tell you that the dinner – which so many thought of all the time as supper – was yust as well served as it if had been in the Chamberlain Hotel in Des Moines, where she had stayed when she went with Haakon to the state convention.
Why shouldn’t it have been even better served? It was planned, cooked, served and eaten by people of intelligence and brains, in their own house, as a community affair, and in a community where, if any one should ask you, you are authorized to state that there’s as much wealth to the acre as in any strictly farming spot between the two oceans, and where you are perfectly safe – financially – in dropping from a balloon in the dark of the moon, and paying a hundred and fifty dollars an acre for any farm you happen to land on. Why shouldn’t things have been well done, when every one worked, not for money, but for the love of the doing, and the love of learning to do in the best way?
