The Brown Mouse Part 14

"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 a.s.sert," 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 ma.s.s 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' Inst.i.tute. 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' inst.i.tutes 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 inst.i.tute 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 inst.i.tute.

"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 cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tute.

Two persons were a good deal embarra.s.sed 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.