The Brown Mouse Part 23

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

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

"I--I don't see how--" Jim stammered, all taken aback by this new breeze of recognition.

"We can't pay much," said Mr. Hofmyer. "You have charge of the dis-_cip_-line in the whole school, and teach in Number Two room.

Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal to ye?"

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

"I'm afraid I can't," said Jim Irwin, "but----"

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

"You mustn't think," said Jim, "that we've _done_ all the things I mentioned in my talk, or that I haven't made any mistakes or failures."

"Your county superintendent didn't mention any failures," said Mr.

Hofmyer.

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

"M'h'm."

"Then I don't see why you want me," Jim went on.

"Why?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XX

THINK OF IT

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

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

"I'll admit," said the professor, "that much of our work in agriculture is pretty elementary."

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

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

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

"I think you're right," said the professor.

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

The professor laughed at his enthusiasm.

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

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

"I'm much obliged," replied Jim.

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

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

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

"I don't know," said Jim. "I haven't decided."

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

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

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

"Well, think of it," said Con. "The county's close, and wid a pop'lar young educator--an' a farmer, too, it might be done. Think of it."

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Hofmyer," said Jim, "--yes, he did."

"Well," said Columbus, "I don't want to ask you to stand in your own light, but I hope you won't let him toll you off there among strangers.

We're proud of you, Jim, and we don't want to lose you."

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."