American Agriculturist, June 30, 1923 
543 
The Brown Mouse ■—By Herbert Quick 
** ALL right,” reiterated the colonel. “But why?” 
■LX. Oh,” said Jennie, “I want to see whether I can talk Jim out of some of his 
foolishness.” 
“You want to line him up, do you?” said the colonel. “Well, that's good politics, 
and incidentally, you may get some good ideas out of Jim.” 
“Rather unlikely,” said Jennie. 
“I don’t know about that,” said the colonel, smiling. “I begin to think that 
Jim's a Brown Mouse. I’ve told you about the Brown Mouse, haven’t I?” 
“Yes,” said Jennie. “You’ve told me. But Professor Darbishire’s brown mice 
were simply wild and incorrigible creatures.” 
“Justin Morgan was a Brown Mouse,” sard the colonel. “And he founded the 
greatest breed of horses in the world.” 
“You say that,” said Jennie, “because you’re a lover of the Morgan horse.” 
“Napoleon Bonaparte was a Brown Mouse,” said the colonel. “So was George 
Washington, and so was Peter the Great. Whenever a Brown Mouse appears he 
changes things in a little way or a big way.” 
“For the better, always?” asked Jennie. 
“No,” said the colonel. “The Brown Mouse may throw back to slant-headed 
savagery. But Jim . . . . sometimes I think Jim is the kind of Mendelian segre¬ 
gation out of which we get Franklins and Edisons and their sort. You may get 
' some good ideas out of Jim. Let us have them here for Christmas, by all means.” 
In due time Jennie’s invitation 
reached Jim and his mother, like an 
explosive shell fired from a distance 
into their humble dwelling. Mrs. Irwin 
had long since regarded herself as 
quite outside society. To be sure, for 
something like half of this period, she 
had been of society if not in it. She 
had done the family washings, scrub¬ 
bings and cleanings, had made the 
family clothes and been a woman of 
all work, passing from household to 
household, in an orbit determined by 
the exigencies of threshing, harvesting, 
illness and child-bearing. And when 
Jim, having absorbed everything v/hich 
the Woodruff school could give him in 
the way of education, found his first 
job at “making a hand,” Mrs. Irwin, at 
her son’s urgent request, ceased going 
out to work for a while, until she could 
get back her strength. This she had 
never succeeded in doing, and for a 
dozen years or more had never entered 
one of the houses in which she had 
formerly served. 
“I can’t go, James,” said she; “I 
can’t possibly go.” 
“Oh, yes, you can! Why not?” said 
Jim. “Why not?” 
“You know I don’t go anywhere,” 
urged Mrs. Irwin. 
“That’s no reason,” said her son. 
“I haven’t a thing to wear,” said 
Mrs. Irwin. 
“Nothing to wear!” 
I WONDER if any ordinary person can 
understand the shock with which Jim 
Irwin heard those words from his 
mother’s lips. He was approaching 
thirty, and the association of the ideas 
of Mother- and Costume was foreign to 
his mind. Other women had surfaces 
different from hers, to be sure—but 
his mother yjas not as other women. 
She was just Mother, always at work 
in the house or in the garden, always 
clothed in the grays, gray-blues, neu¬ 
tral stripes and checks which were 
cheap and common and easily made. 
Clothes! Jim had never given the 
thing a thought further than to wear 
out his Sunday best in the schoolroom, 
to wonder where the next suit of Sun¬ 
day best was to come from, and to buy 
for his mother the cheap and common 
fabrics which she fashioned into gar¬ 
ments. 
“Why, mother,” said he, “I think it 
would be pretty hard to explain to the 
Woodruffs that you stayed away be¬ 
cause of clothes. They have seen you 
in the clothes you wear pretty often 
for the last thirty years!” 
Was a woman ever quite without a 
costume? 
Mrs. Irwin gazed at vacancy for a 
while, and went to the old bureau. 
From the bottom drawer she took an 
old, old black alpaca dress—a dress 
which Jim had never seen. She spread 
it out on her bed in the alcove off the 
combined kitchen, parlor and dining¬ 
room in v^hich they lived, and smoothed 
out the M finkles. It was almost whole, 
.save for the places where her body, 
I once so much fuller than now, had 
drawn the threads apart—under the 
l arms, and at some of the seams—and 
she handled it as one deals with some¬ 
thing very precious. 
“I never thought I’d wear it again,” 
said she, “but once. I’ve been saving 
it for my last dress. But I guess it 
won’t hurt to wear it once for the 
benefit of the living.” 
Jim kissed his mother—a rare thing. 
save as the caress was called for by 
the established custom between them. 
“Don’t think of that, mother,” said 
he, “for years and years yet!” 
CHAPTER X 
HOW JIM WAS LINED UP 
fPHERE is no doubt that Jennie 
-L Woodruff was justified in thinking 
that they were a queer couple. To be 
sure, Jim’s clothes were not especially 
noteworthy, being just shiny, and 
frayed at cuff and instep, and short of 
sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. 
They betrayed poverty, and the in¬ 
ability of a New York sweatshop to 
anticipate the prodigality of Nature in 
the matter of length of leg and arm, 
and wealth of bones and joints which, 
she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But 
the Woodruff table had often enjoyed 
Jim’s presence, and the standards pre¬ 
vailing there as to clothes were only 
those of plain people who eat with their 
hired meP, buy their clothes at a county 
seat town, and live simply and sensibly 
on the fat of the land. Jim’s queerness 
lay not so much in his clothes as in his 
personality. 
On the other hand, Jennie could not 
help thinking that Mrs. Irwin’s queer¬ 
ness was to be found almost solely in 
her clothes. The black alpaca looked 
undeniably respectable, especially when 
. it was helped out by a curious old 
brooch. Jennie guessed it must have 
a story-^a story in which the stooped, 
rusty, old lady looked like a character 
of the period just after the war. For 
the blaqk alpaca dress looked more 
like a costume for a masquerade than a 
present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwin 
was so oppressed with knowledge that 
her dress didn’t fit, and with the diffi¬ 
culty of behaving naturally—like a 
convict just discharged from prison 
after a ten years’ term—that she took 
on a stiffness of deportment quite in 
keeping with the idea that she was a 
female Rip Van Winkle not yet quite 
awake. But Jennie had the keenness 
to see that if Mrs. Irwin could have 
had an up-to-date costume she would 
have become a rather ordinary and not 
bad-looking old lady. What Jennie 
failed to divine was that if Jim could 
have invested a hundred dollars in the 
services of tailors, haberdashers, bar¬ 
bers and other specialists in personal 
appearance, and could have blotted out 
his record as her father’s field-hand, 
he would have seemed to her a dis¬ 
tinguished-looking young man. Not 
handsome, of course, but the sort people 
look after—and follow. 
<<^OME to dinner,” said Mrs. Wood- 
vJruff, who at this juncture had a 
hired girl, but was yoked to the oar 
nevertheless when it came to turkey 
. and the other fixings of a Christmas 
dinner. “It’s good enough, what there 
is of it, and there’s enough of it such as 
it is — but the dressing in the turkey 
would be better for a little more sage!” 
The bountiful meal piled mountain 
high for guest and hired help and 
family melted away. The colonel, in 
stiff starched shirt, black tie and frock 
coat, carved with much empressement, 
and Jim felt almost for the first time 
a sense of the value of manner. 
“I had bigger turkeys,” said Mrs. 
Woodruff to Mrs. Irwin, “but I thought 
it would be better to cook two turkey- 
hens instead of one great big gobbler 
with meat as tough as tripe and stuffed 
full of fat.” 
“One of the hens would ’a’ been 
plenty,” replied Mrs. Irwin. “How 
much did they weigh?” 
“About fifteen pounds apiece,” was 
the answer. “The gobbler would ’a’ 
weighed thirty, I guess. He’s pure 
Mammoth Bronze.” 
“I wish,”)said Jim, “that we could 
get a few breeding birds of the wild 
bronze turkeys from Mexico.” 
“Why?” asked the colonel. 
“They’re the original blood of the 
domestic bronze turkeys,” said Jim, 
“and they’re bigger and handsomer 
than the pure-bred bronzes, even. 
They’re a better stock than the north¬ 
ern wild turkeys from which our com¬ 
mon birds originated.” 
“Where do you learn .all fhese things, 
Jim?” asked Mrs. Woodruff. “I de¬ 
clare, I often tell Woodruff that it’s as 
good as a lecture to have Jim Irwin at 
table.” 
There came into Jim’s eyes the gleam 
of the man devoted to a Cause—and the 
dinner tended to develop into a lecture. 
Jennie saw a little more plainly where¬ 
in his queerness lay. 
“There’s an education in any meal, 
if we would just use the things on the 
table as materials for study, and follow 
their trails back to their starting- 
points. This turkey takes us back to 
the chaparral of Mexico-^-” 
^^TX/HAT’S chaparral?” asked Jennie, 
VV as a diversion. “It’s one of the 
words I have seen so often—but after 
all it’s just a word, and nothing more.” 
“Ain’t that the trouble with our edu¬ 
cation, Jim?” queried the colonel, 
cleverly steering Jim back into the 
track of his discourse. 
“They are not even living words,” 
answered Jim, “unless we have clothed 
them in flesh and blood. ‘Chaparral’ to 
Jennie is just the ghost of a word. Our 
civilization is full of inefficiency be¬ 
cause we are satisfied to give our 
children these ghosts and shucks and 
husks of words, instead of the things 
themselves, that can be seen and hefted 
and handled and tested and heard.” 
Jennie looked Jim over carefully. His 
queerness was taking on a new phase— 
and she felt a sense of surprise such as 
one experiences when the conjurer 
causes a rose to grow into a tree before 
your very eyes. Jim’s development \vas 
not so rapid, but Jennie’s perception' of 
it was. 
“I think we lose so much time in 
school,” Jim went on, “while the chil¬ 
dren are eating their dinners.” 
“Well, Jim,” said Mrs. Woodruff, 
“everyone but you is down on the hu¬ 
man level. The poor kids have to 
eat!” 
“But think how much good education 
there is wrapped up in the school din¬ 
ner—if we could only get it out.” 
Jennie grew grave. Here was this 
Brown Mouse actually introducing the 
subject of the school—and he ought to 
suspect that she was planning to line 
him up on this very thing—if he wasn’t 
a perfect donkey as well as a dreamer. 
And he was calmly wading into the 
subject as if she were the ex-farm-hand 
country teacher, and he was the county 
superintendent-elect! 
“Eating a dinner like this, mother,” 
said the colonel gallantly, “is an edu¬ 
cation in itself; but just how ‘lamin’’ 
is wrapped up in the school lunch is a 
new one on me, Jim,” 
“Well,” said Jim, “in the first place 
the children ought to cook their meals 
as a part of the school work. Prior to 
that they ought to buy the materials. 
And prior to that they ought to keep 
the accounts of the school kitchen. 
They’d like to do these things, and it 
would help prepare them for life on an 
intelligent plane, while they prepared 
the meals.” 
“Isn’t that looking rather far ahead?” 
asked the county superintendent-elect. 
“It’s like a lot of other things we 
think far ahead,” urged Jim. “The 
only reason why they’re far off is be¬ 
cause we think them so. It’s a thought 
—and a thought is as near the moment 
we think it as it will ever be.” 
“I guess that’s so—to a wild-eyed 
reformer,” said the colonel. “But go 
on. Have some more dressing.” 
“Thanks, I believe I will,” said Jim. 
“And a little more of the cranberry 
sauce. No more turkey, please.” 
“I’d like to see the school class that 
could prepare this dinner,” said Mrs. 
Woodruff. 
“Why,” said Jim, “you’d be there 
showing them how! They’d get credits 
in their domestic-economy course for 
getting the school dinner—and they’d 
bring their mothers into it to help 
them stand at the head of their classes. 
And one detail of girls would cook one 
week, and another serve The Setting of 
the table would come in as a study— 
flowers, linen and all that. And when 
we get a civilized teacher, table man¬ 
ners!” 
“I’d take on that class,” said the 
hired man, winking at Selma Carlson, 
the maid, from somewhere below the 
salt. “The way I make my knife feed 
my face would be a great help to tbe 
children.” 
“And when the food came on the 
table,” Jim went on, with a smile at his 
former fellow-laborer, “just think of 
the things we could study while eating 
it. The discussion of a meal under 
proper guidance is much more educa¬ 
tive than a lecture. This breast-borie, 
now,’’ said he, referring to the remains 
on his plate. “That’s physiology. The 
cranberry-sauce — that’s botany, and 
JIM IRWIN—“THE BROWN 
MOUSE” 
'^HOUGH he smiles so cheer- 
fully, things are looking badly 
for Jim Irwin, former farm hand- 
and now school teacher. Jennie 
Woodruff, in order to “line him 
up”—that is, force him to give 
up his plans for a school based 
on practical life—has invited Jim 
and his mother to Christmas din¬ 
ner. Her father, however, has 
a growing respect for Jim’s 
theories and his ability to practice 
them. 
commerce, and soil management—do 
you know. Colonel, that the cranberry 
must have an acid soil—which would 
kill alfalfa or clover?” 
“Read something of it,” said the 
colonel, “but it didn’t interest me 
much.” 
“And the difference between the 
types of fowl on the table— ^that’s 
breeding. And the nutmeg, pepper and 
cocoanut—that’s geography. And every¬ 
thing on the table runs back to geogra- 
■ phy, and comes to us linked to our 
lives by dollars and cents—and they’re 
mathematics.” 
“We must have something more than 
dollars and cents in life,” said Jennie. 
“We must have culture.” 
{Continued on page 544) 
