American Agriculturist, July 7,1923 
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The Brown Mouse — By Herbert Quick 
AND Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since 
xahe began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause, however, 
would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might discover the same 
sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin has been a sort of ascetic 
since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh by hard labor in the fields, and by 
flagellations of the brain to drive off sleep while he pored over his books in the 
attic. He had looked long on such women as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Evange¬ 
line Agnes Wickfield and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh he had 
gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had this young 
ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the psychology of a 
stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of the fields, and associa¬ 
tion with a group of young human beings of both sexes. 
He would, no doubt, have considered carefully his patient’s symptoms. These 
were very largely the mental experiences which most boys pass through in their 
early twenties, save, perhaps that, as in a belated season, the transition from 
winter to spring was more sudden, and the contrast more violent. Jim was now 
thrown every day into contact with his fellows. He was becoming more of a 
boy, with the boys, and still more was he developing into a man with the women. 
The budding womanhood of Calista 
Simms and other school girls thrilled 
him as Helen of Troy or Juliet had 
never done. This will not seem very 
strange to the experienced reader, but 
it astonished the unsophisticated young 
schoolmaster. The floating hair, the 
rosebud mouth, the starry eye—all 
these disturbed the hitherto sedate 
mind. And now, as he gazed at Jennie, 
he was suddenly aware of the fact that, 
after all, whenever; these thoughts and 
dreams took on individuality, they were 
only persistent and intensified contin¬ 
uations of his old dreams of her. He 
was quite sure, now, that he had never 
forgotten for a moment, that Jennie 
was the only girl in the world for 
him. 
N OW, however, he arose as from 
some inner compulsion, and went to 
her side. Still scanning him by means 
of her back hair, Jennie knew that in 
another moment Jim would lay his hand 
on her shoulder, or otherwise advance 
to personal nearness, as he had done 
the night of his ill-starred speech at 
the schoolhouse—and she rose in self- 
dcf gusg. 
Self-defense, however, did not seem 
to require that he be kept at too 
great a distance; so she maneuvered 
him to the sofa, and seated him be¬ 
side her. Now was the time to line 
him up. 
“It seems good to have you with us 
to-day,” said she. “We’re such old, 
old friends.” 
“Yes,” repeated Jim, “old friends. 
.... We are, aren’t we, Jennie?” 
“And I feel sure,” Jennie went on, 
“that this marks a new era in our 
friendship.” 
“Why?” asked Jim, after consider¬ 
ing the matter. 
“Oh! everything is different, now— 
and getting more different all the time. 
My new work, and your new work, you 
know.” 
“I should like to think,” said Jim, 
“that we are beginning over again.” 
“Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am 
quite sure of it.” 
“And yet,” said Jim, “there is no 
such thing as a new beginning. Every¬ 
thing joins itself to something which 
went before. There isn’t any seam.” 
“No?” said Jennie interrogatively. _ 
“Our regard for each other,” Jennie 
noted most pointedly his word “regard” 
—“must be the continuation .of the 
old regard.” 
“I hardly know what you mean,” 
said Jennie. 
J IM reached over and possessed him¬ 
self of her hand. She pulled it from 
him gently, but he paid no attention to 
the little muscular protest, and ex¬ 
amined the hand critically. On the 
back of the middle finger he pointed 
out a scar—a very tiny scar. 
“Do you remember how you got 
that?” he asked. 
Because Jim clung to the hand, their 
heads were very close together as she 
joined in the examination. 
“Why, I don’t believe I do,” said she. 
“I dto,” he replied. “We—you and I 
and Mary Forsythe—were playing 
numble-peg, and you put your hand on 
the grass just as I threw the knife—it 
cut you, and left that scar.” 
“I remember, now!” said she. “How 
such things come back over the mem¬ 
ory. And did it leave a scar when I 
pushed you toward the hed-hot stove in 
the schoolhouse one blizzardy day, like 
this, and you peeled the skin off your 
wrist where it struck the stove?” 
“Look at it,” said he, baring his long 
and bony wrist. “Right there!”_ 
And they were off on the trail that 
leads back to childhood. They had 
talked long, and intimately, when the 
shadows of the early evening crept into 
the corners of the room. They had re¬ 
lived a dozen moving incidents by flood 
and field. Jennie recalled the time 
when the tornado narrowly missed the 
schoolhouse, and frightened everybody 
in school nearly to death. 
“Everybody but you, Jim,” Jennie 
remembered. “You looked out of the 
window and told the teacher that the 
twister was going north of us, and 
would kill somebody else.” 
“Did I?” asked Jim. 
“Yes,” said Jennie, “and when the 
teacher asked us to kneel and thank 
God, you said, ‘Why should we thank 
God that somebody else is bloWed 
away?’ She was greatly shocked.” 
“I don’t see to this day,” Jim as¬ 
serted, “what answer there was to my 
question.” 
In the gathering darkness Jim again 
took Jennie’s hand, but this time she 
deprived him of it. 
H E was trembling like a leaf. Let it 
be remembered in his favor that this 
was the only girl’s hand he had ever 
held. 
“You can’t find any more scars on 
it,” she said soberly. 
“Let me see how much it has changed 
since I struck the knife in it,” begged 
Jim. 
Jennie held it up for inspection. 
“It’s longer, and slenderer, and 
whiter, and even more beautiful,” said 
he, “than the little hand I cut; but it 
was then the most beautiful hand in 
the world to me—and still is.” 
“I must light the lamps,” said 
the county superintendent-elect, rather 
flustered,.it must be confessed. “Mama! 
Where are all the matches?” 
Mrs. Woodruff and Mrs. Irwin came 
in, and the lamplight reminded Jim’s 
mother that the cow was still to milk, 
and that the chickens might need at¬ 
tention. The Woodruff sleigh came to 
the door to carry them home; but Jim 
desired to breast the storm. He felt 
that he needed the conflict. Mrs. Irwin 
scolded him for his foolishness, but he 
strode off into the whirling drift, 
throwing back a good-by for general 
consumption, and a pathetic smile to 
Jennie. 
“He’s as odd as Dick’s hatband,” said 
Mrs. Woodruff, “tramping off in a 
storm like this.” 
“Did you line him up?”' asked the 
colonel of Jennie. 
The young lady started and blushed. 
She had forgotten all about the poli¬ 
tics of the situation. 
“I—I’m afraid I didn’t, papa,” she 
confessed. 
“Those brown mice of Professor 
Darbishire’s,” said the colonel, “were 
the devil and all to control.” 
J ENNIE was thinking of this as she 
dropped asleep. 
“Hard to control!” she thought. “I 
wonder. I wonder, after all, if Jim is 
not capable of being easily lined up— 
“Why, I don’t believe I do,” said she. 
And Jim? He found himself hard to 
control that night. So much so that it 
was after midnight before he had fin¬ 
ished work on a plan for a cooperative 
creamery. 
“The boys can be given work in help¬ 
ing to operate it,” he wrote on a tablet, 
“which, in connection with the labor 
performed by the teacher, will greatly 
reduce the expense of operation. A 
skilled buttermaker, with slender white 
hands”—but he erased this last clause 
and retired. 
CHAPTER XII 
FACING TRIAL 
A DISTINCT sensation ran through 
the Woodruff school, but the 
schoolmaster and a group of five big- 
boys and three girls engaged in a very 
unclasslike conference in the back of 
the room were all unconscious of it. 
The geography classes had recited, and 
the language work was on. Those too 
small for these studies were playing a 
game under the leadership of Jinnie 
Simms, who had been promoted to the 
position of weed-seed monitor. 
Each child had been encouraged to 
bring some sort of weed from the win¬ 
ter fields—preferably one the seed of 
which still clung to the dried recep¬ 
tacles—but anyhow, a weed. Some pu¬ 
pils had brought merely empty tas¬ 
sels, some bare stalks, and some seeds 
which they had winnowed from the 
grain in Their father’s bins; and with 
them they played forfeits. They counted 
out by the “arey, Ira, ickery an’ ” 
method, and somebody was “It.” Then, 
in order, they presented to him a seed, 
stalk or head of a weed, and if the 
one who was It could tell the name of 
the weed, the child who brought the 
specimen became It, and the name was 
written on slates or tablets, and the 
new It told where the weed or seed was 
collected. If any pupil brought, in a 
specimen the name of which he himself 
could not correctly give, he paid a for¬ 
feit. If a specimen brought in was not 
found in the school cabinet—which was 
coming to contain a considerable collec¬ 
tion—it was placed there, and the task 
allotted to the best penman in the 
school to write its proper label. .All 
this caused excitement, and not a little 
buzz—but it ceased when the county 
superintendent entered the room. 
For it was after the first of Janu¬ 
ary, and Jennie was visiting the Wood¬ 
ruff school. 
The group in the back of the room 
went on with its conference, oblivious 
of the entrance of Superintendent Jen¬ 
nie. Their work was rather absorbing, 
being no more nor less than the com¬ 
pilation of the figures of a cow census 
of the district. 
“Altogether,” said Mary Talcott, 
“we have in the district one hundred 
and fifty-three cows.” 
“I don’t make it that,” said Raymond 
Simms. “I don’t get but a hundred 
and thirty-eight.” 
“rpHE trouble is,” said Newton Bron- 
J-son, “that Mary’s counting in the 
Bailey herd of Shorthorns.” 
“Well, they’re cows, ain’t they?” in¬ 
terrogated Mary. 
“Not for this census,” said Ray¬ 
mond. 
“Why not?” asked Mary. “They’re 
the prettiest cows in the neighbor¬ 
hood.” 
“Scotch Shorthorns,” said Newton, 
“and run with their calves.” 
“Leave them out,” said Jim, “and 
to-morrow, I want each one to tell in 
the language class, in three hundred 
words or less, whether there are 
enough cows in the district to justify 
a cooperative creamery, and give the 
reason. You’ll find articles in the farm 
papers if you look through the card 
index. Now, how about the census 
in the adjoining districts?” 
“There are more than two hundred 
within four miles on the roads leading 
west,” said a boy. 
“My father and I counted up about 
a hundred beyond us,” said Mary. 
“But I couldn’t get the exact number.” 
“Why” said Raymond, “we could find 
six hundred dairy cows in this neigh¬ 
borhood, within an hour’s drive.” 
“Six hundred!” scoffed Newton. 
“You’re crazy! In an hour’s drive?” 
“I mean an hour’s drive each way,” 
said Raymond. 
“I believe we could,” said Jim. “And 
after we find how far we will have to 
go to get enough cows, if half of them 
patronized the creamery, we’ll work 
over the savings the business would 
make. Who’s in possession of that 
correspondence with the Wisconsin 
creameries?” 
“I have itj” said Raymond. “I’m 
hectographing a lot of ar.ifhmetic prob¬ 
lems from it.” 1 
“How do you do, Mr. Irwin!” It 
was the superintendent who spoke. 
Jim’s brain whirled little prismatic 
clouds before his vision, as he rose and 
shook Jennie’s extended hand. . 
“Let me give you a chair,” said hjf 
“Oh no, thank you!” she returnee 
“I’ll just make myself at home. I 
know my way about in this school- 
house, you know!” 
She smiled at the children and 
went about looking at their work— 
which was not noticeably disturbed, by 
reason of the fact that visitors were 
much more frequent now than ever 
before, and were no rarity. Certainly, 
Jennie Woodruff was no novelty, since 
they had known her all their lives. 
Most of the embarrassment was Jim’s. 
He rose to the occasion, however, 
went through the routine of the closing 
day, and dismissed the flock, not omit¬ 
ting making an engagement with a 
group of boys for that evening to come 
back and work on the formalin treat¬ 
ment for smut in seed grains, and the 
blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes. 
“We hadn’t time for these things,” 
said he to the county superintendent, 
“in the regular class work—and it’s 
getting time to take them up if we 
are to clean out the smut in next 
year’s crop.” 
T HEY repeated Whittier’s Com Song 
in concert, and school was out. 
Alone with her in the old school- 
house, Jim confronted Jennie in the 
flesh. She felt a sense of his agitation, 
but if she had known the power of it, 
she would have been astonished. Since 
that Christmas afternoon when she 
had undertaken to follow Mr. Peter¬ 
son’s advice and line Yim Irwin up, 
Jim had gone through an inward trans¬ 
formation. He was in love with her. 
He knew how insane it was, yet, he 
had made up his mind that he would 
marry Jennie Woodruff. 
He saw her through clouds of rose 
and pink; but she looked at him as at 
a foolish man who was chasing rain¬ 
bows at her expense, and deeply vex¬ 
ing her. She was in a cold official 
frame of mind. 
“Jim,” said she, “do you know that 
you are facing trouble?” 
“Trouble,” said Jim, “is the natural 
condition of a man in my state of mind. 
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE 
TX THEN Jennie Woodruff asked 
VV Jim Irwin and his mother 
to dinner, she meant to play 
politics to the extent of persuad¬ 
ing him to give up his new 
fangled way of teaching school 
and conform to traditional meth¬ 
ods. But Jim was a “Brown 
Mouse,” whose theories meant 
much to him. Col. Woodruff, 
Jennie’s father, thought the 
former farm-hand had something 
to him and watched him carefully 
through the dinner at which Jim 
held forth on his ideas of a school 
program related to life. 
But it is going to be a delicious sort of 
tribulation.” 
“I don’t know what you mean,” she 
replied in perfect honesty. 
“Then I don’t know what you mean,” 
replied Jim. 
“Jim,” she said pleadingly, “I want 
you to give up this sort of teaching. 
Can’t you see it’s all wrong?” 
“No,” answered Jim, in much the 
manner of a man who has been stabbed 
by his sweetheart. “I can’t see that 
it’s wrong. It’s the only sort I can do. 
What do you see wrong in it?” 
“Oh, I can see some very wonderful 
things in it,” said Jennie, “but it can’t 
be done in the Woodruff District. It 
may be correct in theory, but it won’t 
work in practice.” 
“It works,” said Jim. “Anything 
that’s correct in theory will work. If 
the theory seems correct, and yet won’t 
work, it’s because something is wrong 
(Continued on page 15) 
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