American Agriculturist, August 25 ,1923 
131 
Mouse — By Herbert Quick 
The Brown 
A FINE home-coming it was for Jim, with the colonel waiting at the station 
with a double sleigh, arid the chance to ride into the snowy country in the 
same seat with Jennie—a chance which was blighted by the colonel’s placing of 
Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad rear seat, and Jim in front with 
himself. A fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and past fine farmsteads 
snuggled into their rectangular wrappages of trees set out in the old' pioneer 
days. The colonel would not allow him to get but and walk when he could really 
have reached home more quickly by doing so; no, he set the Hansens down at 
their door, took Jennie home, and then drove merrily to the humble cabin of the 
rather excited young schoolmaster. 
“Did you make any deal with those people down in the western part of the 
State?” asked the colonel. “Jennie wrote me that you’ve got an offer.” 
“No,” said Jim, and he told the colonel about the proposal of Mr. Hofmyer. 
“Well,” said the colonel, “in my capacity of wild-eyed reformer, I’ve made up 
my mind that the first four miles in the trip is to make the rural teacher’s job 
a bigger job. It’s got to be a man’s size, woman’s size job, or we can’t get real 
men and real women to stay in the work.” 
“I think that’s a statesmanlike formulation of it,” said Jim. 
“Well,” said the colonel, “don’t turn 
down the Pottawatomie County job un¬ 
til we have a chance to see what we can 
do. I’ll get some kind of a meeting to¬ 
gether, and what I want you to do is to 
use this offer as a club over this help¬ 
less school district. What we need is 
to be held up. Do the Jesse James act, 
Jim!” 
“I can’t, Colonel!” 
“Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?” 
“I want to treat everybody fairly,” 
said Jim, “including Mr. Hofmyer. I 
don’t know what to do, hardly.” 
“Well, I’ll get the meeting together,” 
said the colonel, “and in the meantime, 
think of what I’ve said.” 
A NOTHER thing to think of! Jim 
rushed into the house and surprised 
his mother, who had expected him to 
arrive after a slow walk from town 
through the snow. Jim caught her in 
his arms, from which she was released 
a moment later, flustered and blushing. 
“Why, James,” said she, “you seem 
excited. What’s happened?” 
“Nothing, mother,” he replied, “ex¬ 
cept that I believe there’s just a pos¬ 
sibility of my being a success in the 
world!” 
“My boy, my boy!” said she, laying 
her hand on his arm, “if you were to 
die to-night, you’d die the greatest suc¬ 
cess any boy ever was—if your mother 
is any judge.” 
Jim kissed her, and went up to his 
attic to change his clothes. Inside the 
waistcoat was a worn envelope, which 
he carefully opened, and took from it a 
letter much creased from many foldings. 
It was the old letter from Jennie, writ¬ 
ten when the comical mistake had been 
made of making him the teacher of the 
Woodruff school. It still contained her 
rather fussy cautions about being “too 
original,” and the sage statement that 
“the wheel runs easiest in the beaten 
track.” It was writtembefore the -vexa¬ 
tion and trouble he had caused her; but 
he did not read the advice, nor think 
of the coolness which had come be¬ 
tween them—he read only the sentence 
in which Jennie had told of her 
father’s interest in Jim’s success, end¬ 
ing with the underscored words, “I’m 
for you, too.’’ 
“I wonder,” said Jim, as he went 
out to do the evening’s tasks, “I wonder 
if she is for me!” 
CHAPTER XXI 
A SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP 
Y oung mcGeehee simms was 
loitering along the snowy way to 
the sc-hoolhouse bearing a brightly 
scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. 
He had been allowed to act as Water 
Superintendent of the Woodruff School 
as a reward of merit—said merit be¬ 
ing- an essay on which he received cred¬ 
it in both language and geography on 
“Harvesting Wheat in the Tennessee 
Mountains.” This had been of vast in¬ 
terest to the school in view of the fact 
that the Simmses were the only pupils 
in the school who had ever seen in use 
that supposedly-obsolete harvesting im¬ 
plement, the cradle. Buddy’s essay had 
been passed over to the class in United 
States history as the evidence of an eye¬ 
witness concerning farming conditions 
.in our grandfathers’ times. 
The surnameless Pete, Colonel Wood¬ 
ruff’s hired man, halted Buddy at the 
dour. 
“Mr. Simms, T believe?” he said. 
“I reckon you must be lookin’, for my 
brother, Raymond, suh,” said Buddy. 
“I am a-lookin’,” said Pete impres¬ 
sively, “for Mr. McGeehee Simms.” 
“That’s me,” said Buddy; “but I 
hain’t been doin’ nothin’ wrong, suh!” 
“I have a message here,” said Pete, 
“for Professor James E. Irwin. He’s 
what-ho within, there, ain’t he?” , 
“He’s inside, I reckon,” said Buddy. 
“Then will you be so kind and con¬ 
descendin’ as to stoop so lo\v as to jump 
so high as to give him this letter?” 
asked Pete. 
Buddy took the letter and was consid¬ 
ering his reply to this remarkable 
speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, 
passed on. 
“Please come to the meeting to¬ 
night,” ran the colonel’s note to Jim; 
“and when you come, come prepared to 
hold the district up. If we can’t meet 
the Pottowattamie County standard 
of wages, we ought to lose you. Every¬ 
body will be there. Come late, so you 
won’t hear yourself talked about—I 
should recommend nine-thirty and war¬ 
paint.” 
It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and 
the responsibility rather sickened Jim. 
How could he impose conditions on the 
whole school district? And how could 
any one look for anything but scorn 
for the upstart field-hand from these 
men who had for so many years made 
him th*e butt of their good-natured but 
none the less contemptuous ridicule? 
Only one thing kept him from dodging 
the whole issue and remaining at home 
— the colonel’s matter-of-fact assump¬ 
tion that Jim had become master of 
the situation. Ilow could he flee, when 
this old soldier was fighting so valiantly 
for him in the trenches? So Jim went 
to the meeting. 
n^HE season was nearing spring, and 
-L it was a mild thawy night. The win¬ 
dows of the schoolhouse were filled with 
heads, evidencing the presence of a 
crowd of almost unprecedented size, 
and the sashes had been thrown up for 
ventilation and coolness. As Jim 
climbed the back fence of the school- 
yard, he heai-d a burst of applause, 
from which he judged that some 
speaker had just finished his remarks. 
There was silence when he came along¬ 
side the window at the right of the 
chairman’s desk, a silence broken by 
the voice of Old Man Simms, saying 
“Mistah Chairman!” 
“The chair,” said the voice of Ezra 
Bronson, “recognizes Mr. Simms.” 
Jim halted in indecision. There is 
no rule of manners or morals, how¬ 
ever, forbidding eavesdropping during 
the proceedings of a public meeting— 
and anyhow, he felt rather shiveringly 
curious about these deliberations. 
Therefore he listened to the first and 
last public speech of Old Man Simms. 
“Ah ain’t no speaker,” said Old Man 
Simms, “but Ah cain’t set hei*e and be 
quiet an’ go home an’ face my ole 
woman an’ my boys an’ gyuhls with- 
outen sayin’ a word fo’ the best friend 
any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin.” 
(Applause.) “Gentlemen, we-all owe 
everything to Mr. Jim Irwin! Maybe 
Ah’ll be thought forrard to speak hyah, 
bein’ as Ah ain’t no learnin’ an’ some 
may think Ah don’t pay no taxes; but 
it will be overlooked, Ah reckon, seein’ 
as how we’ve took the Blanchard farm, 
a hundred an’ sixty acres, for five 
yeahs, an’ move in a week from Sat’- 
day. We pay taxes in our rent, Ah 
reckon, an’ howsomever that may be, 
Ah’ve come to feel that you-all won’t 
think hard of me if Ah speak what we- 
uns feels so strong about Mr. Jim 
Irwin?” 
O LD Man Simms finished this exordi¬ 
um with the rising inflection, which 
denoted a direct question as to his 
status in the meeting. “Go on!” 
“You’ve got as good a right as any 
one!” “You’re all right, old man!” 
Such exclamations as these came to 
Jim’s ears, with scarcely less grateful¬ 
ness than to those of Old Man Simms 
—who stammered and went on. 
“Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentle¬ 
men an’ ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin 
found us, we was scandalous pore, an’ 
we was wuss’n pore—we was low- 
down.” (Cries of “No—No!”) “Yes, 
we was, becuz what’s respectable in 
the mountings is one thing, whar all the 
folks is pore, but when a man gets in a 
new place, he’s got to lift himse’f up to 
what folks does where he’s come to, or 
he’ll fall to the bottom of what there 
is in that there community. In the 
mountings we was good people, becuz 
we done the best we could an’ the best 
any one done; but hyah, we was low- 
down people becuz we hated the people 
that had mo’ learnin’, mo’ land, mo’ 
money, an’ mo’ friends than what we 
had. My children was igernant, an’ 
triflin’, but I was the most triflin’ of 
all. Ah’ll leave it to Colonel Woodruff 
if I was good fer a plug of terbacker, 
or a bakin’ of flour at any sto’ in the 
county. Was I, Colonel? Wasn’t I 
perfectly wuthless an’ triflin’?” 
There was a ripple of laughter, in 
the midst of which the colonel’s voice 
was heard saying, “I guess you were, 
Mr. Simms, 1 guess you were, but—” 
“Thankee,” said Old Man Simms, as 
if the colonel had given a really valu¬ 
able testimonial to his character. “I 
sho’ was! Thankee kindly! An’ now, 
what am I good fer? Cain’t I get any¬ 
thing I want at the stores? Cain’t I 
git a little money at the bank, if I got 
to have it?” 
“You’re just as good as any man in 
the district,” said the colonel. “You 
don’t ask for more than you can pay, 
and you can get all you ask.” 
“Thankee,” said Mr. Simms gravely. 
“What Ah tell you-all is right, ladies 
and gentlemen. An’ what has made the 
change in we-uns, ladies and gentlemen? 
It’s the wuk of Mr. Jim Irwin with my 
boy Raymond, the best boy any man 
evah hed, and my gyuhl, Calista, an’ 
Buddy, an’ Jinnie, an’ with me an’ my 
ole woman. He showed us how to get 
a toe-holt into this new kentry. He 
done showed us that you-all is good 
people, an’ not what we thought you 
was. Outen what he learned in school, 
my boy Raymond an’ me made as good 
crops as we could last summer, an’ 
done right much wuk outside. We got 
WHAT HAS HAPPENED 
G RADUALLY the tide is turn¬ 
ing Jim’s way. It has been 
a long, uphill pull for the inex¬ 
perienced young teacher, facing 
the opposition of the school board 
and even of his old sweetheart, 
Jennie Woodruff, how county su¬ 
perintendent. 
But bit by bit, Jim’s successful 
application of his “work related 
to life” school program has made 
friends. The shiftless Simms fam¬ 
ily, southern newcomers, has 
been rehabilitated, Newton Bron¬ 
son, formerly a village problem, 
has found work more fun than 
idleness and, finally, Jim’s trip to 
the Agricultural College to speak 
at Farmer’s Week has shown the 
community that he was to be 
taken seriously. During that trip 
he receives a flattering offer to 
teach in another county. He 
agrees to “think it over.” 
the name of bein’ good farmers an’ 
good wukkers, an’ when Mr. Blanchard 
moved to town, he said he was glad to 
give us his fine farm for five years. 
Instid o’ hidin’ out from the Hobdays 
that was laywayin’ us in the mountings, 
we’ll be livin’ in a house with two chim- 
leys an’ a swimmin’ tub made outen 
crock’ryware. (Applause.) “Ah could 
affo’d to pay Mr. Jim Irwin’s salary 
mysr’f, if Ah could. An’ there’s 
enough men hyah to-night that say 
they’ve been money—he’pd by his 
teachin’ the school to make up mo’ 
than his wages. Let’s not let Mr. Jim 
Irwin go, neighbors! Let’s not let 
him 'go!” 
Jim’s heart sank. Surely the case 
was desperate which could call forth 
such a forlornhope charge as that of 
Old Man Simms—a performance on 
Mr. Simms’ part which warmed Jim’s 
soul. “There isn’t a man in that meet¬ 
ing,” said he to himself, as he walked 
to the schoolhouse door, “possessed of 
the greatness of spirit of Old Man 
SiVnms. If he’s a fair sample of the 
people of the mountains, they are of 
the stuff of which great nations are 
made— if they only are given a 
chance!” 
Colonel Woodruff was on his feet as 
Jim made his way through the crowd 
about the door. 
“Mr. Irwin is here, ladies and gentle¬ 
men,” said he, “and I move that we 
hear from him as to what we can do to 
meet the offer of our friends in Pot¬ 
towattamie County; but before I yield 
the floor, I want to say that this meet¬ 
ing has been worth while just to have 
been the occasion of our all becoming 
better acquainted with our friend and 
neighbor, Mr. Simms. Whatever may 
have been the lack of understanding, 
on our part, of his qualities, they were 
all cleared up by that speech of his — 
the best I have ever heard in this 
neighborhood.” 
More applause, in the midst of which 
(Continued on page 135) 
Old Man Simms Says His Say 
I 
