WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE
Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position of
teacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like a
ghost's or a bandit's. That is, he walked of nights and on rainy days.
On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff's fields as of yore. Had he
been appointed to a position attached to a salary of fifty thousand
dollars a year, he might have spent six months on a preliminary vacation
in learning something about his new duties. But Jim's salary was to be
three hundred and sixty dollars for nine months' work in the Woodruff
school, and he was to find himself--and his mother. Therefore, he had to
indulge in his loose habits of night walking and roaming about after hours
only, or on holidays and in foul weather.
The Simms family, being from the mountings of Tennessee, were rather
startled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,
silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They had
lived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before one
passed through the palin's and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to
know whether the visitor was friend or foe?
From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim's
appearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much like
his own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old Man
Simms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhat
stood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, could
possibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.
"Stranger," said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, "you're
right welcome, but in my kentry you'd find it dangersome to walk in
thisaway."
"How so?" queried Jim Irwin.
"You'd more'n likely git shot up some," replied Mr. Simms, "onless you
whooped from the big road."
"I didn't know that," replied Jim. "I'm ignorant of the customs of other
countries. Would you rather I'd whoop from the big road--nobody else
will."
"I reckon," replied Mr. Simms, "that we-all will have to accommodate
ourse'ves to the ways hyeh."
Evidently Jim was the Simms' first caller since they had settled on the
little brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of their
mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where the
creek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, with
the oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine
themselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston.
The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternal
black soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, in
comparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the old wood-lot
could find no renter? It was better than the soil in the mountains, and
suited the lonesome Simmses much more than a better farm would have done.
They were not of the Iowa people anyhow, not understood, not their
equals--they were pore, and expected to stay pore--while the Iowa people
all seemed to be either well-to-do, or expecting to become so. It was much
more agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the back wood-lot farm with the
creek bed running through it.
Jim Irwin asked Old Man Simms about the fishing in the creek, and whether
there was any duck shooting spring and fall.
"We git right smart of these little panfish," said Mr. Simms, "an' Calista
done shot two butterball ducks about 'tater-plantin' time."
Calista blushed--but this stranger, so much like themselves, could not see
the rosy suffusion. The allusion gave him a chance to look about him at
the family. There was a boy of sixteen, a girl--the duck-shooting
Calista--younger than Raymond--a girl of eleven, named Virginia, but
called Jinnie--and a smaller lad who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, but
was mercifully called Buddy.
Calista squirmed for something to say. "Raymond runs a line o' traps when
the fur's prime," she volunteered.
Then came a long talk on traps and trapping, shooting, hunting and the
joys of the mountings--during which Jim noted the ignorance and poverty of
the Simmses. The clothing of the girls was not decent according to local
standards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly slipped on, Jim was
quite sure--and not without evidence to support his views--that she had
been wearing when he arrived the same regimentals now displayed by
Jinnie--a pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the Simmses were wearing
what they had and not what they desired. The father was faded, patched,
gray and earthy, and the boys looked better than the rest solely because
we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as
a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed
with a regular ebb and flow of embers.
On the next rainy day Jim called again and secured the services of Raymond
to help him select seed corn. He was going to teach the school next
winter, and he wanted to have a seed-corn frolic the first day, instead of
waiting until the last--and you had to get seed corn while it was on the
stalk, if you got the best. No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellow
who was so much like themselves, and who was so greatly interested in
trapping, hunting and the Tennessee mountains--so Raymond went with Jim,
and with Newt Bronson and five more they selected Colonel Woodruff's seed
corn for the next year, under the colonel's personal superintendence.
In the evening they looked the grain over on the Woodruff lawn, and the
colonel talked about corn and corn selection. They had supper at half past
six, and Jennie waited on them--having assisted her mother in the cooking.
It was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the least conspicuous person in the
gathering, but the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed that
the farm-hand had become a fisher of men, and was angling for the souls of
these boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was careful not to flush
the covey, but every boy received from the next winter's teacher some
confidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion that Jim was relying on
the aid and comfort of that particular boy. Newt Bronson, especially, was
leaned on as a strong staff and a very present help in time of trouble. As
for Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to leave him alone. All this talk
of corn selection and related things was new to him, and he drank it in
thirstily. He had an inestimable advantage over Newt in that he was
starved, while Newt was surfeited with "advantages" for which he had no
use.
"Jennie," said Colonel Woodruff, after the party had broken up, "I'm
losing the best hand I ever had, and I've been sorry."
"I'm glad he's leaving you," said Jennie. "He ought to do something except
work in the field for wages."
"I've had no idea he could make good as a teacher--and what is there in it
if he does?"
"What has he lost if he doesn't?" rejoined Jennie. "And why can't he make
good?"
"The school board's against him, for one thing," replied the colonel.
"They'll fire him if they get a chance. They're the laughing-stock of the
country for hiring him by mistake, and they're irritated. But after seeing
him perform to-night, I wonder if he can't make good."
"If he could _feel_ like anything but an underling he'd succeed," said
Jennie.
"That's his heredity," stated the colonel, whose live-stock operations
were based on heredity. "Jim's a scrub, I suppose; but he acts as if he
might turn out to be a Brown Mouse."
"What do you mean, pa," scoffed Jennie--"a Brown Mouse!"
"A fellow in Edinburgh," said the colonel, "crossed the Japanese waltzing
mouse with the common white mouse. Jim's pedling father was a waltzing
mouse, no good except to jump from one spot to another for no good reason.
Jim's mother is an albino of a woman, with all the color washed out in one
way or another. Jim ought to be a mongrel, and I've always considered him
one. But the Edinburgh fellow every once in a while got out of his
variously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't a
common house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had ever seen.
It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders
call a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in the
waltzers and albinos all the time--their original wild ancestor of the
woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be a bigger
man than any of us. Anyhow, I'm for him."
"He'll have to be a big man to make anything out of the job of a country
school-teacher," said Jennie.
"Any job's as big as the man who holds it down," said her father.
Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.
* * * * *
"Dear Jim," it ran. "Father says you are sure to have a hard time--the
school board's against you, and all that. But he added, 'I'm for Jim,
anyhow!' I thought you'd like to know this. Also he said, 'Any job's as
big as the man who holds it down,' And I believe this also, _and I'm for
you, too!_ You are doing wonders even before the school starts in getting
the pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while they don't belong
to school work, will make them friends of yours. I don't see how this will
help you much, but it's a fine thing, and shows your interest in them.
Don't be too original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten track. Yours.
Jennie."
Jennie's caution made no impression on Jim--but he put the letter away,
and every evening took it out and read the italicized words, _"I'm for
you, too!"_ The colonel's dictum, "Any job's as big as the man who holds
it down," was an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all jobs to an
equality, and it meant equality in intellectual and spiritual development.
It didn't mean, for instance, that any job was as good as another in
making it possible for a man to marry--and Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
returned to kill and drag off her "I'm for you, too!"