Tuesday, November 27, 1923
THE HEPPNER HERALD, HEPPNER, OREGON
PAGE THREE
4fcrl)ert Quick
CHAPTER I
Kfii-:
A Maiden's "Humph!"
.Tim brought from his day's work nil
the fragrances of next year's meadows.
He had been feeding the crops. All
things have opposite poles, and the
scents of the farm are no exception
to the rule. Jus now, Jim Irwin pos
sessed In his clothes and person the
olfactory pote opposite to the new
mown hay, the fragrant butter and
the scented breath of the lowing kine
perspiration and top-dressing.
He was not quite so keenly con
scious of this as was Jennie Woodruff,
nad he been so, the glimmer of her
white pique dress on the bench under
the basswoo 1 would not have drawn
him back from the gate. He had come
to the house to ask Colonel Woodruff
about the farm work, and having re
ceived instructions to take a team and
Join In the road work next day, he had
gone down the walk between the beds
of four o'clocks and petunias to the lane.
Turning to latch the gate, he saw
through the dusk the white dress un
der the tree and drawn by the grpalest
attraction known In nature, had re
entered the Woodruff grounds and
strolled back.
A brief hello betrayed old acquaint
ance, and that social equality which
still persists In theory between the
work people on the American farm
and the family of the employer. A
desultory murmur of voices ensued.
Jim Irwin sat down on the bench
not too close, be It observed, to the
pique skirt. . . , There came Into
the voices a note of deeper earnest
ness, betokening something quite aside
from the rippling of the course of true
love running smoothly. In the man's
voice was a tone of protest and plead
ing. . . .
"I know you are," said she, "but
after all these years don't you tliink
fftra should be at least preparing to
be something more than that?"
"What can I do?" he pleaded, "I'm
tied hand and foot. ... I might
have. ..."
"You might have," said sne, -but,
Jim, you haven't . . . and I don't
see any prospects. ..."
"I have been writing for the farm
papers," said Jim ; "but ..."
"But that doesn't get you anywhere,
you know. . . . Tou're a great
deal more able and Intelligent than
Ed, and see what a fine position he
has In Chicago. ..." ,
"There's mother, you know," said
Jim gently.
"You can't do anything here," said
Jennie. "You've been a farm-hand for
fifteen years . . . and you always
will be unless you pull yourself loose.
Even a girl can make a place for her
self if she doesn't marry and leaves
the farm. You're twenty-eight years
old." I
"It's all wrong!" said Jim gently.
"The farm ought to be the place for
the best sort of career I love the
soil!"
"I've been teaching for only two
years, and they say ril be nominated
for county superintendent If I'll take
It. Of course I won't It seems silly
but if it were you, now, It would be
a first step to a life thut leads to
something."
"Mother and I can live on my wages
and the garden and chickens, and the
cow," said Jim. "After I received my
teacher's certificate, I tried to work
out some way of doing the same thing
on a country teacher's wages. I
couldn't It doesn't seem right."
Jim rose and after pacing back and
forth sat down again, a little closer
to Jennie. Jennie moved away to the
extreme end of the bench, and the
shrinking away of Jim as if he bad
been repelled by some sort of negative
magnetism showed either sensitive
nejg or temper.
" "it ieerns as If It ought to be pos
sible," said Jim, "for a man to do
work on the farm, or In the rural
schools, that would make him a liveli
hood. If he Is only a field-hand, It
ought to bepo89lbIe oj nlm to save
XDdntS and buy t farm."
' "Pa's land If worth two hundred
dollaxs an acre," said Jennie. "Six
months of your wages for an acre
even if you lived on nothing."
"No," he assented, "it can't be done,
and the other thing can't, either.
There ought to be such conditions that
a teacher could make a living."
"They do," said Jennie, "if they
can live at home during vacations. I
do."
"But a man teaching In the country
ought to be able to marry."
"Marry!" said Jennie, rather unfeel
ingly, I think. "You marry!" Then
after remaining silent for nearly a
minute, she uttered the syllable with
out the utterance of which this narra
tive would not have been written.
"You marry 1 Humph 1"
Jim Irwin rose from the bench
tingling with the Insult he found In
sweethearts "In the old days "at The
Woodruff schoolhouse down the road,
and before the fateful time when
Jennie went "off to school" and Jim
begun to support his mother. They
had even kissed and on Jim's side,
lonely as was his life, cut off as it
necessarily was from all companion
ship save that of his tiny home and
his fellow-workers of the field, the
tender little love-story was the sole ro
mance of his life. Jennie's "Humph !"
retired this romance from circulation,
he felt. It showed contempt for the
idea of his marrying. It relegated him
to a sexless category with other de
fectives, and badged him with the celi
bacy of a sort of Twentieth-century
monk, without the honor of the priest
ly vocation. From another girl It
would have been bad enough, but from
Jennie Woodruff and especially on
that quiet summer night under the
linden it was Insupportable.
"Good night," said Jim simply be
cause he could not trust himself to
say more.
"Good night," replied Jennie, and
sat for a long time wondering Just
how deeply she had unintentionally
wounded tlie feelings of her father's
field-hand; deciding that if he was
driven from her forever, It would
solve the problem of terminating that
old childish love affair which still per
sisted in occupying a suite of rooms
all of its own in her memory; and
finally repenting of the unpremedi
tated thrust which might easily have
hurt too deeply so sensitive a man as
Jim Irwin. But girls are not usually
so made as to feel any very bitter re
morse for their male victims, and so
Jennie slept very well that night.
Jim Irwin was bony and rugged and
homely, with a big mouth, and wide
ears, and a form stooped with labor.
He had fine, lambent, gentle eyes
which lighted up his face when he
smiled. He was not ugly. Jim Irwin
possessed charm. That is why little
Jennie Woodruff had asked him to
help with her lessons, rather oftener
than was necessary, in those old days
In the Woodruff schoolhouse when
"You Marryl Humph!"
Jennie wore her hair down her back.
But in spite of this homely charm
of personality, Jim Irwin was set off
from his fellows of the Woodruff
neighborhood. He was different. In
local parlance, he was an off ox. He
was as odd as Dick's hatband. He ran
in a gang by himself. He had always
liked to read, and had piles of liter
ature in his attic room which was
good, because It was cheap.
Very few people know that cheap
literature is very likely to be good, be
cause it is old and unprotected by
copyright. Jim had Emerson, Thoreau,
an Encyclopedia of English Literature,
some editions of standard poets in pa
per covers, and a few Ruskins and
Carlyles all read to rags.
In fact, Jim had a good library of
publications which can be obtained
gratis, or very cheaply and be knew
their contents. He had a personal
philosophy, which while it had cost
him the world in which his fellows
lived, had given him one of his own, in
which he moved as lonely as a cloud,
and ai untouched of the life about
him.
By every test of common life, he
was a failure. His family history was
a badge of failure. People despised a
man who wa's so incontestably smarter
than they, and yet could do no better
with himself than to work in the fields
alongside the tramps and transients
and hoboes. Save for his mother and
their cow and garden and flock of
fowls and their wretched little rented
house, he was a tramp himself.
His duties, his mother, and his dead
father's status as an outcast took
away his citizenship in Iioyviile, and
drove him In upon himself, and, at
first, upon his school books and later
upon Emerson, Thoreau, Kuskin and
the poets, and the agricultural reports
and bulletins.
Ali this degraded or exalted him
to the position of an intellectual farm
hand, with a sense of superiority and
a feeling of degradation. . It made
Jennie "Woodruffs ""Humph 1" potent
to keep him awake that night, and
send him to the road work with Col
onel Woodruff's team next morning
with hot eyes and a hotter heart.
Colonel Woodruffs gray percherons
seemed to feel the unrest of their
driver, for they fretted and actually
executed a clumsy prance as Jim
Irwin pulled them up at the end of
the turnpike across Bronson's Slew a
peat-marsh which annually offered
the men of the Woodruff district the
opportunity to hold the male equiva
lent of a sewing circle while working
out their road taxes. Columbus
Brown, the patlmiaster, prided him
self on the Bronson Slew turnpike as
his greatest triumph in road engineer
ing. The work consisted in hauling,
drugging and carrying gravel out on
the low fill which carried the road
across the marsh, and then watching
It slowly settle until the next summer.
"Haul gravel from the east gravel
bed, Jim," called Columbus Brown
from the lowest spot in the middle
of the turnpike. "Take Newt here to
help loud."
Jim smiled his habitual slow, gentle
smile at Newton Bronson, seventeen,
undersized, tobacco-stained, profane
and proud of the fact that he had once
beaten his way from Des Moines to
Faribault on freight trains. A source
of anxiety to his father, and the sub
ject of many predictions that he
would come to no good end, Newton
was out on the road work because he
was likely to be of little use on the
farm. Clearly, Newton was on the
downward road in a double sense
and yet, Jim Irwin rather liked him.
"The fellers have put up a job on
you, Jim," volunteered Newton, as
"Fellers Have Put Up a Job on You,
Jim."
they began filling the wagon with
gravel.
"What sort of job?" asked Jim.
"They're nominating you for teach
er," replied Newton.
"Since when has the position of
teacher been an elective office?" asked
Jim. '
"Sure, it ain't elective," answered
Newton. "But they say that with as
many brains as you've got sloshing
around loose in the neighborhood,
you're a candidate that can break the
deadlock in the school board."
Jim shoveled on silently for a while,
and by example urged Newton to earn
the money credited to his father's as
sessment for the day's work.
A slide of earth just then brought
down a sweet-clover plant growing
rankly beside the top of the pit. Jim
Irwin pulled it loose from Its anchor
age, and after looking attentively at
the roots, laid the whole plant on the
bank for safety.
"What do you want of that weed?"
asked Newton.
Jim picked It up and showed hlra
the nodules on Its roots little white
knobs, smaller than cluheads.
"Ever hear of tie use of nitrates
to enrich the soil?"
"Ain't that the stuff the old man
used on the lawn last spring?"
"Yes," said Jim, "your father used
some oil his lawn. We don't put it on
our fields in Iowa not yet; but if it
weren't for those white specks on the
clover-roots, we should be obliged to
do so--us they do buck east."
"How do them white specks keep
US from needin' nitrates?"
"It's a long story," said Jim. "You
see, before there were any plants big
enough to be visible If there had
been any one to see them the world
was full of little plants so small that
there may be billions of them In one
of these little white specks. They
knew bow to take the nitrates from
the. air"
"Afr !"" ejaculated Newton. "Nitrates
In the air! You're crazy!"
"No," said Jim. "There are tons of
nitrogen In the air that press down on
your head but the big plants can't
get it through their leaves, or their
roots. They never had to learn, be
cause the little plants bacteria lo
cated on those roots and tapped them
for the sap they needed began to get
their board and lodgings off the big
plants. And In payment for their hotel
bills, the little plants took nitrogen
9.ui Stl. tne Sir for bth themselves and
their hosTs"
"What d'ye mean by 'hosts'?"
"Their hotel-keepers the big plants.
And now the plants that have the
hotel roots for the bacteria furnish
nitrogen not only for themselves, bnt
for the crops thai follow. Corn cun't
get nitrogen out of the air; but
clover can and that's why we ought
to plow down clover before a crop of
corn."
"Gee!" said Newt. "If you could got
to teach our school, I'd go again."
"It would Interfere with your pool
playing."
"What business Is that o' yours?"
Interrogated Newt defiantly.
"Well, get busy with that shovel,"
suggested Tim, TvTio han -Deen working
steadily, driving out upon the fill oc
occaslonally to unload. On his return
from dumping the next load, Newton
seemed, In a superior way, quite
amiably disposed toward his workfel
low rather the habitual thing in the
neighborhood.
"I'll work my old man to vote for
you for teacher," said he.
"Those school directors," replied
Jim, "have become so bullheaded that
they'll never vote for any one except
the applicants they've been voting for."
"The old man says he will have
True Foster again, or he'll give the
school a darned long vacation, unless
I'eterson and Bonner join on some one
else. That would beat True, of
course."
"And Con Bonner won't vote for
any one but Maggie Gilmartln," added
Jim.
"And," supplied Newton, "Hnnkon
Peterson says he'll stick to Herman
Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze
over."
"And there you are," said Jim. "You
tell your father for me that I think
he's a mere mule and that the whole
district thinks the same."
"All right," suid Newt. "I'll tell him
that while I'm working him to vote
for you."
Jim smiled grimly. He had re
mained a peasant because the Amer
ican rural teacher Is placed econom
ically lower than the peasant. He
gave Newton's chatter no considera
tion. But when, in the afternoon, he
hitched his team with otherB to the
big road grader, and the gang became
concentrated within talking distance,
he found that the project of heckling
and chaffing him nbout his eminent fit
ness for a scholastic position was to
be the real entertainment of the oc
casion.
"Jim's the candidate to bust the
deadlock," said Columbus Brown, with
u wink. "Just like Garfield In that
Ilepublicun convention he was nom
inated in eh, Con?"
"Con" was Cornelius Bonner, an
Irishman, one of the deadlocked school
board, ami the captain of the road
grader. He winked back at the path
master. "Jim's the gray-eyed man o' des
tiny," he replied, "if he gets two
votes in that board."
"You'd vote for me, wouldn't you,
Con?" asked Jim.
"I'll try annythlng wance," replied
Bonner.
"Try voting with Ezra Bronson once,
for I'rue Foster," suggested Jim.
"She's done good work here."
"Opinions differ," said Bonner, "an'
when you try annythlng just for
wance, it shouldn't be an irrevocable
shtlp, me bye."
"You're a reasona,blebQaxd.Qf public
Just Good
servants," sa,Id Jliu Ironically.' "fa
like to tell the whole board what I
think of them."
"Come down tonight," said Bonner
jeeiingly. "We're going to have a
board meeting at the schoolhouse
and ballot a few more times. Come
down, and he the Garfield of the con-
vintion. We've lacked brains on the
board, that's clear. They ain't a man
on the board that Iver studied algebra,
'r that knows more about farmin' than
their lmpl'yers. Come down to the
schoolhouse. and we'll have a field
hand addrlss the school board and
hegosh, I'll move yer miction mesilf!
Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game.
It'll vary the program, annyhow."
The entire gang grinned. Jim
flushed, and then reconquered his
calmness of spirit.
"All right, Con," said he. "I'll come
and tell you a few things and you
cun do as you like about making the
motion."
(To be continued)
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THE HERALD
Chinese Mode Is Given
Prominence in Pai
Strange how the Chinese mode hasj
swept over us by way of Paris. Most
of the openings speak of Chinese
colors and Chinese feeling, but it has
remained for Lanvln to present Ug
with coolie coats developed in all
sorts of attractive fabrics the coolie
never dreamed about. These she tops
with mandarin hats Just to be Incon
sistent and democratic and altogether
femininely French. Since mah Jongg
has become so popular that special
rooms in the houses of enthusiasts)
are being decorated as a background
for play, the Chinese coats and hats
ought to have strong attraction for
those women who always get the new
thing, and get ;t first. i
i
RAGS WANTED Clean eottott
rags wanted at Herald office. Knit
underwear, etc., not acceptable. 22-tf
Thono Main 333
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her tone.Tbey had been boy-and-glrl
f J
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