Part 23 (1/2)
Jim's face lighted up at this, the first convincing evidence that he had scored.
”I b'lieve, too,” went on Mr. Hofmyer, ”that your idee would please our folks. I've been the stand-patter in our parts--mostly on English and--say German. What d'ye say to comin' down and teachin' our school? We've got a two-room affair, and I was made a committee of one to find a teacher.”
”I--I don't see how--” Jim stammered, all taken aback by this new breeze of recognition.
”We can't pay much,” said Mr. Hofmyer. ”You have charge of the dis-_cip_-line in the whole school, and teach in Number Two room.
Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal to ye?”
Appeal to him! Why, eighteen months ago it would have been worth crawling across the state after, and now to have it offered to him--it was stupendous. And yet, how about the Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens and Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start on the upward path to usefulness and real happiness? How could he leave the little, crude, puny structure on which he had been working--on which he had been merely practising--for a year, and remove to the new field? Jim was in exactly the same situation in which every able young minister of the gospel finds himself sooner or later. The Lord was calling to a broader field--but how could he be sure it was the Lord?
”I'm afraid I can't,” said Jim Irwin, ”but----”
”If you're only 'fraid you can't,” said Mr. Hofmyer, ”think it over. I've got your post-office address on this program, and we'll write you a formal offer. We may spring them figures a little. Think it over.”
”You mustn't think,” said Jim, ”that we've _done_ all the things I mentioned in my talk, or that I haven't made any mistakes or failures.”
”Your county superintendent didn't mention any failures,” said Mr.
Hofmyer.
”Did you talk with her about my work?” inquired Jim, suddenly very curious.
”M'h'm.”
”Then I don't see why you want me,” Jim went on.
”Why?” asked Mr. Hofmyer.
”I had not supposed,” said Jim, ”that she had a very high opinion of my work.”
”I didn't ask her about that,” said Mr. Hofmyer, ”though I guess she thinks well of it. I asked her what you are tryin' to do, and what sort of a fellow you are. I was favorably impressed; but she didn't mention any failures.”
”We haven't succeeded in adopting a successful system of selling our cream,” said Jim. ”I believe we can do it, but we haven't.”
”Wal,” said Mr. Hofmyer, ”I d'know as I'd call that a failure. The fact that you're tryin' of it shows you've got the right idees. We'll write ye, and mebbe pay your way down to look us over. We're a pretty good crowd, the neighbors think.”
CHAPTER XX
THINK OF IT
Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received from the great agricultural college more real education in this one trip than many students get from a four years' course in its halls; for he had spent ten years in getting ready for the experience. The great farm of hundreds of acres, all under the management of experts, the beautiful campus, the commodious cla.s.srooms and laboratories, and especially the barns, the greenhouses, gardens, herds and flocks filled him with a sort of apostolic joy.
”Every school,” said he to Professor Withers, ”ought to be doing a good deal of the work you have to do here.”
”I'll admit,” said the professor, ”that much of our work in agriculture is pretty elementary.”
”It's intermediate school work,” said Jim. ”It's a wrong to force boys and girls to leave their homes and live in a college to get so much of what they should have before they're ten years old.”
”There's something in what you say,” said the professor, ”but some experiment station men seem to think that agriculture in the common schools will take from the young men and women the felt need, and therefore the desire to come to the college.”