“But it used to relate to life,” said Jim, “the life of the people who made Greek and Latin a part of everybody else’s education as well as their own. Latin and Greek were the only languages in which anything worth much was written, you know. But now”—Jim spread out his arms as if to take in the whole world—“science, the marvelous literature of our tongue in the last three centuries! And to make a child learn Latin with all that, a thousand times richer than all the literature of Latin, lying unused before him!”
“Know any Latin?” asked Mr. Hofmyer.
Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning what he knows nothing about.
“I—I have studied the grammar, and read Cæsar,” he faltered, “but that isn’t much. I had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard, and it didn’t go very well.”
“I’ve had all the Latin they gave in the colleges of my time,” said Mr. Hofmyer, “if I do talk dialect; and I’ll agree with you so far as to say that it would have been a crime for me to neglect the chemistry, bacteriology, physics, engineering and other sciences that pertain to farmin’—if there’d been any such sciences when I was gettin’ my schoolin’.”
“And yet,” said Jim, “some people want us to guide ourselves by the courses of study made before these sciences existed.”
“I don’t, by hokey!” said Mr. Hofmyer. “I’ll be dag-goned if you ain’t right. I wouldn’t ’a’ said so before I heard that speech—but I say so now.”
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.