AN EMBASSY FROM DIXIE
Superintendent Jennie sat at her desk in no very satisfactory frame of mind. In the first place court was to convene on the following Monday, and both grand jury and petit juries would be in session, so that her one-room office was not to be hers for a few days. Her desk was even now ready to be moved into the hall by the janitor. To Wilbur Smythe, who did her the honor of calling occasionally as the exigencies of his law practise took him past the office of the pretty country girl on whose shapely shoulders rested the burden of the welfare of the schools, she remarked that if they didn’t soon build the new court-house so as to give her such accommodations as her office really needed, “they might take their old office—so there!”
“Fair woman,” said Wilbur, as he creased his Prince Albert in a parting bow, “should adorn the home!”
“Bosh!” sneered Jennie, rather pleased, all the same, “suppose she isn’t fair, and hasn’t any home!”
This question of adorning a home was no nearer settlement with Jennie than it had ever been, though increasingly a matter of speculation.
There were two or three men—rather good catches, too—who, if they were encouraged—but what was there to any of them? Take Wilbur Smythe, now; he would by sheer force of persistent assurance and fair abilities eventually get a good practise for a country lawyer—three or four thousand a year—serve in the legislature or the state senate, and finally become a bank director with a goodly standing as a safe business man; but what was there to him? This is what Jennie asked her paper-weight as she placed it on a pile of unfinished examination papers. And the paper-weight echoed, “Not a thing out of the ordinary!” And then, said Jennie, “Well, you little simpleton, who and what are you so out of the ordinary that you should sneer at Wilbur Smythe and Beckman Fifield and such men?” And echo answered, “What?”—and then the mail-carrier came in.
Down near the bottom of the pile she found this letter, signed by a southern state superintendent of schools, but dated at Kirksville, Missouri:
“I am a member of a party of southern educators—state superintendents in the main,” the letter ran, “en tour of the country to see what we can find of an instructive nature in rural school work. I assure you that we are being richly repaid for the time and expense. There are things going on in the schools here in northeastern Missouri, for instance, which merit much study. We have met Professor Withers, of Ames, who suggests that we visit your schools, and especially the rural school taught by a young man named Irwin, and I wonder if you will be free on next Monday morning, if we come to your office, to direct us to the place? If you could accompany us on the trip, and perhaps show us some of your other excellent schools, we should be honored and pleased. The South is recreating her rural schools, and we are coming to believe that we shall be better workmen if we create a new kind rather than an improvement of the old kind.”
There was more of this courteous and deferential letter, all giving Jennie a sense of being saluted by a fine gentleman in satin and ruffles, and with a plume on his hat. And then came the shock—a party of state officials were coming into the county to study Jim Irwin’s school! They would never come to study Wilbur Smythe’s law practise—never in the world—or her work as county superintendent—never!—and Jim was getting seventy-five dollars a month, and had a mother to support. Moreover, he was getting more than he had asked when the colonel had told him to “hold the district up!” But there could be no doubt that there was something to Jim—the man was out of the ordinary. And wasn’t that just what she had been looking for in her mind?