The office of county superintendent was, as a matter of course, the least desirable room of the court-house. I say “room” advisedly, because it consisted of a single chamber of moderate size, provided with office furniture of the minimum quantity and maximum age. It opened off the central hall at the upper end of the stairway which led to the court room, and when court was in session, served the extraordinary needs of justice as a jury room. At such times the county superintendent’s desk was removed to the hall, where it stood in a noisy and confusing but very democratic publicity. Superintendent Jennie might have anticipated the time when, during the March term, offenders passing from the county jail in the basement to arraignment at the bar of justice might be able to peek over her shoulders and criticize her method of treating examination papers. On the twenty-fifth of February, however, this experience lurked unsuspected in her official future.

Poor Jennie! She anticipated nothing more than the appearance of Messrs. Bronson, Peterson and Bonner in her office to confront Jim Irwin on certain questions of fact relating to Jim’s competency to hold a teacher’s certificate. The time appointed was ten o’clock. At nine forty-five Cornelius Bonner and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five per cent. of the chairs therein. At nine fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard, weather-beaten and seedy as ever, and looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept since his sweetheart stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon Peterson and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by Wilbur Smythe, attorney-at-law, who carried under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation of the school laws of the state, and Throop on Public Officers. At nine fifty-six, therefore, the crowd in Jennie’s office exceeded its seating capacity, and Jennie was in a flutter as the realization dawned upon her that this promised to be a bigger and more public affair than she had anticipated. At nine fifty-nine Raymond Simms opened the office door and there filed in enough children, large and small, some of them accompanied by their parents, and all belonging to the Woodruff school, to fill completely the interstices of the corners and angles of the room and between the legs of the grownups. In addition there remained an overflow meeting in the hall, under the command of that distinguished military gentleman, Colonel Albert Woodruff.

“Say, Bill, come here!” said the colonel, crooking his finger at the deputy sheriff.

“What you got here, Al!” said Bill, coming up the stairs, puffing. “Ain’t it a little early for Sunday-school picnics?”

“This is a school fight in our district,” said the colonel. “It’s Jennie’s baptism of fire, I reckon ... and say, you’re not using the court room, are you?”

“Nope,” said Bill.

“Well, why not just slip around, then,” said the colonel, “and tell Jennie she’d better adjourn to the big room.”

Which suggestion was acted upon instanter by Deputy Bill.

“But I can’t, I can’t,” said Jennie to the courteous deputy sheriff. “I don’t want all this publicity, and I don’t want to go into the court room.”

“I hardly see,” said Deputy Bill, “how you can avoid it. These people seem to have business with you, and they can’t get into your office.”

“But they have no business with me,” said Jennie. “It’s mere curiosity.”

Whereupon Wilbur Smythe, who could see no particular point in restricted publicity, said, “Madame County Superintendent, this hearing certainly is public or quasi-public. Your office is a public one, and while the right to attend this hearing may not possibly be a universal one, it surely is one belonging to every citizen and taxpayer of the county, and if the taxpayer, qua taxpayer, then certainly a fortiori to the members of the Woodruff school and residents of that district.”

Jennie quailed. “All right, all right!” said she. “But, shall I have to sit on the bench!”

“You will find it by far the most convenient place,” said Deputy Bill.

Was this the life to which public office had brought her? Was it for this that she had bartered her independence—for this and the musty office, the stupid examination papers, and the interminable visiting of schools, knowing that such supervision as she could give was practically worthless? Jim had said to her that he had never heard of such a thing as a good county superintendent of schools, and she had thought him queer. And now, here was she, called upon to pass on the competency of the man who had always been her superior in everything that constitutes mental ability; and to make the thing more a matter for the laughter of the gods, she was perched on the judicial bench, which Deputy Bill had dusted off for her, tipping a wink to the assemblage while doing it. He expected to be a candidate for sheriff, one of these days, and was pleasing the crowd. And that crowd! To Jennie it was appalling. The school board under the lead of Wilbur Smythe took seats inside the railing which on court days divided the audience from the lawyers and litigants. Jim Irwin, who had never been in a court room before, herded with the crowd, obeying the attraction of sympathy, but to Jennie, seated on the bench, he, like other persons in the auditorium, was a mere blurry outline with a knob of a head on its top.

She couldn’t call the gathering to order. She had no idea as to the proper procedure. She sat there while the people gathered, stood about whispering and talking under their breaths, and finally became silent, all their eyes fixed on her, as she wished that the office of county superintendent had been abolished in the days of her parents’ infancy.

“May it please the court,” said Wilbur Smythe, standing before the bar. “Or, Madame County Superintendent, I should say ...”

A titter ran through the room, and a flush of temper tinted Jennie’s face. They were laughing at her! She wouldn’t be a spectacle any longer! So she rose, and handed down her first and last decision from the bench—a rather good one, I think.

“Mr. Smythe,” said she, “I feel very ill at ease up here, and I’m going to get down among the people. It’s the only way I have of getting the truth.”

She descended from the bench, shook hands with everybody near her, and sat down by the attorney’s table.

“Now,” said she, “this is no formal proceeding and we will dispense with red tape. If we don’t, I shall get all tangled up in it. Where’s Mr. Irwin? Please come in here, Jim. Now, I know there’s some feeling in these things—there always seems to be; but I have none. So I’ll just hear why Mr. Bronson, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Bonner think that Mr. James E. Irwin isn’t competent to hold a certificate.”

Jennie was able to smile at them now, and everybody felt more at ease, save Jim Irwin, the members of the board and Wilbur Smythe. That individual arose, and talked down at Jennie.

“I appear for the proponents here,” said he, “and I desire to suggest certain principles of procedure which I take it belong indisputably to the conduct of this hearing.”

“Have you a lawyer?” asked the county superintendent of the respondent.

“A what?” exclaimed Jim. “Nobody here has a lawyer!”

“Well, what do you call Wilbur Smythe?” queried Newton Bronson from the midst of the crowd.

“He ain’t lawyer enough to hurt!” said the thing which the dramatists call A Voice.

There was a little tempest of laughter at Wilbur Smythe’s expense, which was quelled by Jennie’s rapping on the table. She was beginning to feel the mouth of the situation.

“I have no way of retaining a lawyer,” said Jim, on whom the truth had gradually dawned. “If a lawyer is necessary, I am without protection—but it never occurred to me ...”

“There is nothing in the school laws, as I remember them,” said Jennie, “giving the parties any right to be represented by counsel. If there is, Mr. Smythe will please set me right.”

She paused for Mr. Smythe’s reply.

“There is nothing which expressly gives that privilege,” said Mr. Smythe, “but the right to the benefit of skilled advisers is a universal one. It can not be questioned. And in opening this case for my clients, I desire to call your honor’s attention—”

“You may advise your clients all you please,” said Jennie, “but I’m not going to waste time in listening to speeches, or having a lot of lawyers examine witnesses.”

“I protest,” said Mr. Smythe.

“Well, you may file your protest in writing,” said Jennie. “I’m going to talk this matter over with these old friends and neighbors of mine. I don’t want you dipping into it, I say!”

Jennie’s voice was rising toward the scream-line, and Mr. Smythe recognized the hand of fate. One may argue with a cantankerous judge, but the woman, who like necessity, knows no law, and who is smothering in a flood of perplexities, is beyond reason. Moreover, Jennie dimly saw that what she was doing had the approval of the crowd, and it solved the problem of procedure.

There was a little wrangling, and a little protest from Con Bonner, but Jennie ruled with a rod of iron, and adhered to her ruling. When the hearing was resumed after the noon recess, the crowd was larger than ever, but the proceedings consisted mainly in a conference of the principals grouped about Jennie at the big lawyers’ table. They were talking about the methods adopted by Jim in his conduct of the Woodruff school—just talking. The only new thing was the presence of a couple of newspaper men, who had queried Chicago papers on the story, and been given orders for a certain number of words on the case of the farm-hand schoolmaster on trial before his old sweetheart for certain weird things he had done in the home school in which they had once been classmates. The fact that the old school-sweetheart had kicked a lawyer out of the case was not overlooked by the gentlemen of the fourth estate. It helped to make it a “good story.”

By the time at which gathering darkness made it necessary for the bailiff to light the lamps, the parties had agreed on the facts. Jim admitted most of the allegations. He had practically ignored the text-books. He had burned the district fuel and worn out the district furniture early and late, and on Saturdays. He had introduced domestic economy and manual training, to some extent, by sending the boys to the workshops and the girls to the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers who allowed those privileges. He had used up a great deal of time in studying farm conditions. He had induced the boys to test the cows of the district for butter-fat yield. He was studying the matter of a cooperative creamery. He hoped to have a blacksmith shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime, where the boys could learn metal working by repairing the farm machinery, and shoeing the farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative laundry in connection with the creamery. He hoped to see a building sometime, with an auditorium where the people would meet often for moving picture shows, lectures and the like, and he expected that most of the descriptions of foreign lands, industrial operations, wild animals—in short, everything that people should learn about by seeing, rather than reading—would be taught the children by moving pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped to open to the boys and girls the wonders of the universe which are touched by the work on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented farmers of them, able to get the most out of the soil, to sell what they produced to the best advantage, and at the same time to keep up the fertility of the soil itself. And he hoped to teach the girls in such a way that they would be good and contented farmers’ wives. He even had in mind as a part of the schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one day build, an apartment in which the mothers of the neighborhood would leave their babies when they went to town, so that the girls could learn the care of infants.

“An’ I say,” interposed Con Bonner, “that we can rest our case right here. If that ain’t the limit, I don’t know what is!”

“Well,” said Jennie, “do you desire to rest your case right here?”

Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.

“Now, Mr. Irwin,” said she, “while you have been following out these very interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of teaching the things called for by the course of study?”

“What is the course of study?” queried Jim. “Is it anything more than an outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading: why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of language than by writing about things they have found out in relation to some of the sciences which are laid under contribution by farming? Everything they do runs into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than the course requires. There isn’t any branch of study—not even poetry and art and music—that isn’t touched by life. If there is we haven’t time for it in the common schools. We work out from life to everything in the course of study.”

“Do you mean to assert,” queried Jennie, “that while you have been doing all this work which was never contemplated by those who have made up the course of study, that you haven’t neglected anything?”

“I mean,” said Jim, “that I’m willing to stand or fall on an examination of these children in the very text-books we are accused of neglecting.”

Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full minute, and at the clock. It was nearly time for adjournment.

“How many pupils of the Woodruff school are here?” she asked. “All rise, please!”

A mass of the audience, in the midst of which sat Jennie’s father, rose at the request.

“Why,” said Jennie, “I should say we had a quorum, anyhow! How many will come back to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, and bring your school-books? Please lift hands.”

Nearly every hand went up.

“And, Mr. Irwin,” she went on, “will you have the school records, so we may be able to ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?”

“I will,” said Jim.

“Then,” said Jennie, “we’ll adjourn until nine o’clock. I hope to see every one here. We’ll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr. Irwin, please remember that you state that you’ll stand or fall on the mastery by these pupils of the text-books they are supposed to have neglected.”

“Not the mastery of the text,” said Jim. “But their ability to do the work the text is supposed to fit them for.”

“Well,” said Jennie, “I don’t know but that’s fair.”

“But,” said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, “we don’t want our children brought up to be yust farmers. Suppose we move to town—where does the culture come in?”

The Chicago papers had a news item which covered the result of the examinations; but the great sensation of the Woodruff District lay in the Sunday feature carried by one of them.

It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of Jennie Woodruff—the latter authentic, and the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently the portrait of a lumber-jack. There was also a very free treatment by the cartoonist of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the intention of shooting up the school board in case the decision went against the schoolmaster.

“When it became known,” said the news story, “that the schoolmaster had bet his job on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed and alleged to have been studiously neglected, the excitement rose to fever heat. Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds being eight to five on General Proficiency against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and his school. And the way those rural kids rose in their might and ate up the text-books was simply scandalous. There was a good deal of nervousness on the part of some of the small starters, and some bursts of tears at excusable failures. But when the fight was over, and the dead and wounded cared for, the school board and the county superintendent were forced to admit that they wished the average school could do as well under a similar test.

“The local Mr. Dooley is Cornelius Bonner, a member of the ‘board.’ When asked for a statement of his views after the county superintendent had decided that her old sweetheart was to be allowed the priceless boon of earning forty dollars a month during the remainder of his contract, Mr. Bonner said, ‘Aside from being licked, we’re all right. But we’ll get this guy yet, don’t fall down and fergit that!’

“‘The examinations tind to show,’ said Mr. Bonner, when asked for his opinion on the result, ‘that in or-r-rder to larn anything you shud shtudy somethin’ ilse. But we’ll git this guy yit!’”

“Jim,” said Colonel Woodruff, as they rode home together, “the next heat is the school election. We’ve got to control that board next year—and we’ve got to do it by electing one out of three.”

“Is that a possibility?” asked Jim. “Aren’t we sure to be defeated at last? Shouldn’t I quit at the end of my contract? All I ever hoped for was to be allowed to fulfill that. And is it worth the fight?”

“It’s not only possible,” replied the colonel, “but probable. As for being worth while—why, this thing is too big to drop. I’m just beginning to understand what you’re driving at. And I like being a wild-eyed reformer more and more.”