r seen.
It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders
call a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in the
waltzers and albinos all the time--their original wild ancestor of the
woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be a bigger
man than any of us. Anyhow, I'm for him."

"He'll have to be a big man to make anything out of the job of a country
school-teacher," said Jennie.

"Any job's as big as the man who holds it down," said her father.

Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.

* * * * *

"Dear Jim," it ran. "Father says you are sure to have a hard time--the
school board's against you, and all that. But he added, 'I'm for Jim,
anyhow!' I thought you'd like to know this. Also he said, 'Any job's as
big as the man who holds it down,' And I believe this also, _and I'm for
you, too!_ You are doing wonders even before the school starts in getting
the pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while they don't belong
to school work, will make them friends of yours. I don't see how this will
help you much, but it's a fine thing, and shows your interest in them.
Don't be too original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten track. Yours.
Jennie."

Jennie's caution made no impression on Jim--but he put the letter away,
and every evening took it out and read the italicized words, _"I'm for
you, too!"_ The colonel's dictum, "Any job's as big as the man who holds
it down," was an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all jobs to an
equality, and it meant equality in intellectual and spiritual development.
It didn't mean, for instance, that any job was as good as another in
making it possible for a man to marry--and Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
returned to kill and drag off her "I'm for you, too!"

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

I suppose every reader will say that genius consists very largely in
seeing Opportunity in the set of circumstances or thoughts or impressions
that constitute Opportunity, and making the best of them.

Jim Irwin would have said so, anyhow. He was full of his Emerson's
_Representative Men_, and his Carlyle's _French Revolution_, and the other
old-fashioned, excellent good literature which did not cost over
twenty-five cents a volume; and he had pored long and with many thrills
over the pages of Matthews' _Getting on in the World_--which is the best
book of purely convention