rwin was possibly a Brown Mouse. But
the colonel knew only a part of Jim's performances. He saw Jim clothed in
slickers, walking through rainstorms to the houses in the Woodruff
District, as greedy for every moment of rain as a haymaker for shine; and
he knew that Jim made a great many evening calls.

But he did not know that Jim was making what our sociologists call a
survey. For that matter, neither did Jim; for books on sociology cost more
than twenty-five cents a volume, and Jim had never seen one. However, it
was a survey. To be sure, he had long known everybody in the district,
save the Simmses--and he was now a friend of all that exotic race; but
there is knowing and knowing. He now had note-books full of facts about
people and their farms. He knew how many acres each family possessed, and
what sort of farming each husband was doing--live stock, grain or mixed.
He knew about the mortgages, and the debts. He knew whether the family
atmosphere was happy and contented, or the reverse. He knew which boys and
girls were wayward and insubordinate. He made a record of the advancement
in their studies of all the children, and what they liked to read. He knew
their favorite amusements. He talked with their mothers and sisters--not
about the school, to any extent, but on the weather, the horses, the
automobiles, the silo-filling machinery and the profits of farming.

I suppose that no person who has undertaken the management of the young
people of any school in all the history of education, ever did so much
work of this sort before his school opened. Really, though Jennie Woodruff
did not see how such doings related to school work, Jim Irwin's school was
running full blast in the homes of the district and the minds of many
pupils, weeks and weeks before that day when he called them to order on
the Monday specified in his contract as the first day of school.

Con Bonner, who came to see the opening, voiced the sentiments of the
older people when he condemned the school as disorderly. To be sure, there
were more pupils enrolled than had ever entered on a first day in the
whole history of the school, and it was hard to accommodate them all. But
the director's criticism was leveled against the free-and-easy air of the
children. Most of them had brought seed corn and a good-sized corn show
was on view. There was much argument as to the merits of the various
entries. Instead of a language lesson from the text-book, Jim had given