The Brown Mouse

Every Iowa county has its Farmers' Institute. Usually it is held in the county seat, and is a gathering of farmers for the ostensible purpose of listening to improving discussio...

A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question asked him by Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood--and Waterloo was lost. On the nod o...

Young McGeehee Simms was loitering along the snowy way to the schoolhouse bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. He had been allowed to act as Water Super...

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...

A sudden July storm had drenched the fields and filled the swales with water. The cultivators left the corn-fields until the next day's sun and a night of seepage might once mor...

And so it turned out quite as if it were in the old ballad, that "all in the merry month of May," and also "all in the merry green wood," there were great doings about the bold...

A good deal of water ran under the Woodruff District bridges in the weeks between the school election and the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. They were very important...

A distinct sensation ran through the Woodruff school, but the schoolmaster and a group of five big boys and three girls engaged in a very unclasslike conference in the back of t...

March came in like neither a lion nor a lamb, but was scarcely a week old before the wild ducks had begun to score the sky above Bronson's Slew looking for open water and badly-...

The great blade of the grading machine, running diagonally across the road and pulling the earth toward its median line, had made several trips, and much persiflage about Jim Ir...

In the little strip of forest which divided the sown from the Iowa sown wandered two boys in earnest converse. They seemed to be Boy Trappers, and from their backloads of steel-...

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 jurie...

The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken off into the apron of Miss J...

There is no doubt that Jennie Woodruff was justified in thinking that they were a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were of a different pattern. To be...

Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position of teacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like a ghost's or a bandit's. That is, he w...

The day passed. Four o'clock came. In order that all might reach home for supper, there was no staying, except that Newt Bronson and Raymond Simms remained to sweep and dust the...

If Jennie Woodruff was the cause of Jim Irwin's sudden irruption into the educational field by her scoffing "Humph!" at the idea of a farm-hand's ever being able to marry, she a...

Jim had finished his supper, and yearned for a long evening in his attic den with his cheap literature. But as the district schoolmaster he was to some extent responsible for th...

Jennie played the piano and sang. They all joined in some simple Christmas songs. Mrs. Woodruff and Jim's mother went into other parts of the house on research work connected wi...

Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received from the great agricultural college more real education in this one trip than many students get from a four years' course in its hall...

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 m...

The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was left struggling in the water. It was in the rapids just above the cataract--and poor Jim could not swim a stroke. Helpless, terrified, ga...

"Quite correct," said Mr. Bronson, "thankee, A. B. I was about to forgit the secretary. Any other nominations? No 'bjections, Mr. Irwin will be declared unanimously elected. Mr....

"Well," said Mr. Hofmyer, "that's the kind of education I b'lieve in. I kep' school back in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the scholars measure things, and weigh things...