The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1923-08-30

Jennie wore her hair down her back
Of personality, Jim Irwin was set o1
from his fellows of the Woodruff
neighborhood. He was different. In
local parlance, he was an Off OF. He
was as odd as Dicks hatband. He ran
In a gang by himself. He had always
liked to read, and had piles Of liter.
allure in his attic room which was
good, because it was cheap.
Very few people know that cheap
literature is very likely to be good, be-
cause 1t is old and unprotected by
copyright. Jim had Emerson, Thoreau,
an Encyclopedia of English Literature,
some editions Of standard poets in pa
per covers, and a few Ruskins and
Carlyles-al read to rags.
/. In fact, Jim had a good library Of
publications which can be obtained
gratis, or very cheaply-and he knew
their contents. He had a personal
philosophy, which while 1t had cost
him the world in which his fellows
lived, had given him one of his own, In
which he moved as lonely as a cloud,
and as untouched OF the life about
him.
BY every test of common life, he
was a failure. His family history was
a badge of failure. People despised a
man who was so incontestably smarter
than they, and yet could do no better
with himself than to work In the fields
alongside the tramps and transIents
and hoboes. Save for his mother and
their cow and garden and flock of
fowls and their wretched little rented
house, he was a tramp himself.
His duties, his mother, and his dead
fathers status as an outcast took
his citizenship in Boyyille. and
drove him in upon himself, and, at
first, upon his school books and later
upon Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin and
the poets, and the agricultural reports
and bulletins.
All this degraded-or exalted-him
to the position of an intellectual farm
hand, with a sense of superiority and
a feeling Of degradation. 1t made
Jennie Woodruf's "Humph /" potent
to keep him awake that night, and
send him to the road work with Col.
onel Woodruf's team next morning
hot eyes and a hotter heart.
Colonel Woodruff's gray percherons
seemed to feel the unrest of their
irfver, for they fretted and actually
Executed a clumsy prance as Jim
irwin pulled them up at the end OF
turnpike across Bronson's SIew-a
which annually offered
men of the Woodruff district the
pportunity to hold the male equIva-
Of a sewing circle while working
ut their road taxes. Columbus
'rown, the pathmaster, prided him
on the Bronson Slew turnpike as
is greatest triumph In road engineer
lg. The work consisted in hauling,
Raging and carrying gravel out on
low fill which carried the road
cross the marsh, and then watching
slowly settle until the next summer.
Haul gravel from the east gravel
ed, JIM" called Columbus Brown
'om the lowest spot In the middle
{ the turnpike. Take Newt here to
clip load"
Jim smiled his habituai slow, gentle
nile at Newton Bronson, seventeen. /,
ndersized, tobacco-stained. profane i,
Id proud Of the fact that he had once
eaten his way from Des Moines to
aribault on freight trains. A source ,
anxiety to his father, and the SUBJ !,
ct of many predictions that he :
ould come to nc good end, Newton :
as olt on the road work because he !.
as likely to be of little use on the !.
rm. Clearly, Newton was on the :
'wnward road in a double sense :,
ID yet, Jim Irwin rather liked him. =
'The fellers have put UP a job on :
u. jim" volunteered Newton, as :