“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.” 47 47 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!” 48 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 conventional helpfulness in the language. And his view of efficiency was that it is the capacity to see opportunity where others overlook it, and make the most of it. All through his life he had had his own plans 49 for becoming great. He was to be a general, hurling back the foes of his
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