Ghosts began to file into the dusky room, and above a plaintive hum of insects it seemed as if I could hear the voices of children and bits of the old lessons—that loud, triumphant sound of tender intelligence as it began to seize the alphabet; those parrot-like answers: “Round like a ball,”
“Three-fourths water and one-fourth land,” and others like them.
“William Brower, stop whispering!” I seemed to hear the teacher say. What was the writing on the blackboard? I rose and walked to it as I had been wont to do when the teacher gave his command. There in the silence of the closing day I learned my last lesson in the old school-house. These lines in the large, familiar script of Feary, who it seems had been a
visitor at the last day of school, were written on the board:
SCHOOL 'S OUT
Attention all—the old school's end is near.