We proceeded in silence for a moment, and soon he added: “That little brook has done a lot fer us. It took our thoughts off the hard work, and helped us fergit the mortgage, an' taught us to laugh like the rapid water. It never owed us anything after the day Mose Tupper lost his pole. Put it all together, I guess I've laughed a year over that. 'Bout the best payin' job we ever done. Mose thought he had a whale, an' I don't blame him. Fact is, a lost fish is an awful liar. A trout would deceive the devil when he's way down out o' sight in the 8059 water, an' his weight is telegraphed through twenty feet o' line. When ye fetch him up an' look him square in the eye he tells a different story. I blame the fish more'n I do the folks. “That 'swallered pole' was a kind of a magic wand round here in Faraway. Ye could allwus fetch a laugh with it. Sometimes I think they must 'a' lost one commandment, an' that is: Be happy. Ye can't be happy an' be bad. I never see a bad man in my life that was hevin' fun. Let me hear a man laugh an' I'll tell ye what kind o' metal there is in him. There ain't any sech devilish sound in the world as the laugh of a wicked man. It's like the cry o' the swift, an' you 'member what that was.” Uncle Eb shook with laughter as I 8060 tried the cry of that deadly bugbear of my youth. We got into the wagon presently and drove away. The sun was down as I drew up at the old school-house. “Run in fer a minute an' set down in yer old seat an' see how it seems,” said Uncle Eb. “They're goin' to tear it down, an' tain't likely you'll see it ag'in.” I went to the door and lifted its clanking latch and walked in. My footsteps filled the silent room with echoes, and how small it looked! There was the same indescribable odor of the old time country school—that of pine timber and seasoning fire-wood. I sat down in the familiar seat carved by jack-knives. There was my name surrounded by others cut in the rough wood. 8061 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 8062 visitor at the last day of school, were written on the board: SCHOOL 'S OUT Attention all—the old school's end is near. Behold the sum of all its lessons here: If e'er by loss of friends your heart is bowed! Straightway go find ye others in the crowd. Let Love's discoveries console its pain