be turned loose in the
delightful pasturage of summer holiday, turning the key in the lock, and
plodding alone down the dusty road to Squire Rawson's, he now found the
school-room full, not of school-children only, but of grown people as
well. He had learned that they expected him to say something, and there
was nothing for him to do but to make the effort. For an hour, as he sat
during the last lessons,--which were in the nature of a review,--the
pages before him had been mere blurred spaces of white, and he had been
cogitating what he should say. Yet, when he rose, every idea that he had
tried so faithfully to put into shape fled from his brain.

Dropping all the well-turned phrases which he had been trying to frame,
he said simply that he had come there two years before with the conceit
of a young man expecting to teach them a good deal, and that he went
away feeling that he had taught very little, but that he had learned a
great deal; he had learned that the kindest people in the world lived in
that region; he should never forget their kindness and should always
feel that his best friends were there. A few words more about his hopes
for the school and his feeling for the people who had been so good to
him, and he pronounced the school closed. To his surprise, at a wink
from Squire Rawson, one of the other trustees, who had formerly been
opposed to Keith, rose, and, addressing the assemblage, began to say
things about him that pleased him as much as they astonished him.

He said that they, too, had begun with some doubt as to how things would
work, as one "could never tell what a colt would do till he got the
harness on him," but this colt had "turned out to be a pretty good
horse." Mr. Keith, maybe, had taught more than he knew. He had taught
some folks--this with a cut of his eye over toward where Jake Dennison
sat big and brown in the placid content of a young giant, fanning
Euphronia for life--he had "taught some folks that a door had to be
right strong to keep out a teacher as knowed his business." Anyhow, they
were satisfied with him, and the trustees had voted to employ him
another year, but he had declined. He had "business" that would take him
away. Some thought they knew that business. (At this there was a
responsive titter throughout the major portion of the room, and Gordon
Keith was furious with himself for finding that he suddenly turned hot
and red.) He himself, the speaker said, didn't pretend to kno