Explore "Farmington" by Clarence Darrow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Somehow I can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the Academy on the hill. Back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and the little child from whom I grew is only one of the old boyish group for whose sake the sun revolved and the changing seasons came and went.
It must be that for a long time I looked forward to going to the Academy as an event in my boyish life. For I know that when I first went up the hill, I wore a collar and a necktie and shoes,-or, rather, boots. I must have felt then that I was growing to be a man, and that it was almost time to put off childish things. When I went to the Academy, we called the teacher "Professor," and he in turn no longer called me Johnny, or even John, but spoke to me as "Smith. " A certain dignity and individuality had come to me from some source, I knew not where. When we boys came from the playground into the open door, it was not quite the mad rush of noisy and boisterous urchins that carried all before it, like a rushing flood, in the little district school.