- Professor Ellis Fowler: [looking through school yearbook] They all come and go like ghosts. Faces, names, smiles. The funny things they said or the sad things, or the poignant ones. I gave them nothing. I gave them nothing at all. Poetry that left their minds the minute they themselves left. Aged slogans that were out of date when I taught them. Quotations dear to me that were meaningless to them. I was a failure, Mrs. Landers. An abject, miserable failure. I walked from class to class, an old relic, teaching by rote to unhearing ears, unwilling heads. I was an abject, dismal failure. I moved nobody. I motivated nobody. I left no imprint on anybody. Now, where do you suppose I ever got the idea that I was accomplishing anything?
- [opening narration]
- Narrator: Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Springs School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.
- [closing narration]
- Narrator: Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher, who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small scholastic lesson from the campus of - The Twilight Zone.
- Professor Ellis Fowler: I do believe I may have left my mark - a few gauntlets of knowledge that I've thrown down that may have been picked up.
- [Quoting Horace Mann]
- Professor Ellis Fowler: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." Well, I didn't win the victories, Mrs. Landers, but I helped others to win them, so perhaps in some small measure they are victories that I can share. I've had a very good life, Mrs. Landers - a very full life, a very rich life! This particular changing of the guard... I wouldn't have it any other way.