Afterward one of them--a master musician, for all his soiled gray uniform and grimed fingers--played a piano that was in the corner, while all the rest sang.
It was a strange picture they made there.

On the wall, on a row of hooks, still hung the small umbrellas and book-satchels of the pupils.
Presumably at the coming of the Germans they had run home in such a panic that they left their school-traps behind.

There were sums in chalk, half erased, on the blackboard; and one of the troopers took a scrap of chalk and wrote "On to Paris!" in big letters here and there.
A sleepy parrot, looking like a bundle of rumpled green feathers, squatted on its perch in a cage behind the master's desk, occasionally emitting a loud squawk as though protesting against this intrusion on its privacy.
When their wine had warmed them our soldier-hosts sang and sang, unendingly.

They had been on the march all day, and next day would probably march half the day and fight the other half, for the French and English were just ahead; but now they sprawled over the school benches and drummed on the boards with their fists and feet, and sang at the tops of their voices.

They sang their favorite marching songs--Die Wacht am Rhein, of course; and Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles! which has a fine, sonorous cathedral swing to it; and God Save the King!--with different words to the air, be it said; and Haltet Aus! Also, for variety, they sang Tannenbaum--with the same tune as Maryland, My Maryland!--and Heil dir im Sieges-kranz; and snatches from various operas.
When one of us asked for Heine's Lorelei they sang not one verse of it, or two, but twenty or more; and then, by way of compliment to the guests of the evening, they reared upon their feet and gave us The Star Spangled Banner, to German words.