CHAPTER III.
THE OLD-FASHIONED SCHOOL.
"At the death of Sir William Phips," proceeded Grandfather, "our chair
was bequeathed to Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, a famous schoolmaster in Boston.
This old gentleman came from London in 1637, and had been teaching
school ever since; so that there were now aged men, grandfathers like
myself, to whom Master Cheever had taught their alphabet. He was a
person of venerable aspect, and wore a long white beard."
"Was the chair placed in his school?" asked Charley.
"Yes, in his school," answered Grandfather; "and we may safely say that
it had never before been regarded with such awful reverence,--no, not
even when the old governors of Massachusetts sat in it. Even you,
Charley, my boy, would have felt some respect for the chair if you had
seen it occupied by this famous schoolmaster."
And here grandfather endeavored to give his auditors an idea how matters
were managed in schools above a hundred years ago. As this will probably
be an interesting subject to our readers, we shall make a separate
sketch of it, and call it The Old-Fashioned School.
Now, imagine yourselves, my children, in Master Ezekiel Cheever's
school-room. It is a large, dingy room, with a sanded floor, and is
lighted by windows that turn on hinges and have little diamond-shaped
panes of glass. The scholars sit on long benches, with desks before
them. At one end of the room is a great fireplace, so very spacious that
there is room enough for three or four boys to stand in each of the
chimney corners. This was the good old fashion of fireplaces when there
was wood enough in the forests to keep people warm without their digging
into the bowels of the earth for coal.
It is a winter's day when we take our peep into the school-room. See
what great logs of wood have been rolled into the fireplace, and what a
broad, bright blaze goes leaping up the chimney! And every few moments a
vast cloud of smoke is puffed into the room, which sails slowly over the
heads of the scholars, until it gradually settles upon the walls and
ceiling. They are blackened with the smoke of many years already.
Next look at our old historic chair! It is placed, you perceive, in the
most comfortable part of the room, where the generous glow of the fire
is sufficiently felt without being too intensely hot. How stately the
old chair looks, as if it remembered its many famous occupants, but yet
were conscious that a greater man is sitting in it now! Do you see the
venerable schoolmaster, severe in aspect, with a black skullcap on his
head, like an ancient Puritan, and the snow of his white beard drifting
down to his very girdle? What boy would dare to play; or whisper, or
even glance aside from his book; while Master Cheever is on the lookout
behind his spectacles? For such offenders, if any such there be, a rod
of birch is hanging over the fireplace, and a heavy ferule lies on the
master's desk.
And now school is begun. What a murmur of multitudinous tongues, like
the whispering leaves of a wind-stirred oak, as the scholars con over
their various tasks! Buzz! buzz! buzz! Amid just such a murmur has
Master Cheever spent above sixty years; and long habit has made it as
pleasant to him as the hum of a beehive when the insects are busy in the
sunshine.
Now a class in Latin is called to recite. Forth steps a rowel queer-
looking little fellows, wearing square-skirted coats and small-clothes,
with buttons at the knee. They look like so many grandfathers in their
second-childhood. These lads are to be sent to Cambridge and educated
for the learned professions. Old Master Cheever had lived so long, and
seen so many generations of school-boys grow up to be men, that now he
can almost prophesy what sort of a man each boy will be. One urchin
shall hereafter be a doctor, and administer pills and potions, and stalk
gravely through life, perfumed with assafoetida. Another shall wrangle
at the bar, and fight his way to wealth and honors and, in his declining
age, shall be a worshipful member of his Majesty's council. A third-and
he is the master's favorite--shall be a worthy successor to the old
Puritan ministers now in their graves; he shall preach with great
unction and effect, and leave volumes of sermons, in print and
manuscript, for the benefit of future generations.
But, as they are merely school-boys now, their business is to construe
Virgil. Poor Virgil! whose verses, which he took so much pains to
polish, have been misscanned, and misparsed, and misinterpreted by so
many generations of idle school-boys. There, sit down, ye Latinists. Two
or three of you, I fear, are doomed to feel the master's ferule.
Next comes a class in arithmetic. These boys are to be the merchants,
shopkeepers, and mechanics of a future period. Hitherto they have traded
only in marbles and apples. Hereafter some will send vessels to England
for broadcloths and all sorts of manufactured wares, and to the West
Indies for sugar, and rum, and coffee. Others will stand behind
counters, and measure tape, and ribbon, and cambric by the yard. Others
will upheave the blacksmith's hammer, or drive the plane over the
carpenter's bench, or take the lapstone and the awl and learn the trade
of shoemaking. Many will follow the sea, and become bold, rough sea-
captains.
This class of boys, in short, must supply the world with those active,
skilful hands, and clear, sagacious heads, without which the affairs of
life would be thrown into confusion by the theories of studious and
visionary men. Wherefore, teach them their multiplication-table, good
Master Cheever, and whip them well when they deserve it; for much of the
country's welfare depends on these boys.
But, alas! while, we have been thinking of other matters, Master
Cheever's watchful eye has caught two boys at play. Now we shall see
awful times. The two malefactors are summoned before the master's chair,
wherein he sits with the terror of a judge upon his brow. Our old chair
is now a judgment-seat. Ah, Master Cheever has taken down that terrible
birch rod! Short is the trial,--the sentence quickly passed,--and now
the judge prepares to execute it in person. Thwack! thwack! thwack! In
these good old times, a schoolmaster's blows were well laid on.
See, the birch rod has lost several of its twigs, and will hardly serve
for another execution. Mercy on his, what a bellowing the urchins make!
My ears are almost deafened, though the clamor comes through the far
length of a hundred and fifty years. There, go to your seats, poor boys;
and do not cry, sweet little Alice, for they have ceased to feel the
pain a long time since.
And thus the forenoon passes away. Now it is twelve o'clock. The master
looks at his great silver watch, and then, with tiresome deliberation,
puts the ferule into his desk. The little multitude await the word of
dismissal with almost irrepressible impatience.
"You are dismissed," says Master Cheever.
The boys retire, treading softly until they have passed the threshold;
but, fairly out of the schoolroom, lo, what a joyous shout! what a
scampering and trampling of feet! what a sense of recovered freedom
expressed in the merry uproar of all their voices! What care they for
the ferule and birch rod now? Were boys created merely to study Latin
and arithmetic? No; the better purposes of their being are to sport, to
leap, to run, to shout, to slide upon the ice, to snowball.
Happy boys! Enjoy your playtime now, and come again to study and to feel
the birch rod and the ferule to-morrow; not till to-morrow; for to-day
is Thursday lecture; and, ever since the settlement of Massachusetts,
there has been no school on Thursday afternoons. Therefore sport, boys,
while you may, for the morrow cometh, with the birch rod and the ferule;
and after that another morrow, with troubles of its own.
Now the master has set everything to rights, and is ready to go home to
dinner. Yet he goes reluctantly. The old man has spent so much of his
life in the smoky, noisy, buzzing school-room, that, when he has a
holiday, he feels as if his place were lost and himself a stranger in
the world. But forth he goes; and there stands our old chair, vacant and
solitary, till good Master Cheever resumes his seat in it to-morrow
morning.
"Grandfather," said Charley, "I wonder whether the boys did not use to
upset the old chair when the schoolmaster was out."
"There is a tradition," replied Grandfather, "that one of its arms was
dislocated in some such manner. But I cannot believe that any school-boy
would behave so naughtily."
As it was now later than little Alice's usual bedtime, Grandfather broke
off his narrative, promising to talk more about Master Cheever and his
scholars some other evening.
