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 school-master, severe in aspect, with a black scull-cap 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 look-out,
behind his spectacles! For such offenders, if any such there be, a rod of
birch is hanging over the fire-place, 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! Buz, buz, buz! 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 bee-hive, when the insects are busy in the sunshine.

Now a class in Latin is called to recite. Forth steps a row of
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 has 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 assaf[oe]tida. 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 mis-scanned, and mis-parsed, and mis-interpreted, 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,
shop-keepers, and mechanics, of a future period. Hitherto,