"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
maste