while sitting in this chair."

"I am tired of these schoolmasters and learned men," said Charley. "I
wish some stirring man, that knew how to do something in the world, like
Sir William Phips, would sit in the chair."

"Such men seldom have leisure to sit quietly in a chair," said
Grandfather. "We must make the best of such people as we have."

As Cotton Mather was a very distinguished man, Grandfather took some
pains to give the children a lively conception of his character. Over
the door of his library were painted these words, BE SHORT,--as a
warning to visitors that they must not do the world so much harm as
needlessly to interrupt this great man's wonderful labors. On entering
the room you would probably behold it crowded, and piled, and heaped
with books. There were huge, ponderous folios, and quartos, and little
duodecimos, in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and all other
languages that either originated at the confusion of Babel or have since
come into use.

All these books, no doubt, were tossed about in confusion, thus forming
a visible emblem of the manner in which their contents were crowded into
Cotton Mather's brain. And in the middle of the room stood table,
on which, besides printed volumes, were strewn manuscript sermons,
historical tracts, and political pamphlets, all written in such a queer,
blind, crabbed, fantastical hand, that a writing-master would have
gone raving mad at the sight of them. By this table stood Grandfather's
chair, which seemed to have contracted an air of deep erudition, as if
its cushion were stuffed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and other hard
matters.

In this chair, from one year's end to another, sat that prodigious
bookworm, Cotton Mather, sometimes devouring a great book, and sometimes
scribbling one as big. In Grandfather's younger days there used to be a
wax figure of him in one of the Boston museums, representing a solemn,
dark-visaged person, in a minister's black gown, and with a black-letter
volume before him.

"It is difficult, my children," observed Grandfather, "to make you
understand such a character as Cotton Mather's, in whom there was so
much good, and yet so many failings and frailties. Undoubtedly he was
a pious man. Often he kept fasts; and once, for three whole days, he
allowed himself not a morsel of food, but spent the time in prayer and
religious meditation. Many a live-long night did he watch and pray.
These fasts and vigils made him m