1. Imagine yourselves 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 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.
2. It is a winter's day when we take our peep into the school-room. See what 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.
3. Do you see the venerable schoolmaster, severe in aspect, with a black skull-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 outlook 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.
4. And now school is begun. What a murmur of multitudinous tongues, like the whispering of 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 about 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.
5. 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 asafœtida. 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 shall be a worthy successor to the old Puritan ministers now in their graves. But as they are merely school-boys now, their business is to construe Virgil.
6. 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. 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. 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.
7. But, alas! Master Cheever's watchful eye has caught two boys at play. Now we shall see awful times. The malefactors are summoned before the master's chair. 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 those good old times a schoolmaster's blows were well laid on. 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 the desk. "You are dismissed," says Master Cheever.
8. The boys retire, treading softly until they have passed the threshold; but fairly out of the school-room lo, what a joyous shout! What a scampering and trampling of feet! 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 snow-ball. Happy boys! Enjoy your play-time now, and come again to study and to feel the birch-rod and the ferule to-morrow.