“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.
CHAPTER IV. COTTON MATHER
Accordingly, the next evening, Grandfather resumed the history of his beloved chair.
“Master Ezekiel Cheever,” said he, “died in 1707, after having taught school about seventy years. It would require a pretty good scholar in arithmetic to tell how many stripes he had inflicted, and how many birch rods he had worn out, during all that time, in his fatherly tenderness for his pupils. Almost all the great men of that period, and for many years back, had been whipped into eminence by Master Cheever. Moreover, he had written a Latin Accidence, which was used in schools more than half a century after his death; so that the good old man, even in his grave, was still the cause of trouble and stripes to idle schoolboys.”
Grandfather proceeded to say, that, when Master Cheever died, he bequeathed the chair to the most learned man that was educated at his school, or that had ever been born in America. This was the renowned Cotton Mather, minister of the Old North Church in Boston.
“And author of the Magnalia, Grandfather, which we sometimes see you reading,” said Laurence.
“Yes, Laurence,” replied Grandfather. “The Magnalia is a strange, pedantic history, in which true events and real personages move before the reader with the dreamy aspect which they wore in Cotton Mather’s singular mind. This huge volume, however, was written and published before our chair came into his possession. But, as he was the author of more books than there are days in the year, we may conclude that he wrote a great deal while sitting in this chair.”