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Page 27
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, they have
traded only in marbles and apples. Hereafter, some will send vessels to
England for broadcloths and all sorts of manufactured wares, and to the
West Indies for sugar, and rum, and coffee. Others will stand behind
counters, and measure tape, and ribbon, and cambric, by the yard. 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 shoe-making. Many will follow the sea, and become bold, rough
sea-captains.
This class of boys, in short, must supply the world with those active,
skilful hands, and clear, sagacious heads, without which the affairs of
life would be thrown into confusion, by the theories of studious and
visionary men. 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!
But, alas! while we have been thinking of other matters, Master
Cheever's watchful eye has caught two boys at play. Now we shall see
awful times! The two malefactors are summoned before the master's chair,
wherein he sits, with the terror of a judge upon his brow. Our old chair
is now a judgment-seat. Ah, 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 school-master's blows were well laid on.
See! the birch-rod has lost several of its twigs, and will hardly serve
for another execution. Mercy on us, what a bellowing the urchins make!
My ears are almost deafened, though the clamor comes through the far
length of a hundred and fifty years. There, go to your seats, poor boys;
and do not cry, sweet little Alice; for they have ceased to feel the
pain, a long time since.
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 his desk. The little multitude await the word of
dismissal, with almost irrepressible impatience.
"You are dismissed," says Master Cheever.
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 a sense of recovered freedom,
expressed in the merry uproar of all their voices! 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; not till to-morrow, for
to-day is Thursday-lecture; and ever since the settlement of
Massachusetts, there has been no school on Thursday afternoons.
Therefore, sport, boys, while you may; for the morrow cometh, with the
birch-rod and the ferule; and after that, another Morrow, with troubles
of its own.
Now the master has set every thing to rights, and is ready to go home to
dinner. Yet he goes reluctantly. The old man has spent so much of his
life in the smoky, noisy, buzzing school-room, that, when he has a
holiday, he feels as if his place were lost, and himself a stranger in
the world. But, forth he goes; and there stands our old chair, vacant
and solitary, till good Master Cheever resumes his seat in it to-morrow
morning.
* * * * *
"Grandfather," said Charley, "I wonder whether the boys did not use to
upset the old chair, when the school-master 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."
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