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Page 28
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.
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 whipt 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
school-boys."
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."
"I am tired of these school-masters and learned men," said Charley. "I
wish some stirring man, that knew how to do something in the world, like
Sir William Phips, would set 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 a 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 already 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
book-worm, 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 meagre and haggard, and probably caused
him to appear as if he hardly belonged to the world."
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