so often manifested, I may by your Excellency's favor, allowance and encouragement, still be continued in my present place. And whereas there is due to me about fifty-five pounds for my labors past, and the former way of that part of my maintenance is thought good to be altered,-I with all submission beseech your Excellency, that you would be pleased to give order for my due satisfaction, the want of which would fall heavy upon me in my old age, and my children also, who are otherwise poor enough. And your poor petitioner shall ever pray, &c. Your Excellency's most humble servant, EZEKIEL CHEEVER." He died, according to Dr. Mather, "on Saturday morning, August 21, 1708-in the ninety-fourth year of his age; after he had been a skillful, painful, faithful schoolmaster for seventy years, and had the singular favor of Heaven, that though he had usefully spent his life among children, yet he was not become twice a child, but held his abilities, in an unusual degree, to the very last,"-"his intellectual force as little abated as his natural." It was his singular good fortune to have lived as an equal among the very founders of New England, with them of Boston, and Salem, and New Haven,-to have taught their children, and their children's children, unto the third and fourth generation-and to have lingered in the recollections of his pupils and their children, the model and monument, the survivor and representative of the Puritan and Pilgrim stock, down almost to the beginning of the present century. President Stiles of Yale College, in his Literary Diary, 25th April 1772, mentions seeing the "Rev. and aged Mr. Samuel Maxwell, of Warren," R. I., in whom "I have seen a man who had been acquainted with one of the original and first settlers of New England, now a rarity." "He told me he well knew the famous Grammar schoolmaster, Mr. E. Cheever of Boston, author of the Accidence; that he wore a long white beard, terminating in a point; that when he stroked his beard to the point, it was a sign for the boys to stand clear." In another entry, made on the 17th of July 1774, Dr. Stiles, after noting down several dates in the life of Mr. Cheever, adds, “I have seen those who knew the venerable saint, particularly the Rev. John Barnard, of Marblehead, who was fitted for college by him, and entered 1698." Rev. Dr. Mather, in 1708, speaks of him not only as his master, seven and thirty years ago, but, also, "as master to my betters, no less than seventy years ago; so long ago, that I must even mention my father's tutor for one of them." "Venerable." says Governor Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, (Vol. II., page 175, Note), "not merely for his great age, 94, but for having been the schoolmaster of most of the principal gentlemen in Boston, who were then upon the stage. He is not the only master who kept his lamp longer lighted than otherwise it would have been by a supply of oil from his scholars." ↑ There is now living in Bangor, Maine, "Father Sawyer," who was born in Hebron, Conn., in Nov., 1755, and who has preached the gospel for 70 years. He knew Rev. John Barnard, of Marblehead, a pupil of Mr. Cheever. These three persons connect the present with the first generation of New England. He was buried, according to an entry of Judge Sewall in his manuscript Diary,* under date of August 23, "from the school-house. The Governor, Councillors, Ministers, Justices, Gentlemen being there. Mr. Williams (his successor in the school) made a handsome oration in his honor." * We are indebted to Rev. Samuel Sewall of Burlington, Mass., for the following transcript from the manuscript Diary of Judge Sewall: "Feria septima. August 21st (1708). Mr. Edward Oakes tells me, Mr. Chiever died this last night N. He was born January 25th 1614. Came over to New England 1637, to Boston, land to New Haven 1638. Married in the Fall, and began to teach School, which work he was constant in till now: first at New Haven; then at Ipswich; then at Charlestown; then at Boston, wither he came in 1673; so that he has labored in that calling skillfully, diligently, constantly, religiously, seventy years-a rare instance of Piety, Health, Strength, and Service. ableness. The welfare of the Province was much upon his spirit. He abominated Periwigs." The Rev. Mr Sewall, in communicating the above transcript, adds the following remarks by the way of postscript. Though Judge Sewall wrote the Sentence underscored last, yet it was not as what he conceived to be the climax of the characteristic excellence he had ascribed to good Master Cheever, but as a fact which happened to come into his mind as he was writing, and which he regarded as a recommendation of Mr. Cheever. In his prejudice against Periwigs, he was not singular. Such men as Rev. John Eliot was alike opposed to them; and Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton wrote against them." The assault of "the learned and reverend Mr. Stoddard," of Northampton, on Periwigs. was in a letter addressed to a distinguished citizen, no other than Chief Justice Sewall, and published at Boston, with other matters, in a pamphlet, in 1722, entitled “An answer to some cases of Conscience respecting the Country." After disposing of some grave questions touching the oppression of the poor and ignorant by the knowing and crafty, in selling at an exorbitant profit, in depreciating the currency of the country, in taking advantage of the necessities of a man in debt, the author passes to the consideration of the lawfulness in the light of scripture, of men wearing their hair long, or of cutting it off entirely, for the purpose of substituting the hair of other persons, and even of horses and goats. "Although I cannot condemn them universally, yet, in wearing them, there is abundance of sin. First, when men do wear them, needlessly, in compliance with the fashion. Secondly, when they do wear them in such a ruffianly way as it would be utterly unlawful to wear their own hair in. Some of the wigs are of unreasonable length; and, generally, they are extravagant as to their bushiness." He not only condemns the wig because it is "wasteful as to cost, but. because it is contrary to gravity." "It makes the wearers of them look as if they were more disposed to court a maid than to bear upon their hearts the weighty concernments of God's kingdom." But, Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Cheever were not alone in their abhorence of wearing periwigs. The Apostle Eliot, talked, prayed, and preached for its suppression. The legislative authorities of Massachusetts denounced "the practice of mens wearing their own or other's hair made into periwigs." It was made a test of godliness and church-membership. In spite of the authority given to the custom by William Penn, who, according to his biographer, "had four wigs with him, which cost him twenty pounds," the Friends, in their monthly session, at Hampton, in 1721, made this decision: "It was concluded by this meeting that the wearing of extravagant, superfluous wigs is altogether contrary to truth." In the second church of Newbury, in 1752, one Richard Bartlett was "dealt with": First, our said brother refuses communion with the church for no other reason, but because the pastor wears a wig, and because the church justifies him in it; setting up his own opinion in opposition to the church, contrary to that humility which becomes a Christian. Second, and farther, in an unchristian manner, he censures and condemns both pastor and church as anti-Christian on the aforesaid account, and he sticks not, from time to time, to assert, with the greatest assur ance, that all who wear wigs unless they repent of that particular sin, before they die, will certainly be damned, which we judge to be a piece of uncharitable and sinful rashness." This custom prevailed in England and France, as well as in this country, and there, as well as here, provoked the attacks of the pulpit and the satirist, but gradually disappeared, or gave place to other fashions of the toilet, if not quite so monstrous, full as expensive and as absurd, There is no accounting for taste." See Felt's Customs of New England. In 1748, the modest structure which had accommodated the Latin School and the family of Master Cheever, was removed to make room for the enlargement of the Stone Chapel, and a new anɩ larger building erected on the opposite side of the same street, the third floor of which only was used for school purposes until 1816, when the increased number of pupils under Master Gould, called for the use of the second floor, which had been used by the Central Grammar School. For several years prior to Mr. Gould's appointment to the mastership, the Latin School did not keep up with the demands of the wealthy and educated families of the city who had generally got into the way of sending their sons into the country towns, and particularly to the academies at Exeter and Andover, to be prepared for admission to college and their withdrawal thus perhaps contributed largely to keep the school in an unprogressive state-taking from it both the pupils and the parental interest and intelligence, which are the life of every public school. The vigorous administration, personal popularity, and better scholarship of Mr. Gould, with the increasing interest in the improvement of the public schools generally, placed its course of instruction in extent and thoroughness on a level with the best academies of the country towns, and made it the natural head of the public schools of the city. With an improvement in the classical course destined for college, there grew up a demand for a more thorough literary and scientific training for boys who were destined for other pursuits than those of law, theology, and medicine, which found their appropriate preparation in the College-and the English High School was established in 1821, to meet this demand. The establishment of the English High School for boys, very naturally created a desire for similar advantages for the girls, which led to the establishment of the Girls' High School, in 1825, which in its turn gave way to an extension of the studies and a prolonged attendance of the girls in all the Grammar Schools in 1829. The discussion and final recognition of the necessity of special preparation for the art of teaching in connection with the employment of a large number of females as teachers in the Primary and Grammar Schools of the city, led to the establishment of a Normal School for girls, in 1852, which, in a few years, became also a High School for the same class of pupils, and thus the System of Public Schools in Boston, rises from the broad basis of Primary Schools, through its natural expansion of Intermediate and Grammar Schools into the Latin, English, and Girls' High Schools, and a Normal Course in the latter for at least the largest number of teachers-the female teachers of the city. |