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.