下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
among the best American contributions to literature. He wrote “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Marble Faun,” and several other novels. He also wrote for children some beautiful imaginative stories, tales from New England history, and stories from Greek mythology.
1. Imagine yourselves in Master Ezekiel Cheever’s schoolroom. It is a large, dingy room, with a sanded floor, and is lighted by windows that turn on hinges and have little diamond-shaped panes of glass. The scholars sit on long benches with desks before them.
2. At one end of the room is a great fireplace, so very spacious that there is room enough for three or four boys to stand in each of the chimney corners. This was the good old fashion of fireplaces when there was wood enough in the forests to keep people warm without their digging into the earth for coal.
3. It is a winter’s day when we take our peep into the schoolroom. See what great logs of wood have been rolled into the fireplace, and what a broad, bright blaze goes leaping up the chimney! And every few moments a vast cloud of smoke is puffed into the room, which sails slowly over the heads of the scholars until it gradually settles upon the walls and ceiling. They are blackened with the smoke of many years already.
4. Do you see the venerable schoolmaster, severe in aspect, with a black skullcap on his head, like an ancient Puritan, and the snow of his white beard drifting down to his very girdle? What boy would dare to play, or whisper, or even glance aside from his book while Master Cheever is on the lookout behind his spectacles? For such offenders, if any such there be, a rod of birch is hanging over the fireplace, and a heavy ferule lies onthe master’s desk.
The old-fashioned school
5. And now school is begun. What a murmur of2over their various tasks! Buzz! buzz! buzz! Amid just such a murmur has Master Cheever spent above sixty years; and long habit has made it as pleasant to him as the hum of a beehive when the insects are busy in the sunshine.
6. Now a class in Latin is called to recite. Forth steps a row of queer-looking little fellows wearing Square-skirted coats and smallclothes, with buttons at the knee. They look like so many grandfathers in their second childhood. These lads are to be sent to Cambridge and educated for the learned professions.
7. Old Master Cheever has lived so long and seen so many generations of schoolboys grow up to be men that now he can almostunctionand effect, and leave volumes of sermons in print and manuscript for the benefit of future generations
5
Multitudinous:very many.
con:study.
Prophesy:foretell.
Unction:religious zeal; strong devotion.
8. But, as they are merely schoolboys now, their business is to read1. Poor Virgil! whose verses, which he took so much pains to polish, have been misparsed and misinterpreted by so many generations of idle schoolboys. There, sit down, ye Latinists. Two or three of you, I fear, are doomed to feel the master’s ferule.
9. Next comes a class in arithmetic. These boys are to be merchants, shopkeepers, 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 coffee.
10. Others will stand behind counters and measure tape and ribbon and cambric by the yard. Others will2the blacksmith’s hammer, or drive the plane over the carpenter’s bench, or take the lapstone and the awl and learn the trade of shoemaking. Many will follow the sea and become bold, rough sea captains.
11. This class of boys, in short, must supply the world with those active, skillful hands and clear,3heads, 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.
Virgil (B.c. 70-19):a great Roman poet.
Upheave:raise.
sagacious:wise.
12. 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 two1are summoned before the master’s chair, wherein he sits with the terror of a judge upon his brow. 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 these good old times a schoolmaster’s blows were well laid on.
13. See, the birch rod has lost several of its twigs and will hardly serve for another2. Mercy on us, what a bellowing the urchins make! My ears are almost deafened, though the noise comes through the far length of a hundred and fifty years
14. 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 almost3impatience.
“You are dismissed,” says Master Cheever.
15. The boys retire, treading softly until they have passed the threshold; but, fairly out of the schoolroom, lo, what a joyous shout! what a scampering and tramping of feet! what a sense of recovered freedom expressed in the merry uproar of all
Malefactor:an evil doer.
execution:as a law term, the carrying into effect the judgment of a court of law.
Irrepressible:that cannot be repressed or controlled.
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 snowball.
16. Happy boys! Enjoy your playtime now, and come again to study and to feel the birch rod and the ferule to-morrow. 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.
17. Now the master has set everything 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 schoolroom that, when he has a holiday, he feels as if his place were lost and himself a stranger in the world.