Children -- United States; United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
It was said of Ezekiel Cheever, the old Boston schoolmaster, who
taught for over seventy years, "He taught us Lilly and he Gospel
taught." But he also wrote a Latin grammar of his own, _Cheever's
Accidence_, which had unvarying popularity for over a century.
Cheever was a thorough grammarian. Cotton Mather thus eulogized
him:--
"Were Grammar quite extinct, yet at his Brain
The Candle might have well been Lit again."
There was brought forth at his death a broadside entitled _The
Grammarian's Funeral_. A fac-simile of it is here given. Josiah
Quincy, later in life the president of Harvard College, wrote an
account of his dismal school life at Andover. He entered the school
when he was six years old, and on the form by his side sat a man
of thirty. Both began _Cheever's Accidence_, and committed to
memory pages of a book which the younger child certainly could not
understand, and no advance was permitted till the first book was
conquered. He studied through the book twenty times before mastering
it. The hours of study were long--eight hours a day--and this upon
lessons absolutely meaningless. [Ilustration:
The Grammarians Funeral,
OR,
An ELEGY compo[f.]ed upon the Death of Mr. _John Woodmancy_,
formerly a School-Ma[f.]ter in _Bo[f.]ton_: But now Publi[f.]hed
upon the DEATH of the Venerable
Mr. Ezekiel Chevers,
The late and famous School-Ma[f.]ter of _Bo[f.]ton_ in
_New-England_; Who Departed this Life the _Twenty-fir[f.]t_ of
_Augu[f.]t_ 1708. Early in the Morning. In the Ninety-fourth Year of
his Age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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