The First Schoolmaster of Boston.
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��" Do but name Cherver, and the Echo straight Upon that name, Good Latin will Repeat.
"And in our School, a Miracle is wrought: For the Dead Languages to Li/e are brought.
" Who serv'd the School, the Church did not forget, But Thought aiid Prayed & often wept for it.
" How oft we saw him tread the Milky IVay Which to the Glorious Throne of Mercy lay!
" Come from the Mount he shone with ancient Grace, Awful the Splendor of his Aged Face.
" He Liv'd and to vast age no Illness knew. Till Times Scythe waiting for him Rusty grew.
" He Liv'd Ttai Wrought ; His Labours were Immense, But ne'r Declined to Praeter-perfect Tense."
He closes this eulogy with an epitaph in Latin.
Mr. Cheever's will, found in the Suf- folk probate office, was offered by his son Thomas and his daughter Susanna, August 26, 1708, a few days after his death. He wrote it two years previous, when he was ninety-one years old, a short time before his " dear wife," whom he mentions, died. In it his estate is appraised at £Zt^ 7:19:6. One handles reverently this old piece of yellow paper, perhaps ten by twelve inches in size, with red lines, on which is written in a clear handwriting the last will of this dear old man. He characteristically begins it thus : —
"In nomine Domini Amen, I Ezekiel Cheever of the Towne of Bostoa in the County of Suffolk in New England, School- master, living through great mercy in good health and understanding wonderful! in my age, do make and ordain this as my last Will & Testament as FoUoweth : I give up my soule to God my Father in Jesus Christ, my body to the earth to be buried in a decent manner according to my desires in hope of a Blessed part in ye first resurrec- tion & glorious kingdom of Christ on earth a thousand years."
He then gives all his household goods *' & of my plate ye two-ear'd Cup, my least tankard porringer a spoon," to his wife ; "all my books saving what
��Ezekiel may need & what godly books my wife may desire," to his son Thomas ; 1 £\o to Mary Phillips; £20 to his grandchild, Ezekiel Russel; and ^5 to the poor. The remainder of the estate he leaves to his wife and six children, Samuel, Mary, Elizabeth, Ezekiel, Thomas, and Susanna.
One handles still more reverently a httle brown, stiff-covered book, kept in the safe in the Athenaeum, of about one hundred and twenty pages, yellow with age, on the first of which is the year " 163 1," and on the second, " Ezekiel Cheever, his booke," both in his own handwriting. Then come nearly fifty pages of finely- written Latin poems, composed and written by him- self, probably in London; then, there are scattered over some of the remain- ing pages a few short-hand notes which have been deciphered as texts of Scrip- ture. On the last page of this quaint little treasure — only three by four inches large — are written in English some verses, one of which can be clearly read as, "Oh, first seek the kingdom of God and his Righteousness, and all things else shall be added unto you."
Another ms. of Mr. Cheever's is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is a book six by eight inches in size, of about four hundred pages, all well filled with Latin dissertations, with occasionally a mathe- matical figure drawn. One turns over the old leaves with affectionate interest, even if the matter written upon them is beyond his comprehension. It cer- tainly is a pleasure to read on one of them the date May 18, 1664.
Verily, New England should treasure the memory of Ezekiel Cheever, the man who called himself " Schoolmas- ter." for she owes much to him.
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