Christianity, has ever looked upon. He lived, as a master, the term
which has been, for above three thousand years, assigned for the life
of a man." Mather celebrated his praises in a poetical effusion:--

"He lived, and to vast age no illness knew,
Till Time's scythe, waiting for him, rusty grew.
He lived and wrought; his labors were immense,
But ne'er declined to preterperfect tense.

* * * * *

'Tis Corlett's pains, and Cheever's, we must own,
That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown."

To our early schoolmasters, as Mather says, and the later too, I may
add, it is owing, that the whole country did not become another
Scythia.

Ezekiel Cheever was in this country as early as 1637. He was then in
New Haven, sharing in the work of the first settlement of that colony,
teaching school as his ordinary employment, but sometimes preaching,
and in other ways helping to lay the foundations of church and
commonwealth. While there, he had a family of several children. The
first-born, Samuel, became the minister of Marblehead. In 1650, he was
keeping a school at Ipswich. About this time, he lost his wife. On the
18th of November, 1652, he married Ellen, the sister whom Captain
Lothrop had brought with him from England. They had several children;
one of them, Thomas, was ordained first at Malden, and afterwards at
Chelsea. The old schoolmaster died on the 21st of August, 1708, aged
ninety-three years and seven months. His son Thomas reached the same