Harvard Yard by William Martin Read Free Book Online

“You may thank me for showing you the error of your ways.”
    Being a young man of intelligence, Isaac did as he was told. Being a young man of spirit, he resolved that he would never let Nathaniel Eaton cane him again.
    Such resolutions were hard to keep, however, in the college that students soon came to call the School of Tyrannus. Lessons were taught in fear, learned in terror.
    Ten young men, “the sons of gentlemen and others of the best note in the country,” began each day at the meetinghouse, where they prayed with Reverend Shepard. Then they would return to Peyntree House for morning bever—a cup of beer, a bit of sour bread, some watery gruel to break their fast. After that they would repair to the front room, where Eaton and his impatient rod awaited their recitations from Cicero and Aristotle, from Greek grammar, from mathematics and reasoning.
    Eaton proclaimed that he had taken this course of study from that which freshmen at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, pursued. No student was so bold as to point out that while Eaton may have gone to Cambridge, he held no degree. And no student, no matter how assiduous in study or prayer, was able to avoid punishment for more than a fortnight.
    When Isaac was summoned to the master’s chambers one September evening, he thought to bid his fellows farewell, as he expected a beating for some unknown infraction, a beating that this time he would resist.
    He found Eaton before a guttering candle, a letter on the desk, a mug of beer beside it, and the blackamoor servant hunkered in the shadows.
    Eaton gestured to the letter. The seal had been broken, the letter read. “You may wish to answer it. The slave stands ready.”
    Isaac made certain that this was no trick, that Eaton had no rod hidden under the desk, then he slid the letter toward himself as carefully as he would slide a bone from under the nose of a drowsing dog.
    It was written in the hand of Ann Harvard, and it urged Isaac to come to Charlestown as soon as possible. “My husband has taken to a bed from which I fear he may not rise. His strength ebbs. He asks for his friends. ’Tis my hope that Master Eaton will release you, that you may visit him before he goes to his reward.”
    Isaac read with sadness but little surprise. He did not look up, however, until he had gathered his resolve, for if Eaton would deny a man’s dying request, Isaac would defy him. And if Eaton raised his rod, Isaac would fight back, even though he was a skinny lad, sapped of strength after two months of beatings and Mary Eaton’s bad food. He set his chin and said, “I must go, sir. Don’t try to stop me.”
    And Eaton shocked Isaac by offering to accompany him. “For no one—boy or man—should look upon the face of the consumption alone.”
    Perhaps, thought Isaac, there was charity in Nathaniel Eaton after all.
    The following day, after recitations, they set out. They went by the Charlestown Path through the green world of late summer. To the south, green meadows of marsh grass rimmed the river and the wide estuary called the Back Bay. Deeper green pasturelands and cornfields expanded around them. And stands of hardwood, their dark green leaves dancing in the breeze, retreated to the north.
    Charlestown occupied a peninsula a short ferry ride from Boston, and already there were 150 dwellings clustered near the water or, like Harvard’s house, perched on the side of Windmill Hill. Isaac had hoped to work in the windmill as an apprentice. Then Master Harvard had urged him to the college. Many times since, Isaac had wished he were grinding corn in Charlestown rather than studying Cicero under the rod of Master Eaton.
    The two visitors were admitted to Harvard’s house by Elder Nowell of the Charlestown church.
    Against doctor’s advice, the windows of John Harvard’s bedchamber were thrown open to the September breeze, giving his room of sickness a strange air of hope. He lay propped on several pillows so that he could gaze out