The Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page B

blacksmith in Winterbourne, wherein I also bought a pound of nails. I then returned to the farm and chopped wood until night. I rejoiced in being saved by the grace of my soul’s Beloved.
    By earnest prayer, I sought counsel of God, the giver of all good gifts. My father, whose pious judgment and knowledge I much trusted, said to me, “Your rebirth in Christ hath divinely appointed you to serve Him as His Minister. You must take a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.”
    I said, “Sir, I must needs confess to you that, even for Christ’s sake, I’m loathe to matriculate as a poor sizar obliged to pay my way by waiting upon my fellow students of good rank and quality. To serve them food and drink like a common servant, to fetch and carry for them. I cannot. Not even for Christ’s sake! Such is my pride. Help me conquer my satanical pride!”
    We bowed our heads, and he bade me pray from Psalm 36:11, “Let not the foot of pride come against me.”
    I could not conquer my pride. But God forgave me. My uncle said to me that he would pay my full cost of living at the University, in the amount of about forty-five pounds per annum, so that I could matriculate as a pensioner and live in a manner befitting the nephew of a prosperous yeoman such as he. His pride—or perhaps his love for me—overcame his habitual parsimony.
    My aunt Eliza protested his decision, but he was resolute. He likewise gave me a goodly pair of red gloves of kid from his shop, and, for travel apparel, his old black stockings, black breeches, jerkin, and his warm blue cloak. Then he hired a tailor to make me a black suit and doublet with silver buttons to wear at Emmanuel, wherein, according to my father, the students wore neither clerical cap nor gown. My uncle said to me, “I want you to do me proud amongst all them high and mighty gentlemen.”
    My uncle Roger wrote a new will, leaving his farm and glover’s shop to Tom Foot. Foot got drunk to celebrate in The Sign of the Bull.
    I was admitted to Cambridge for the following Michaelmas term. My father wrote a letter to his friend and former chamber mate at Christ Church, the Rev. William Barstow, who was the rector of All Angels Church, in Ashford in the Weald of Kent; he was the sole surviving heir of two nearby manors, managed by a steward. The Barstows were one of the most ancient of Kentish families. In the years since college, Barstow and my father had met regularly at the annual Commencement festivities held every July. Barstow’s son, Robin, aged fifteen, was in his second year as a pensioner at Emmanuel. He hoped to take a Bachelor of Arts, become a Fellow, and one day teach Latin there. His father prayed he would be converted by Emmanuel’s godly tutors and abandon his design. He wanted Robin to take a Bachelor of Divinity and become a Minister. Our fathers arranged for Roger and me to live together in a chamber near the library and share the same tutor, whose name was Charles Morton.
    I first saw Robin seated by the window in his study, reading a volume of the Aeneid . He gazed upon me over the pages of his book and asked in Latin, with a Kentish accent, “How well do you know your Virgil?”
    And I rejoined, likewise in Latin, “Passing fair.” (“ Satis certe .”) We Cambridge men spake together only in Latin, Hebrew, or Greek.
    Robin said, “Then tell me this: how long did Alcestes live, and how many jars of Sicilian wine did he give to the Trojans?”
    â€œI cannot say.”
    Said he, “Well, neither can I.”
    We laughed together. With his blue eyes, his ruddy complexion, his fair hairs, Robin Barstow was the comeliest youth I have ever known.
    He joined with me and a company of six or eight others to pray together every evening and discourse about religion, presided over by our tutor in his chamber.
    Robin said, “I have need of continual under-proppings to hold up my