THE CHELSEA SCHOOL is in the middle of a field so lush and vivid as to make the eyes water and shine with its light. There’s grass everywhere, acres and acres of it, green and falling away, rolling. Up on the hill, a grand red barn sits, incongruous, bright, the biggest in three counties. Black cows dot the hillside. Sometimes you can see boys in orange down jackets walking among them, slapping the rumps of the cows to get them to shift and calling to each other in raucous, sarcastic voices. But the barn serves no real purpose here. It was built by the school’s founder in the belief that manual labor in the open air would make stalwart men out of callow boys. The boys can take a class called Animal Husbandry, playing at being the farmers they will never be. The small amount of milk that the cows produce is donated to a nearby bottler and sold in greenish glass bottles for more than three times its value.

I have served this school since 1974. For most of that time, I have been the only Negro on the faculty. (A note: I am fully aware that Negro is no longer the fashionable term. It is, however, the term I prefer to use.) I have always been, and remain, the only Negro in the Classics Department. Given the waning interest in the classics manifested by today’s young men, the fathers of the school have seen fit to render me the only classics teacher. It could be worse, I suppose. When I first arrived here, there was some serious talk of eliminating the entire department in the name of “relevance.” Only an impassioned plea by the then-department head and some grumbling from our more conservative alumni preserved the few classes that are left. Fortunately, I have enough students to fill them, but there is not much demand for my knowledge of Greco-Roman culture outside of those classes. The vigorous and lengthy discussions that I imagine used to take place regarding matters of the classical mind are all in the past now.

When I was hired, John Hays, who was headmaster at the time, said that I was exactly the person they were looking for. I remember his words from my hiring interview quite distinctly. “It’s time that the Chelsea School took note of the advances your people have made,” he said, rearing back on the legs of his wooden chair. “Our boys will benefit from your fine example.” He paused. “I know you’ll take this in the spirit in which it’s intended—you’re truly a credit to your race.” I smiled briefly. I did take Hays’s comment as the compliment he meant it to be—though I suppose many would not have.