for the balance of the vacation, after my school-teaching failure, was
the occasion of the final battle. As the vacation drew to an end, and
the time which was still available for studying up the subjects of
the last term, for the examination on reëntering, approached its
imperative limit, I notified him that I must stop work. He said
nothing until I had actually given it up and gone back to my study,
about two weeks before the examination day. Coming home from the shop
that day to dinner, in a very bad humor, he asked me why I had
not been at work. I replied that I had barely the time absolutely
necessary to make up my arrears of study to enter college for the next
term. Then he broke out on me with a torrent of abuse as an idle,
shirking boy, who only cared to avoid work, ending with the accusation
that all I wanted was to "eat the bread of idleness," a phrase he was
very fond of. I suppose I inherited some of his inequality of temper,
and I replied by leaving the table, throwing my chair across the room
as I did so; and, assuring him that when I ate another morsel of bread
in his house he would know the reason why, I left the house in a
towering rage. Having forewarned him days before that I must go,
without his making the least objection, and having postponed the step
to the latest possible moment, out of consideration for the work in
hand, I considered this treatment as ungenerous, and was indignant.

I do not think that, weighing all the circumstances of the case, one
could say that my father was entitled to impose his authority in
a purely arbitrary interference with a matter in which the family
council had decided on my course, and which involved all my future, or
that my refusal to obey an irrational command implies any disrespect
to him. At all events, I decided at once that I would not yield in
this matter, and I made my preparations to seek another home, even
with a modification in my career. If I must abandon the liberal