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
education, I would not waste my life in a little workshop with three
workmen, and no opportunity to widen the sphere of activity, or
opening into a larger occupation. If I should be obliged to leave the
college, it should be for something in the direction of art, and in
this light I did not much regret the change. I had not, however,
calculated on my mother's tenacity, or the imperceptible domination
she exercised over my father.

When I returned to the house to get my clothes and make my
preparations for leaving home for good, I had a most painful scene
with my mother, and it was the only serious misunderstanding I ever
had with her. She went through, in a rapid resume, the history of my
life, from the day when I was given her in consolation for the little
brother before me, who died, with a word for each of the crises
through which her care had carried me,--accidents, grave maladies, for
I was apparently not a strong child, and at several conjunctures my
life had been de