Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/98

78 seeking a school. Positions did not come and he remained at home to renew his friendships with his loved Concord meadows and woods. He now began his journals. In the first journal, or daybook, are a few laconic items about his life at this time:—"was graduated in 1837; kept town school a fortnight that year; began the big red journal October, 1837; found my first arrow-head, fall of 1837; wrote a lecture (my first) on society, March 14, 1838, and read it before the Lyceum, in the Mason's Hall, April 11, 1838; went to Maine for a school in May, 1838; commenced school in the Parkman House in the summer of that year." ("Familiar Letters," p. 4.)

It was during that fortnight of public school-teaching that the conflict came between his ideas of discipline and those of the school-committee. Again, he declared himself prophet of later ideas on education. It has been asserted that Thoreau's school was visited by a committeeman who discovered that the new teacher did not believe in the ferule as a persuasive and educative medium. Declaring that thus alone could discipline be maintained, the irate visitor demanded that Thoreau should adopt the time-honored custom. Thus reduced to defiant obedience, the teacher feruled several scholars, including the family maid of the