But now he’s settling down, happen I’ll see
Bairn’s bairns at Krindlesyke, before I die.
Six sons--and only the youngest of the bunch
Left in the old home to do his parents credit.

EZRA:
Queer, all went wild, your sons, like collies bitten
With a taste for mutton bleeding-hot. Cold lead
Cures dogs of that kidney, peppering them one fine night
From a chink in a stell; but, when they’re two-legged curs,
They’ve a longer run; and, in the end, the gallows
Don’t noose them, kicking and squealing like snarled rabbits,
Dead-certain, as ’twould do in the good old days.

ELIZA:
You crack your gallows-jokes on your own sons--
And each the spit of the father that drove them wild,
With cockering them and cursing them; one moment,
Fooling them to their bent, the moment after,
Flogging them senseless, till their little bodies
Were one blue bruise.

EZRA:
I never larruped enough,
But let the varmints off too easily:
That was the mischief. They should have had my dad--
An arm like a bullock-walloper, and a fist
Could fell a stot; and faiks, but he welted me
Skirlnaked, yarked my hurdies till I yollered,
In season and out, and made me the man I am.