LITMIR.BIZ

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To be a prizefighter, and maul poor mariners

       With naked knuckles, is no work for you.

      CASHEL. Thou dost arraign the inattentive Fates

       That weave my thread of life in ruder patterns

       Than these that lie, antimacassarly,

       Asprent thy drawingroom. As well demand

       Why I at birth chose to begin my life

       A speechless babe, hairless, incontinent,

       Hobbling upon all fours, a nurse’s nuisance?

       Or why I do propose to lose my strength,

       To blanch my hair, to let the gums recede

       Far up my yellowing teeth, and finally

       Lie down and moulder in a rotten grave?

       Only one thing more foolish could have been,

       And that was to be born, not man, but woman.

       This was thy folly, why rebuk’st thou mine?

      LYDIA. These are not things of choice.

      CASHEL. And did I choose

       My quick divining eye, my lightning hand,

       My springing muscle and untiring heart?

       Did I implant the instinct in the race

       That found a use for these, and said to me,

       Fight for us, and be fame and fortune thine?

      LYDIA. But there are other callings in the world.

      CASHEL. Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers,

       Thy poet friends to stoop o’er merchants’ desks

       And pen prose records of the gains of greed.

       Tell bishops that religion is outworn,

       And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker

       Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit

       His fraudulent pedantries, and do i’ the world

       The thing he would teach others. Then return

       To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed;

       And on that pyre of sacrifice I, too,

       Will throw my championship.

      LYDIA. But ’tis so cruel.

      CASHEL. Is it so? I have hardly noticed that,

       So cruel are all callings. Yet this hand,

       That many a two days’ bruise hath ruthless given,

       Hath kept no dungeon locked for twenty years,

       Hath slain no sentient creature for my sport.

       I am too squeamish for your dainty world,

       That cowers behind the gallows and the lash,

       The world that robs the poor, and with their spoil

       Does what its tradesmen tell it. Oh, your ladies!

       Sealskinned and egret-feathered; all defiance

       To Nature; cowering if one say to them

       “What will the servants think?” Your gentlemen!

       Your tailor-tyrannized visitors of whom

       Flutter of wing and singing in the wood

       Make chickenbutchers. And your medicine men!

       Groping for cures in the tormented entrails

       Of friendly dogs. Pray have you asked all these

       To change their occupations? Find you mine

       So grimly crueller? I cannot breathe

       An air so petty and so poisonous.

      LYDIA. But find you not their manners very nice?

      CASHEL. To me, perfection. Oh, they condescend

       With a rare grace. Your duke, who condescends

       Almost to the whole world, might for a Man

       Pass in the eyes of those who never saw

       The duke capped with a prince. See then, ye gods,

       The duke turn footman, and his eager dame

       Sink the great lady in the obsequious housemaid!

       Oh, at such moments I could wish the Court

       Had but one breadbasket, that with my fist

       I could make all its windy vanity

       Gasp itself out on the gravel. Fare you well.

       I did not choose my calling; but at least

       I can refrain from being a gentleman.

      LYDIA. You say farewell to me without a pang.

      CASHEL. My calling hath apprenticed me to pangs.

       This is a rib-bender; but I can bear it.

       It is a lonely thing to be a champion.

      LYDIA. It is a lonelier thing to be a woman.

      CASHEL. Be lonely then. Shall it be said of thee

       That for his brawn thou misalliance mad’st

       Wi’ the Prince of Ruffians? Never. Go thy ways;

       Or, if thou hast nostalgia of the mud,

       Wed some bedoggéd wretch that on the slot

       Of gilded snobbery, ventre à terre,

       Will hunt through life with eager nose on earth

       And hang thee thick with diamonds. I am rich;

       But all my gold was fought for with my hands.

      LYDIA. What dost thou mean by rich?

      CASHEL. There is a man,

       Hight Paradise, vaunted unconquerable,

       Hath dared to say he will be glad to hear from me.

       I have replied that none can hear from me

       Until a thousand solid pounds be staked.

       His friends have confidently found the money.

       Ere fall of leaf that money shall be mine;

       And then I shall possess ten thousand pounds.

       I had hoped to tempt thee with that monstrous sum.

      LYDIA. Thou silly Cashel, ’tis but a week’s income.

       I did propose to give thee three times that

       For pocket money when we two were wed.

      CASHEL. Give me my hat. I have been fooling here.

       Now, by the Hebrew lawgiver, I thought

       That only in America such revenues

       Were decent deemed. Enough. My dream is dreamed.

       Your gold weighs like a mountain on my chest.

       Farewell.

      LYDIA. The golden mountain shall be thine

       The day thou quit’st thy horrible profession.

      CASHEL. Tempt me not, woman. It is honor calls.

       Slave to the Ring I rest until the face

       Of Paradise be changed.

      Enter Bashville

      BASHVILLE. Madam, your carriage,

       Ordered by you at two. ’Tis now half-past.

      CASHEL. Sdeath! is it half-past two? The king! the king!

      LYDIA. The king! What mean you?

      CASHEL. I must meet a monarch

       This very afternoon at Islington.

      LYDIA.

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