Mother:  What is it ails you?

Conan:  That secret to be in the world, and I all to have laid my hand on it, and it to have gone astray on me!

Mother:  So it would go too.

Conan:  A secret that could change the world!  I’d make it as good a world to live in as it was in the time of the Greeks.  I don’t see much goodness in the trace of the people in it now.  To change everything to its contrary the way the book said it would!  There would be great satisfaction doing that.  Was there ever in the world a family was so little use to a man? (Sings in dejection.) (Air, “My Molly O.")

  “There is a rose in Ireland, I thought it would be mine
  But now that it is hid from me I must forever pine. 
  Till death shall come and comfort me for to the grave I’ll go
  And all for the sake of Aristotle’s secret O!”

Celia:  I wonder you wouldn’t ask Timothy that is older again than what my mother is.

Conan:  Timothy!  He has the hearing lost.

Celia:  Well there is no harm to try him.

Conan:  (Going to door.) Timothy!...  There, he’s as deaf as a beetle.

Mother:  It might be best for him.  The thing the ear will not hear will not put trouble on the heart.

Celia:  (Who has gone out comes pushing him in.) Here he is now for you.

Conan:  Did ever you hear of Aristotle?

Timothy:  Aye?

Conan:  Aristotle!

Timothy:  Ere a bottle?  I might ...

Conan:  Aristotle....  That had some power?

Timothy:  I never seen no flower.

Conan:  Something he hid near this place.

Timothy:  I never went near no race.

Conan:  Has the whole world its mind made up to annoy me!

Celia:  Raise your voice into his ear.

Conan:  (Chanting.)

  “Aristotle in the hour
  He left Ireland left a power
  In a gift Eolus gave
  Could all Ireland change and save!”

Timothy: Would it now?

Conan: You said you had heard of a bottle.

Timothy: A charmed bottle.  It is Biddy Early put a cure in it and bestowed it in her will to her son.

Conan: Aristotle that left one in the same way.

Timothy: It is what I am thinking that my old generations used to be talking about a bellows.

Conan: A bellows!  There’s no sense in that!

Timothy: Have it your own way so, and give me leave to go feeding the little chickens and the hens, for if I cannot hear what they say and they cannot understand what I say, they put no reproach on me after, no more than I would put it on themselves. (Goes.)

Celia: Let you be satisfied now and not torment yourself, for if you got the world wide you couldn’t discover it.  You might as well think to throw your hat to hit the stars.