’You Richmond! do you hear him? he swears he’s your son, and asks to be tied to the stake beside you.  Disown him, and I’ll pay you money and thank you.  I’ll thank my God for anything short of your foul blood in the family.  You married the boy’s mother to craze and kill her, and guttle her property.  You waited for the boy to come of age to swallow what was settled on him.  You wait for me to lie in my coffin to pounce on the strongbox you think me the fool to toss to a young donkey ready to ruin all his belongings for you!  For nine-and-twenty years you’ve sucked the veins of my family, and struck through my house like a rotting-disease.  Nine-and-twenty years ago you gave a singing-lesson in my house:  the pest has been in it ever since!  You breed vermin in the brain to think of you!  Your wife, your son, your dupes, every soul that touches you, mildews from a blight!  You were born of ropery, and you go at it straight, like a webfoot to water.  What’s your boast?—­your mother’s disgrace!  You shame your mother.  Your whole life’s a ballad o’ bastardy.  You cry up the woman’s infamy to hook at a father.  You swell and strut on her pickings.  You’re a cock forced from the smoke of the dunghill!  You shame your mother, damned adventurer!  You train your boy for a swindler after your own pattern; you twirl him in your curst harlequinade to a damnation as sure as your own.  The day you crossed my threshold the devils danced on their flooring.  I’ve never seen the sun shine fair on me after it.  With your guitar under the windows, of moonlight nights! your Spanish fopperies and trickeries! your French phrases and toeings!  I was touched by a leper.  You set your traps for both my girls:  you caught the brown one first, did you, and flung her second for t’ other, and drove a tandem of ’em to live the spangled hog you are; and down went the mother of the boy to the place she liked better, and my other girl here—­the one you cheated for her salvation—­you tried to cajole her from home and me, to send her the same way down.  She stuck to decency.  Good Lord! you threatened to hang yourself, guitar and all.  But her purse served your turn.  For why?  You ’re a leech.  I speak before ladies or I’d rip your town-life to shreds.  Your cause! your romantic history! your fine figure! every inch of you ’s notched with villany!  You fasten on every moneyed woman that comes in your way.  You’ve outdone Herod in murdering the innocents, for he didn’t feed on ’em, and they’ve made you fat.  One thing I’ll say of you:  you look the beastly thing you set yourself up for.  The kindest blow to you ‘s to call you impostor.’

He paused, but his inordinate passion of speech was unsated:  his white lips hung loose for another eruption.

I broke from my aunt Dorothy to cross over to my father, saying on the way:  ’We ’ve heard enough, sir.  You forget the cardinal point of invective, which is, not to create sympathy for the person you assail.’