WILLIE. Oh, I shall be outside the palings, laughing at you. I shall
have to laugh, because it'll be your own faults. You'll have nobody
but yourself to thank for it. You don't WANT to be men. You'd rather
NOT be free--much rather. You're like those people spoken of in
Shakespeare: "Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!" I believe
it's Shakespeare--or the Bible--one or the other--it mostly is---

ANABEL WRATH (she was passing to church). It was Tiberius.

WILLIE. Eh?

ANABEL. Tiberius said it.

WILLIE. Tiberius!--Oh, did he? (Laughs.) Thanks! Well, if Tiberius
said it, there must be something in it. and he only just missed being
in the Bible anyway. He was a day late, or they'd have had him in.
"Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!"--It's evident the Romans
deserved all they got from Tiberius--and you'll deserve all you get,
every bit of it. But don't you bother, you'll get it. You won't be
at the mercy of Tiberius, you'll be at the mercy of something a jolly
sight worse. Tiberius took the skin off a few Romans, apparently.
But you'll have the soul taken out of you--every one of you. And I'd
rather lose my skin than my soul, any day. But perhaps you wouldn't.

VOICE. What art makin' for, Willie? Tha seems to say a lot, but tha
goes round it. Tha'rt like a donkey on a gin. Tha gets ravelled.

WILLIE. Yes, that's just it. I am precisely like a donkey on a gin--
a donkey that's trying to wind a lot of colliers up to the surface.