_Dad._ Look at him! A hundred and eighty dollars I pay to a Broadway
tailor to make this young hopeful an overcoat, and look at what he
does with it! I prepare a birthday party, and invite all his
friends, and see the condition in which he comes to welcome them! Do
you wonder my patience is exhausted? Do you wonder--

_Jessie._ Dad, you don't understand!

_Dad._ No, I don't understand! How could I be expected to
understand? How can an old man hope to keep up with a youth so
brilliant--a youth who goes to college and ties firecrackers to the
tails of goats! A youth who comes on his birthday looking like a
tramp--

_Jessie._ Listen, Dad--this is a joke--

_Dad._ Everything's a joke to my son! But I tell you I'm tired of
his jokes. I mean to make him understand that his days of tomfoolery
are over! Do you realize it--here he is, twenty-one years of age,
when he should be coming into possession of the fortune his mother
left him--and he's tying fire-crackers to the tails of goats! And
I--I am trustee of the money, and have to decide whether he's fit to
have it or not! I know that if I give it to him I ruin him for
life--I start him on a career of drunkenness and idleness! Look at
him as he stands there--and imagine him the owner of a quarter of a
million dollars! And under his mother's will the only choice I have
is to give it to him, or turn it over to a Home for Cats!

_Jessie._ Please, Dad!