"No, father--that cannot be. I am no longer a child--a boy; and it is not in the nature of man to bear, even from a father, injustice--degradation, such as that to which I am subjected. I ask you then, that this very night, on this very spot, for once, and for ever, to let my account be settled between us; and never I solemnly swear, here or hereafter shall you be troubled by me or my concerns. What I ask is, that you will give me down a sum of money, just sufficient to pay my expenses out of this country, and let me work for my bread by the sweat of my brow, like others whom I know, in one of the distant colonies; for this I say will be preferable, far preferable, to what you now make me endure--far more accordant with my feelings of right and honour, than shackled, degraded in every point, to be goaded, drawn into a profession for which, besides the original disinclination I felt to embrace it, I have been rendered still more unfit by the treatment I have received. Viewing the office as I do, in a light far too sacred to be entered upon by one, in the spirit and temper of mind to which you have reduced me." "Well, Sir, well; I admire your pious principles; do as you please; give up this living. Many a better man than you, no doubt, will be glad to have it. Go off to Botany Bay, if you will--but beg, borrow, or steal your way out as you like. I must decline advancing you a farthing towards that laudable design; all the money you ever get out of me, goes to making you a parson; choose that, or beggary; for do not suppose that you will be coming over me a second prodigal son. Go, riot as you will, but not from me will ever come the wherewithals. Eat the husks, if you please; but as for the ring, and the fatted calf, and all that--" "Sir!" interrupted the young man, by a strong effort suppressing the resentment these taunting words fired in his breast from breaking through the limits of filial respect. "Far be it from me, to expect such things at your hands. No, truly, the very husks of the fields _would_ be far sweeter to my taste than the begrudged bread eaten in my father's house. And, refused as I am the just and reasonable demand I have made to-night--determined as you are to show the cruelly childish dependence to which you have reduced me, willingly would I embrace the other alternative, and by the sweat of my brow, unaided by you, gain my daily subsistence, were it not for the one consideration which draws me back, and renders me powerless to resist--my mother."