A CITIZEN and his wife.
Drawers.
The Scene: London (and the Parts adjacent).
ACT I.
SCENE I. London. A room in Flowerdale Junior's house.
[Enter old Flowerdale and his brother.]
FATHER.
Brother, from Venice, being thus disguised,
I come to prove the humours of my son.
How hath he borne himself since my departure,
I leaving you his patron and his guide?
UNCLE.
Ifaith, brother, so, as you will grieve to hear,
And I almost ashamed to report it.
FATHER.
Why, how ist, brother? what, doth he spend beyond
the allowance I left him?
UNCLE.
How! beyond that? and far more: why, your exhibition
is nothing. He hath spent that, and since hath borrowed;
protested with oaths, alleged kindred to wring money
from me,--by the love I bore his father, by the fortunes
might fall upon himself, to furnish his wants: that done,
I have had since his bond, his friend and friend's bond.
Although I know that he spends is yours; yet it grieves
me to see the unbridled wildness that reins over him.
FATHER.
Brother, what is the manner of his life? how is the name
of his offences? If they do not relish altogether of
damnation, his youth may privilege his wantonness: I
myself ran an unbridled course till thirty, nay, almost
till forty;--well, you see how I am: for vice, once looked
into with the eyes of discretion, and well-balanced with
the weights of reason, the course past seems so abominable,
that the Landlord of himself, which is the heart of the body,
will rather entomb himself in the earth, or seek a new
Tenant to remain in him:--which once settled, how much
better are they that in their youth have known all these
vices, and left it, than those that knew little, and in their
age runs into it? Believe me, brother, they that die most
virtuous hath in their youth lived most vicious, and none
knows the danger of the fire more than he that falls into
it.
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