scot-free of all liabilities, even in the teeth of a thousand witnesses who could prove the debt. He presents the youth to his father, who is charmed at first sight with the change in his complexion, which has now the genuine disputatious tint. He looks, as Strepsiades declares, "all negations and contradictions," and has the true Attic expression in his face. The father takes him home rejoicing, and awaits confidently the summons of his creditors.
The devices with which the claimants are put off by the new learning of Pheidippides, turn so entirely on the technical expressions of Athenian law, that they have little interest for an English reader. Suffice it to say that the unfortunate tradesmen with whom this young gentleman has run up bills for his horses and chariots do not seem likely to get their money. But the training which he has received in the "Thinking-shop" has some other domestic results which the father did not anticipate. He proceeds, on some slight quarrel (principally because he will quote Euripides, whom his father abominates), to cudgel the old gentleman, and further undertakes to justify his conduct on the plea that when he was a child his father had often cudgelled him.
Strep. Ay. but I did it for your good.
Pheid. No doubt;
And pray am I not also right to show
Goodwill to you—if beating means goodwill?
Why should your back escape the rod, I ask you,
Any more than mine did? was not I, forsooth,
Born like yourself a free Athenian?
