Doggrass: Tut If you are inclined to pre...

Doggrass: Tut! If you are inclined to preach, here is a milestone--I’ll leave you in its company.
Gnatbrain: Ay, it’s all very well--very well; but you have broken poor Susan’s heart, and as for William--
Doggrass: What of him?
Gnatbrain: The sharks of him, for what you care. Didn’t you make him turn a sailor, and leave his young pretty wife, the little delicate black-ey’d Susan, that pretty piece of soft-speaking womanhood, your niece? Now say, haven’t you qualms? On a winter’s night, now, when the snow is drifting at your door, what do you do?
Doggrass: Shut it.
Gnatbrain: And what, when you hear the wind blowing at your chimney corner?
Doggrass: Get closer to the fire..
Gnatbrain: What, when in your bed, you turn up one side at the thunder?
Doggrass: Turn round on the other. Will you go on with your catechism?
Gnatbrain: No, I'd rather go and talk to the echoes. A fair day to you, Master Doggrass. If your conscience--
Doggrass: Conscience! Phoo! My conscience sleeps well enough.
Gnatbrain: Sleeps! Don’t wake it then--it might alarm you.
Doggrass: One word with you--no more of your advice: I go about like a surly bull, and you gadfly buzzing around me. From this moment throw off the part of counsellor.
Gnatbrain: But, don’t you see?--
Doggrass: Don’t you see these trees growing about us?
Gnatbrain: Very well.
Doggrass: If a cudgel was cut from them for every knave who busies himself in the business of others--don’t you think it would mightily open the prospect?
Gnatbrain: Perhaps it might: and don’t you think that if every hard-hearted, selfish rascal that destroys the happiness of others, were strung up to the boughs before they were cut for cudgels, it would, instead of opening the prospect, mightily darken it?
Doggrass: I have given you warning--take heed! Take heed! And with this counsel, I give you good day. [Exit]
Gnatbrain: Ay, it’s the only thing good you can give; and that, only good, because it’s not your own. That rascal has no more heart than a bagpipe! One could sooner make Dover cliffs dance a reel to a penny whistle, than move him with words of pity or distress. No matter, let the old dog bark, his teeth will not last for ever; and I yet hope to see the day when poor black-ey’d Susan, and the jovial sailor, William, may defy the surly cur that now divides them.

Douglas Jerrold, “Black Ey’d Susan” in Nineteenth Century Plays, ed. George Rowell, 2nd ed. OUP, 1972. pp. 5-6.