IRA: Lovely? Lovely to leave you without a mother—leave me without her after I'd had her? Wasn't she worth more than them.
MADELINE: (proudly) Yes. She was worth so much that she never stopped to think how much she was worth.
IRA: Ah, if you'd known her you couldn't take it like that. And now you cry about the world! That's what the world is—all coming to nothing. My father used to sit there at the table and talk about the world—my father and her father. They thought 'twas all for something—that what you were went on into something more than you. That's the talk I always heard in this house. But it's just talk. The rare thing that came here was killed by the common thing that came here. Just happens—and happens cruel. Look at your brother! Gone—(snaps his fingers) like that. I told him not to go to war. He didn't have to go—they'd been glad enough to have him stay here on the farm. But no,—he must—make the world safe for democracy! Well, you see how safe he made it, don't you? Now I'm alone on the farm and he—buried on some Frenchman's farm. That is, I hope they buried him—I hope they didn't just—(tormented)
MADELINE: Oh, father—of course not. I know they did.
IRA: How do you know? What do you care—once they got him? He talked about the world—better world—end war. Now he's in his grave—I hope he is—and look at the front page of the paper! No such thing—war to end war!
MADELINE: But he thought there was, father. Fred believed that—so what else could he do?
IRA: He could 'a' minded his own business.
MADELINE: No—oh, no. It was fine of him to give his life to what he believed should be.
IRA: The light in his eyes as he talked of it, now—eyes gone—and the world he died for all hate and war. Waste. Waste. Nothin' but waste—the life of this house. Why, folks to-day'd laugh to hear my father talk. He gave his best land for ideas to live. Thought was going to make us a better people. What was his word? (waits) Aspiration. (says it as if it is a far-off thing) Well, look at your friend, young Jordan. Kicked from the college to prison for ideas of a better world. (laughs) His 'aspiration' puts him in a hole on bread and water! So—mind your own business, that's all that's so in this country. (constantly tormented anew) Oh, I told your brother all that—the night I tried to keep him. Told him about his mother—to show what come of running to other folks. And he said—standing right there—(pointing) eyes all bright, he said, 'Golly, I think that's great!' And then he—walked out of this house. (fear takes him) Madeline! (she stoops over him, her arm around him) Don't you leave me—all alone in this house—where so many was once. What's Hindus—alongside your own father—and him needing you? It won't be long. After a little I'll be dead—or crazy—or something. But not here alone where so many was once.
MADELINE: Oh—father. I don't know what to do.