Thesaurus

anybody: ( adv) any, each; ( n, pron) any business, shopping, import, export, ignorant, unintentional, dead,

person, a person; ( n) everyone,

transaction, ownership, patronage,

accidental, inanimate, spontaneous,

somebody, nobody, everybody,

sale.

subconscious, unplanned,

someone; ( pron) whoever.

coat: ( v) cloak, blanket; ( n, v) sheath, inadvertent, oblivious.

blame: ( v) arraign, chide; ( n, v)

plaster; ( n) coating, fur, film, crust,

hostess: ( n) mistress, air hostess, flight

reprimand, censure, attack, charge,

jacket, layer, bark. ANTONYMS: ( v)

attendant, housewife, steward,

reproach, rap, rebuke, fault; ( n) onus. reveal, expose.

innkeeper, landlady, prostitute, host.

ANTONYMS: ( n, v) praise; ( v)

conscious: ( adj) alive, premeditated,

vehement: ( adj) fierce, intense, violent,

absolve, exonerate, commend, clear,

mindful, deliberate, cognizant,

strong, furious, passionate, ferocious,

acquit; ( n) vindication, exoneration,

calculated, intended, discerning, self- eager, hot, fervent, fervid.

honor, absolution, glory.

conscious, studied, voluntary.

ANTONYMS: ( adj) impassionate,

buying: ( n) purchasing, buy, purchase, ANTONYMS: ( adj) unaware, indifferent, mild, calm.

102

Pygmalion

HIGGINS.

Yes.%

DOOLITTLE.

You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her; but she'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.

MRS. HIGGINS.

But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE.

Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.

HIGGINS

[rising intolerantly and standing over DOOLITTLE] You're raving. You're drunk. You're mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. I've never seen you since.

DOOLITTLE.

Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for him?

HIGGINS.

What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down again carelessly].

DOOLITTLE.

Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman.

HIGGINS.

Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of the kind.

DOOLITTLE.

Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans is not like us: that Thesaurus

blighter: ( n) chap, cuss, dog, fella, lad, design, coin.

delirious, furious, mad, insane; ( adj,

beau, feller, gent, nudnik, associate, moralist: ( n) disciplinarian, martinet, n) madness, distraction, rage; ( n)

pest.

philosopher, utilitarian, stickler,

rabid, delirium.

intolerantly: ( adv) bigotedly,

moraliser, egalitarian, dictator,

ruined: ( adj, v) lost; ( adj) dilapidated, impatiently, narrowly, edgily,

authoritarian, elitist.

desolate, broke, broken, bankrupt,

prejudicedly, conservatively, rigidly, morality: ( n) ethics, goodness, virtue, finished, devastated, desolated,

unfairly, overweeningly,

honesty, decency, integrity,

insolvent, spoiled. ANTONYMS: ( adj)

opinionatedly, dogmatically.

righteousness, chastity, behavior,

solvent, pure, rich, whole.

ANTONYM: ( adv) patiently.

moral philosophy, rectitude.

tied: ( adj) bound, connected, laced,

invent: ( v) devise, form, create,

ANTONYMS: ( n) immorality,

united, fixed, even, liable, tight,

excogitate, concoct, imagine,

decadence, wickedness, indecency.

spiked, responsible, attached.

contrive; ( n, v) forge, fabricate,

raving: ( adj, v) wild; ( adj) frantic,

ANTONYMS: ( adj) untied, unlaced.

George Bernard Shaw

103

they recognize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble.

Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year.%

HIGGINS.

The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!

PICKERING.

A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you twice.

DOOLITTLE.

It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me.

Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don't you be anxious: I bet she's on my doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn't respectable. And the next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English. That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you done it for.