-- III -- - PART 14

-- III -- PART 14

Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.

Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send
us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us
bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!

Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals
with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most
in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's
ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general
consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior
splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than
by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its
solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if
it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of
omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything
of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior
splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on
the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as
no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves
every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his
semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation
excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence
accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the
honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity
that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to
rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to
oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and
promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with
diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever
irrevocably enjoined?

It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate,
among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired,
the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of
hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest
doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down
the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health
whether the malady had been the trembling withering or loose boyconnell
flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity
contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore
a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the
maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the
discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present
congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all
accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that
all hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the
copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed
scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an
inconsiderable emolument was provided.

To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be
molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent
mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity
gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so
hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense
among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that
domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also
even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by
anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to
be cherished had been begun she felt!

Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever
in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives
attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though
forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less
of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining
to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in
various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images,
divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to
tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair
home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come
by her thereto to lie in, her term up.

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's
oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had
fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming
mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so
God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters in
ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons
thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding
wariest ward.

In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft
rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping
lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the
Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's
rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under
her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.

Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow
he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land
and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe
meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with
good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young
then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word
winning.

As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared.
Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor
tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that
O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him
so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for
friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She
said that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with
masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The
man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man was died
and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona Island through
bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the
Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad
words, in held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope
sorrowing one with other.

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the
dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked
forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to
go as he came.

The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the
nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there
in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman
was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth
to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she
had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that
woman's birth. Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew the
man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her
words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of
motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair face for
any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine
twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.

And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there
nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there
came against the place as they stood a young learningknight yclept Dixon.
And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they
had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this
learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed
for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and
dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of
volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that
he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were
there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for
he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and
repreved the learningknight though she trowed well that the traveller had
said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learningknight would
not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to
his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And the traveller
Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of
limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometime venery.

And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of
Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they
durst not move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful
swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out
of white flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that
there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by
magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath
that he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich
was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there
was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay
strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this
be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these
fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because
of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress.
And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make
a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of
certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like
to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine
themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of
these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.

And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp
thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe
Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in
amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and
anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his
neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down in that castle with them
for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.

This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at
the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing for
there was above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time hied fast.
Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that
it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not
come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a
franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older than any
of the tother and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one
emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently.
But, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and
have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the
franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next.
Also he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none
asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully
delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both's health
for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Leopold
that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and
that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly
hand under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world
one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in
the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering.

Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be
drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the
board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with
other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin
that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young
Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at head of the board and
Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long of a mastery of him
erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young Stephen, he was the most
drunken that demanded still of more mead) and beside the meek sir
Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that he promised to
have come and such as intended to no goodness said how he had broke
his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he bore fast friendship
to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and for that his languor
becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted
him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led
on with will to wander, loth to leave.

For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each gen
other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that
put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a
matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that
now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next before her
death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her case). And
they said farther she should live because in the beginning, they said,
the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were of this
imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had
conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young Lynch were
in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other
howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges
did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all
cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live
and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that head what
with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin Lenehan was
prompt each when to pour them ale so that at the least way mirth might
not lack. Then young Madden showed all the whole affair and said how that
she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and
bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her
goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were all wondrous
grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words following: Murmur, sirs,
is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker,
the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire. But, gramercy, what of
those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise, which is the sin
against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he
said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us
and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch
Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken and the best word
he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she
were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of
his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young
Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he
cometh by his horn, the other all this while, pricked forward with their
jibes wherewith they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint
Foutinus his engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay
in man to do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen
and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange
humour which he would not bewray and also for that he rued for her that
bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous
of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons,
of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of
brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius
saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or
an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, EFFECTU SECUTO,
or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and
Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human
soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for
God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to
bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the
fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church
for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would
he in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A
wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw,
he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who
had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also
with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that
mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such
sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said
Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen was a
marvellous glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from the poor
lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and
that he was now in that taking it appeared eftsoons.

But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had
pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and
as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only
manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art
could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for
that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb's
wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie
akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now Sir
Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his
friend's son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness and
as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for all
accounted him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure for
young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and
murdered his goods with whores.

About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty so
as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their
approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the
intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar
of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he,
of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed parcel of my
body but my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to them that live
by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for this will comfort
more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them
glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two
pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ.
They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as
was herebefore. His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, he
said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's
wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a
rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made
flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the
word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. OMNIS CARO AD TE
VENIET. No question but her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse
of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most
venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an OMNIPOTENTIAM
DEIPARAE SUPPLICEM, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because
she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that
other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis
of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny
pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say,
and was but creature of her creature, VERGINE MADRE, FIGLIA DI TUO
FIGLIO, or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or
ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and
with Joseph the joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy
marriages, PARCEQUE M. LEO TAXIL NOUS A DIT QUE QUI L'AVAIT MISE DANS
CETTE FICHUE POSITION C'ETAIT LE SACRE PIGEON, VENTRE DE DIEU! ENTWEDER
transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in no case
subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A
pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without
blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour
worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.

Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would
sing a bawdy catch STABOO STABELLA about a wench that was put in pod of a
jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack: THE
FIRST THREE MONTHS SHE WAS NOT WELL, STABOO, when here nurse Quigley from
the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as
she remembered them being her mind was to have all orderly against lord
Andrew came for because she was jealous that no gasteful turmoil might
shorten the honour of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a
sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and
wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for
incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed
the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of
blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the
dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in
peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou
dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that
like a curse of God ape, the good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance
the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion
as most sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's house rest
should reign.

To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in
Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he
had not cided to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the
womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master
Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds
and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue of
a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all
intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he
said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the
eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and they
rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and
deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island, she to
be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with
burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and
the anthem UT NOVETUR SEXUS OMNIS CORPORIS MYSTERIUM till she was there
unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those
delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is
in their MAID'S TRAGEDY that was writ for a like twining of lovers: TO
BED, TO BED was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent
upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative
suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the
paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial
communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee,
young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth,
of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best
remembrance they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews
to make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those
days and the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love than
this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend.
Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith
Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the
university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was
more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou
wilt have the secondbest bed. ORATE, FRATRES, PRO MEMETIPSO. And all the
people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of
old, how thou settedst little by me and by my word and broughtedst in a
stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and
kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned against my light and hast
made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, return, Clan
Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done this abomination
before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps and didst
deny me to the Roman and to the Indian of dark speech with whom thy
daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land
of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the
Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast
suckled me with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for
ever. And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my
bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. This
tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath not been illumined
by the wit of the septuagint nor so much as mentioned for the Orient from
on high Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was foraneous.
Assuefaction minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics)
and Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The
adiaphane in the noon of life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of
prenativity and postmortemity is their most proper UBI and QUOMODO. And
as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure
with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance
which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive
metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is
agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters
draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle,
die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among
bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain,
an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the
ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what
processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to
Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from
what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his
whenceness.

Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly ETIENNE CHANSON but he loudly
bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic
longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all in applepie
order, a penny for him who finds the pea.

BEHOLD THE MANSION REARED BY DEDAL JACK

SEE THE MALT STORED IN MANY A REFLUENT SACK,

IN THE PROUD CIRQUE OF JACKJOHN'S BIVOUAC.

A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on
left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm
that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and
witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And
he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as they might all
mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift
was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the
cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some
mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which
Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a
blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old
Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not
lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he
crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a
heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens
so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his
ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side,
spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it
was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of
fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the
order of a natural phenomenon.

But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he
had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be
done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the
other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But
could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the
bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not
there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the
god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why,
he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding
(which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was in the
land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like
the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest
and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make more
shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them
to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is
called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the
king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no
birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as
believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had
pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with
a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-
in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her
flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither
and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly
that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some
learned, Carnal Concupiscence.

This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of
Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-
the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil)
they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For
regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they
could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she
ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on
which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and
Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul
plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative
had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take
no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of
this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their
blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False
Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer.
Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice
of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift
his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings
done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly
biddeth.

So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields
athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle
this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds
all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag
and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for
aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the
land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as
said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish
swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise
poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten
of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of
shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men
making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk
skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place,
Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles
street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair
or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over
against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr
Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's
gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a
papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec.
Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green)
that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and
Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in
the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being
stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a
skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while
poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of
Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling
fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots
fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and
Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be
having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red
slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken
to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through
pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her
term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a
bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath
very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they
say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear,
and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth
and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the
sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off
Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt
he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear.
In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much
increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall
come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr
Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the
Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but
this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet
sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no
telling how.

With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter
was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for
he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on
Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near
by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went
for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh
or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes
and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns
with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps,
waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with
a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of
whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his
ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of
broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he
could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had
from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their
sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry
or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about
Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go
hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.
There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly
he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed
wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief
design of his embassy as he was sharpset. MORT AUX VACHES, says Frank
then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper
that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman
too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a
headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and
the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the
mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was
more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his
volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher,
then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he
was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk,
kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen
or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat
has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father
the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What,
says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift
of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning
going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad,
says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers,
greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for
Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock
and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I
question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber
tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such
matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler
thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor
Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two
of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent,
plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles
with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature,
says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an
English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull
that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder
of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr
Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a
plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had
horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out
of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and
with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the
blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him
a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to
this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in
his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long
holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four
fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed
him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and
ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over
with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road
with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he
could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of
the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could
scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels
brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was
full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their ladyships a
mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all
after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer
nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was
the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in
the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord
Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon,
if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of
Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful
of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the
countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by
lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr
Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in
the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and
I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell,
says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one
evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt
to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself
but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and
on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found
sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion
bull of the Romans, BOS BOVUM, which is good bog Latin for boss of the
show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a
cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it
out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off
him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his
grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he
could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he
copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he
filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the
side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In
short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse
and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of
the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of
one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of
chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang
their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head
between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly
Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their
bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the
occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that
rollicking chanty:

--POPE PETER'S BUT A PISSABED.

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.

Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: MR MALACHI MULLIGAN. FERTILISER AND INCUBATOR.
LAMBAY ISLAND. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw
from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir
Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself
to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well,
let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it
smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon
his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a
consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the
prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal
vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the
prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities
acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch
defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable
females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their
flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly
bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might
multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of
their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he
assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he
concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with
certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had
resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island
from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much
in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a
national fertilising farm to be named OMPHALOS with an obelisk hewn and
erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman
services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever
who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the
functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take
a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent
lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of
savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter
prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled
and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies.
After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr
Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had
shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for
all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr
Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald.
His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and
won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it,
asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to
Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt
quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to
him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: TALIS AC TANTA
DEPRAVATIO HUJUS SECULI, O QUIRITES, UT MATRESFAMILIARUM NOSTRAE LASCIVAS
CUJUSLIBET SEMIVIRI LIBICI TITILLATIONES TESTIBUS PONDEROSIS ATQUE
EXCELSIS ERECTIONIBUS CENTURIONUM ROMANORUM MAGNOPERE ANTEPONUNT, while
for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal
kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest
glade, the farmyard drake and duck.

Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man
of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom
were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a
civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily,
though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there
about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting
condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh)
to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the
table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient
ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic
gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the
noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer
Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely
below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother
Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a
trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a
conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into
the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the
same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.

Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion
with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient
point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a
questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not
achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but
contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever
done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. MAIS BIEN SUR,
noble stranger, said he cheerily, ET MILLE COMPLIMENTS. That you may and
very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity.
But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a
cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it
in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers
above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With
these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent
draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out
popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he
had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those
features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but
beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her
dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she
told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a
tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by
generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an
enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in
all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy
will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh
of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the
locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent
Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal
must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free
and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the
heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed,
sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our
sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that
foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to
think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of
us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his
forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a
MARCHAND DE CAPOTES, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as
snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut,
tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that
most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI
in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape
Horn, VENTRE BICHE, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the
stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, SANS BLAGUE,
has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to
another world. Pooh! A LIVRE! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are
dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is
worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear
Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she
would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me
(blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to
snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine
blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household
word that IL Y A DEUX CHOSES for which the innocence of our original
garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest,
nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty
philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently
tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath
... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse
which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while
all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and,
having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a
profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party
of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not
less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the
most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A
monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you.
What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr
Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice.
Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I
look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any
time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in
the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest
squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me,
I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father
Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried
Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a
white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however,
rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just
then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had
been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was
ENCEINTE which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given
birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who,
without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling
profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest
power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need
were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble
exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious
incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such
an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can
befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of
the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and
where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of
Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present
on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all
and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design
which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his
bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a
horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son
of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was
always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most
particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to
a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on
with a loving heart.

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits
of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The
young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown
children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly
understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous MOTS were
such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously
sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits
spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome
language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a
cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and
thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the
dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as
to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain
desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the
middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand
vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man
of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a
rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution,
foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds
jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To
those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a
habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede
neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding:
while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there
remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to
beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel
with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the
gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer
expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to
pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when
she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's
words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be
owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so
auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the
mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being.

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express
one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not
to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement
since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy
young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or
at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must
acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a
resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again
today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a
request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him
hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife,
I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old
bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to
praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade
held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the
man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant
vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the
guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis
possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting
theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere
acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of
time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art
which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further
added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress
them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh
together.

But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has
this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to
civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal
polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled?
During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with
his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to
discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will
while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he
forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from
being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if
report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from
candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of
a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue
but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his
interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too
long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to
his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the
desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety,
who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit
intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of
society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel,
it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question
of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's
hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort
couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes
him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies
fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty
is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense
his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore
to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist
better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the
repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd
suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected
and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at
his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve
and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more
temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that
comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative.

The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior
medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation
that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's
apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the
presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members
of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the
delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and
hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the
simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier,
broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr
Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain.
The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness
which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every
phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal
repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with
respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother,
the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by
the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of
the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty
touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or
dissimulated, the acardiac FOETUS IN FOETU and aprosopia due to a
congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr
Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary
knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what
the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the
prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure
on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as
exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the
matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the
womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of
the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that
distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers STURZGEBURT,
the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births
conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents--in a
word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in
his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest
problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much
animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as
the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her
movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction
upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually
entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long
usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of
harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark
and portwine stain were alleged by one as a PRIMA FACIE and natural
hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel
Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and
worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged
in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent
to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views,
with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation
between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own
avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the
genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of
his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but
shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an
allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which
none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest
object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated
argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch
regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of
one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent
was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor
Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by
preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was
invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as
some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man
to put asunder what God has joined.

But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the
scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in
the recess appeared ... Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep!
He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a
phial marked POISON. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all
faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such
reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history
is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how
I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance
is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered
thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and
himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and
Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime.
Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum
(he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre
stalks me. Dope is my only hope ... Ah! Destruction! The black panther!
With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later
his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row
station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of
the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The
vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: LEX TALIONIS. The sentimentalist
is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a
thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was
unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The
black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to
obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the
graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her
web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on
it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground.

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the
chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the
merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her
mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud
of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest
substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young
Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a
mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is
seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house
in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him
bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's
thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first
hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged
traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a
thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or
that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a
budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied
baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and
oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the
head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the
paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading
through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month
before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young
knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist.
Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can
say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night
in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together
(she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a
bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of
the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie!
Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night:
first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness,
the willer with the willed, and in an instant (FIAT!) light shall flood
the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas
done but--hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away
through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She
dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory
solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from
thee--and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to
be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions
of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight
ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her
dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with
ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they,
yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a
supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad
phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls
and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the
highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the
ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads
them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and
yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come
trooping to the sunken sea, LACUS MORTIS. Ominous revengeful zodiacal
host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the
trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and
crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning
multitude, murderers of the sun.

Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent
grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own
magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder
of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the
daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one,
Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now
arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour,
shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it
gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it
streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents
of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling,
writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad
metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon
the forehead of Taurus.

Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the
past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them
into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my
call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard,
am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a
coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves,
Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and
greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father.
All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring
forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily
wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent Lenehan said, laying a hand on
the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an
orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for
him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have
withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart.
Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name:
Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh!
off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with 0. Madden up. She was leading
the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain
herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the
straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse
Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis
was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But
her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which
lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A
whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and
three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the
boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us
bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he
said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this
hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you
remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent
said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her)
in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of
it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air drooped with
their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny
patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns
with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near
the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I
held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close.
A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free,
blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad
romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in
your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field.
Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier
book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to
keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion,
feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood
clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she
glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had
been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind,
Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of
his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar:
Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the
scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His
soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision
as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to
the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen?
Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence
Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of
the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha
of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were
therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was.
entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the
case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going
on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was
as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured
the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong
shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring
hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co
at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others
right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to
attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was
simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known
to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the
proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days
and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own
which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn.
Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn
on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he
involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took
hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the
fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it
out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of
attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about
the place.

The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the
loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld
an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of
that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A
gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at the foot of the
table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs
of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose
countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature
wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the
eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form
of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the
hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit
of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the
primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John
Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a
refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the
convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of
him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the
hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and
combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose
steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation
could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the
inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would
appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to
accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated,
deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the
street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain
them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which
science cannot answer--at present--such as the first problem submitted by
Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must
we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the
postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of
males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the
differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine,
such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and
Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation
(one of nature's favourite devices) between the NISUS FORMATIVUS of the
nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position,
SUCCUBITUS FELIX of the passive element. The other problem raised by the
same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting
because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but
we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames
the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract
adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk
in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered
by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all
denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic
cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors
and unfructified duennas--these, he said, were accountable for any and
every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied,
would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely
good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures,
plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and
Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little
attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass
the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc.
Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case
of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to
marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect,
private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the
practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide.
Although the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too
true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the
peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to
look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off
so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human
shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious
suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both
natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution,
tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general,
everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of
some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which
beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet
unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of
normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly
looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other
children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's
words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and
cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths
are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous
germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively
shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to
disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement
which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the
maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial
to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest.
Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an
interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute,
digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with
pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous
females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not
to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find
gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as
nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above
alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately
acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this
morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening
bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from
an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that
staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed
victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly
dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom
(Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons' hall of the National
Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as is well
known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and
popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once
a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete's allusion, presumably,
to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes--
the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as
he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling
rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate
and measured tone in which it was delivered.

Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a
happy ACCOUCHEMENT. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and
doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had
manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was
very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are
happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently
look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that
longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the
first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of
thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes
behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady
there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's
clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may
whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of
years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of
the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old,
faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the
roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God!
How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are
grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary
Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria
Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called
after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford
and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever
there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr
Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time
wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break
from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your
pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you
(may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the
Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to
bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have
fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my
hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant!

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart
but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim,
let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that
they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call
them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most
various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp
soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or
at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult
over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not
for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous
vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.

The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of
that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied
trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an
unhealthiness, a FLAIR, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages
itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so
natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some
thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft
May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and
white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real
interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or
collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder
about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful
irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and
their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then,
Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear,
bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool
ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but
there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are
gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of
girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now
with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs
glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the PIAZZETTA
giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of
reproach (ALLES VERGANGLICHE) in her glad look.

Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their
faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of
custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant
watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long
ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with
preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended,
compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field
and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an
instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the
thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the
transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the
word.

Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail
of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual
Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos,
Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of
lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the
hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news
of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on.
The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's
race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their
ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an
oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind
word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor
Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has
told its tale in that washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of
motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the
storkbird for thee?

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny COELUM. God's
air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe
it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty
deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring
none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle.
Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which
thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her!
Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all
Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping
under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not
thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt
gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy
Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog
is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead
gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer.
Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the
innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile
cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary
pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever,
bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious
attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and
trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty
years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will
and would and wait and never--do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask,
and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith
Zarathustra? DEINE KUH TRUBSAL MELKEST DU. NUN TRINKST DU DIE SUSSE MILCH
DES EUTERS. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an
udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of
those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk,
such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness,
the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but
her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich
bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! PER DEAM PARTULAM ET PERTUNDAM
NUNC EST BIBENDUM!

All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.
Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo.
Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones
and ole clo? Sorra one o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the
ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken
minister coming out of the maternity hospal! BENEDICAT VOS OMNIPOTENS
DEUS, PATER ET FILIUS. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell,
blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight.
Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee
samee dis bunch. EN AVANT, MES ENFANTS! Fire away number one on the gun.
Burke's! Burke's! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted
foot. Where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No,
no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock.
Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? MA MERE M'A MARIEE. British
Beatitudes! RETAMPLATAN DIGIDI BOUMBOUM. Ayes have it. To be printed and
bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of
pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of
Ireland my time. SILENTIUM! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest
canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the
boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs
battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer,
beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers.
Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops
boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my
tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry!

Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare
misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week
gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the UBERMENSCH. Dittoh. Five number
ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate
the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when
the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? CARAMBA! Have an eggnog or a prairie
oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful.
Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a
boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near
the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a
dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None
of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns.
Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven,
nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to
rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving
eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud
again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi
polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your
corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody
after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours
the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss!
Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical
jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray
goodygood Malachi.

Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot
boil! My tipple. MERCI. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket.
Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there.
Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every
cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. LES PETITES FEMMES. Bold bad
girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding
Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had
left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen.
Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. EX!

Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like,
seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink
AD LIB. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come
right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar
and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash
here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon
down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou.
Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.

'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam,
two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do.
Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a
railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of
cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers.
Gemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O,
cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner
today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen
Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire
big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form
hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal
diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the
harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O
lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy.
Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our
Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel.
Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her
spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers
if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I
ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah.
Through yerd our lord, Amen.

You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy
drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of
most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate
one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord,
landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut
and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. NOS OMNES BIBERIMUS
VIRIDUM TOXICUM DIABOLUS CAPIAT POSTERIORIA NOSTRIA. Closingtime, gents.
Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges
ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide.
BONSOIR LA COMPAGNIE. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and
Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates.
Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend
tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night.
Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the
bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this
child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust
syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time,
gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! A LA VOTRE!

Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at
his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a
prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh
of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies.
Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks?
Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg!
Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black
bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like
since I was born. TIENS, TIENS, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes.
O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay
you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle
fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any
Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy
wobblers! Nigh