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 Mananaan! 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. He is young Leopold, 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 Clambrassil street to the high school, his book
satchel 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, 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 luck-penny), 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 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 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. 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 mans 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 O. 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 Periplepomenos 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 dose. 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 too! Mad
romp that it 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 the 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 orange-fiery shipload
from planet Alpha of the lunar chain, would not assume the etheric doubles
and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-coloured 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 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. Crothers 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 facts, he alleges, 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 abnormal 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 balk
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 lower class 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 Mdw., 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 esthetic
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 tranquillity 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
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 danger but must needs
glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving
upon the flower-close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach
(alles VergÔnghche) 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. Them 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, glistering 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 Zarathusthra?
Deine kuh Tríbsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die sísse 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 guzzlingden, 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 family? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and
ole clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward 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 us, dear sir? No
hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee this bunch. En avant, mes
enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. 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 måre m'a
mariØe. British Beatitudes! Ratamplan Digidi Boum Boum. 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 the boys
are (attitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs,
battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beerbeef
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 Íbermensch. Dittoh. Five
number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's candle.
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 was settin sleep 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 best a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity
sagaciating OK? 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 pepper, 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 altogether. 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 vely 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. Mowsing 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 Castille. 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. Gospel-true. 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. Comeahome, 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, wee drap to pree. Cut and some again.
Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum
diabolus capiat posteriora nostra 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 will
yu help, yung man hoose frend tuk bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay
crown off his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my
shins if this beent the bestest putties longbreakyet. 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. Who wander through the world. Health all. A la vâtre!
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? See him today at a runefal?
Chum o yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore picanninies! Thou'll no
be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did urns blubble bigsplash crytears cos fries
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! Night. Night. May Allah, the Excellent One, your
soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We're nae thy fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable