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 omnipollent
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 allhardest 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 learningknight 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. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise
dans cette fichue position c'était le sacré 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 Étienne 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.
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
quarters 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.
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 sûr, 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 Fécondateur, 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.

mid 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
drizz1ing 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 Vetgängliche) 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 Trübsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die süsse 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 mère m'a mariée. 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 Übermensch. 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! À la vôtre!

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! Night.
Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously
conserve.

Your attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love.
Ook.

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she
goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You
not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here
for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to
judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a
ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy.
Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall?

Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed
fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract
of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to
glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity
aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the square and a
corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you
forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early
you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not
half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his
back pocket. Just you try it on.