 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 moats 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 crappiered creature of a misshapen gibocity, 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 color 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 coaler, and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, fostered within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judges 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 metalsome youth which, carrying not for the mose of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever, as the chaste fancy of the holder-writer expresses it, for eating of the tree forbid it, yet not so far forth as to pre-termit humanity upon any condition, so ever, towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sisters' 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. Finally he broke his mind to his neighbor, 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. Crawther, clapping on the table, so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis. Old Glory Allelu-Yuram was around again to-day, 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 around 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 that same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugal had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a link-boy, virtuous, or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Butler communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of Metempsychosis possessed by them, that the pure apparel, dormitory, and the dissecting theater 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 any wise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But he further added, it is may have to relieve the pent-up 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 counseled? 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 peace against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four percents. 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 belay him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candor to violate the bed-chamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue, but if he challenges the tension 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 objugations 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 scouring brush not been her tutillary 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. Cuff'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 seed-field that lies fallow for the want of the plough-share? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an approbrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of gilead in nostrums and apothegems 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 now 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 climb more temperate, its roots have lost their quantum vigor 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 portee by the second female infomerian 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 license 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 the respect to the father and that rarer form with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the child's murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr. Advocate Bush which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rites of primogeniture and King's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the ecardiac fetus infetu and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnothia of certain chinless Chinaman, 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 labor pains in advanced gravity by reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the endmiotic 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 Brandenburgers Sturzgebert, the recorded instances of multisiminal twi-kindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamanic period or of consanguinious 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 country-style lest by her movement, the naval cord 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 hair-lip, breast-mole, supernumerary digits, negro's ankle, strawberry mark and port wine-stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those swine-headed the case of Madame Griselle Stevens was not forgotten, or dog-haired 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 metamorphosis. The impression made by his words was immediate but short-lived. 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 effect, postulating as the supremist 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. Co-editor Deacon Ditalis. Whether too 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's 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 of Celtic literature in one hand and the other a file 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 appearances on me. Tear 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 soul or a bullowurus. My hell and Ireland's is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rook-shooting, the earth's language, he recited some. Louden them, he raised the file to his lips. Camping out, in vain, his specter 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. Malacias, 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, pierced from his hole, accurses on it. It is haunted, murderers 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 cut 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 Clanbersill Street to the high school. His books satchel on him bandolier-wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheat and 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 the day! Already on the road, a full-fledged traveler for the family firm, equipped with an order-book, a scented handkerchief, not for show only. His case of bright trinket-wear, alas, a thing now of the past. And a quiverful of compliant smiles, for this or that half-one housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips. Or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging, but the heart, tell me! His study de Bezmois. 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 a heating. 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 night errant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal, and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch Street, hard by the bonded stores there the first. Together she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine, and of all for a bare shilling and her luck-penny. Together they hear the heavy tread of the watch, as two rain-caped shadows pass the new royal university. Brighty, brighty Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night, first night the bright night. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant, fiat, light shuffled the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader, in a breath was 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 sunny golden 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 gray twilight ever descends, never falls on wide, sage-green pasture fields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her filly-foal. Twilight phantoms are they, yet molded in prophetic grace of structure. Slim shapely haunches, a supple, tendinous neck. The meek, apprehensive skull. They fade, said phantoms. All is gone. Agandath is a wasteland, a home of screech owls and the sand-blind Eupupa. Netayem, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huah, hark, huah! 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, Lakus mortis. Aminus revengeful zadiacal host. They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned. The trumpeted with the tusked, the lion mained, the giant antlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and packaderm, 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-sumnolent 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 day-star, 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, shot in sandals of bright gold, quaffed with the veil of what do you call it, Gossamer? It floats, it flows about her star-born 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 triangle design upon the forehead of Taurus. Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at school together in Canmi's time. He asked about Glokun and Alcibiades and Pisastratus. 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 Letha will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Buse Stephanaminus, bullock befriending Bard, am Lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vine leaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer in 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 Stephanophoros. I hardly wish you may not fail them. Oh 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 Scepter for a whim of the writer's name. Lenehan is much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and off scamper. The mayor ran out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried, Huzzah! Scepter wins! But in the straight on the run home, when all were in close order, the dark horse throw away drew the 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 sugar plums which she partook. A tear fell, one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What writer is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo, the victory, and a hat canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient want. Mercy on the luckless. Poor Scepter, 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. Lelaj was 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 odor 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's fruit in them that para-plipoponies sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had knot 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. Con me himself. He was walking by the hedge reading. I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glacera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colors 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 Con me 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 draft of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a wine jar. Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger into the scarlet label. Wherely, 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 insensely regarded may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? The Asophus told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The Lords of the Moon, Theosophus told me, an orange fiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles, and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-colored 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 mesmerized, 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 Messour's bass and company 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 moments before his observations about boyhood days in 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 endeavoring to help himself to the thing, he involuntarily determined to help himself, and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the medium-sized 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 and 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 Horn'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 encyclopedic. A gallant theme in truth it made. Crawthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mall 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 town bread manners of Malachi, Roland St. John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet, who found a refuge from his labors 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 dishonor, 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 limmed for ages yet to come. It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr. S. Detilis divsep, contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted, and hence 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 hard-headed 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, Pub Canv, regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles, of Trinicria, that the right ovary, the post-menstrual period, assert others, is responsible for the birth of males, or are the two long-neglected spermatozoa, or anema sperms, the differentiating factor, or is it, as most embryologists inclined to opine, such as Kullpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hurtweg, Leopold, and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation, one of nature's favorite devices, between the nicest formativus, of the nemesperm 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. Tim Mulligan, Hague et Euk doc, blames the sanitary conditions in which our gray-lunged 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 car-drivers, the suspended carcasses of dead animals, paranoic bachelors, and unfructified duenas. These, he said, were accountable for any and every falling off in the caliber of the race. Calipedia, 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-colored photographs of prized 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. Crawther's Disc Back attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma, in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labors in the workshop, and to marital discipline in the home, but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion, or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former, we are thinking of neglect, is undoubtedly only too true, the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact, when one comes to look into it, the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often balk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr. V. Lynch, Back Arith, that both natality and mortality, as well as 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 unacertained. Still the plan of 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 morbid germs have taken up their resonance, 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, Divskep, 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 plutor-perfect imperturbability such multifarious ailments as cankrenous females emaciated by parterition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and choleritic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as not else could, and in a very unsavory light, the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of municipal abattoir, as this morbid-minded esthete and embryo philosopher, who for all his overweening, bumpiousness in things scientific, can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lower-class, licensed victuollers, signifies the cookable an eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr. L. Bloom, Pub Kenv, which took place in the Commons Hall of National Maternity Hospital, 2930 and 31 Hollis Street, of which, as is well-known, Dr. A. Horn, licensed in midwifery FKQCPI, 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 illusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvelous 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, nonetheless 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 mother-light 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 Doty there with her to share her joy. To lay in his arms that might 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. Oh, Doty, loved one of old, faithful life mate now, it may never be again that far off 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 above the bedside. Hers and his, Charlie, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert, if he had lived, Mamie, Budgie, Victoria Francis, Tom, Violet, Constance, Louisa, darling little Bobsie, called after our famous hero of the South African War, Lord Bobs of Waterford in Kandahar. 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 Remembranceer's Office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on. But Father Cronian has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentlemina, and Doty, 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 doubt 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 two 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. End of Section 37. Read by Richard Wallace, Liberty, Missouri, 12 January 2011. Section 38 of Ulysses. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ulysses by James Joyce. Part 2, The Odyssey. Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun. Part 6. 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 well remembered grove of lilacs at round town, purple and white, fragrant, slender spectators of the game, but with much real interest in the pellets, as they run slowly forward over the sword or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that gray urn, where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation, you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, flowy, hattie, 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, pendant from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin, so daintily against the cool, ardent fruit. A lad of four or five and Lindsay Woolsey, blossom time, 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, whilst toward where his mother watches from the Piazzetta, giving upon the flower close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach, alays verganglish in her glad look. Mark this farther, and remember, the end comes suddenly. Enter that andy chamber 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 Judah long ago. But as before the lightning the serried storm clouds, 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 reaves their centers, 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. Berks outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cock-a-roll, jack-a-napes, welshers, pill-doctor, punctual bloom at heels with a universal grabbing of headgear, ash-plants, billbows, Panama hats and scabbards, cermet-alpin-stocks, and what not. A didale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan, taken aback in the hallway, cannot stay them, nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs, with the news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligram. They hark him on. The door! It is open! Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it. Berks of Denzel and Hollis their ulterior gull. Dixon follows, giving them sharp language, but wraps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse, a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nursing up there. Dr. Dyatt and Dr. Quiet. Look she too, not other now? Ward of watching in Horn's house has told its tale in that washed-out pallor. Then, all being gone, a glance of mother-wit helping, he whispers close and going, Madam, when comes the stork-bird for thee? The air without is impregnated with rain-dew moisture. Life essence celestial. Glistening on Dublin stone there under star-shiny quellum. God's air, the all-father's air, a scintillant circumambient sessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven Theodore Purfoy, thou hast done a dotty deed and no botch. Thou art, I vow, the remarkableest progenitor, barring none in this chaffering, all including most pharaginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a God-framed, God-given preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on! Labor like a very band-dog, and let scholarment and all-methusias go hang. Thou art all their daddy's Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, be moiled with butcher's bills at home, and ingots, not thine, in the counting-house. Head up! For every new begotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See thy fleece is drenched. Dust Envy, Darvy, Dalman there with his Joan. A canting jay and a rumide cur-dog is all there, progeny. Pshah! I tell thee, he is a mule, a dead gastropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked croitzer. Copulation without population. No, say I. Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name, vegetables forsooth, and sterile cohabitation. Give her beef steaks, red, raw, bleeding. She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, Quincy, bunions, hay fever, bed sores, ringworm, floating kidney, derbisher neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threens and trentles 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 life-task, and did's charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How sayeth Zarathustra? Dine co-trubskal melkest do, none trinks to do desush milch des uter. See, it disploads for the inabundance. Drink, man, and utterful. Mother's milk, purefoy the milk of human kin. Milk, too, of those burgeoning stars overhead, rutulent in thin rain-vapor, punch milk, such as those rioters will coiff in their guzzling den. Milk of madness, the honey milk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Aye, but her milk is hot, and sweet, and fattening. No dollop this but thick, rich bonnie-collabber. To her, old patriarch, pap, perdeum, partulum et pertudum, nunc est bebendum. All off for a buster, arm-strong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. Where you slept last night, Timothy of the battered naggin? Like old Bilio. Any brollies or gumboots in the family? Where are the Henry Neville Sawbones and old Clo? Sara, one of me knows. Hurrah there, dicks forward to the rib encounter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospital. Bendicat wo's omnipotence deus pater et filius. A make, mister, the Denzil Lane boys. Hell, blasty! Scoot! Rytto, Isaacs, shove him out of their bleeding limelight. Use join us, dear sir. No intrusion in life. Lou heep good man. Ali samee dis bunch. And avan, mes enfants. Fire away number one on the gun. Berks, Berks. Thence they advanced five parisangs. Slatteries mounted foot. Where's that bleeding orfer? Parsons steve of postate's creed. No, no. Mulligan abaf. There, shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chucking out time. Mully, what's on you? Mamere mamaria. British beatitudes. Rentum platin digidi boom boom. Eyes have it. To be printed and bound at the druid drum press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissed on green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. Selentium, get a spurt on. Tension. Proceed to nearest canteen and their annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp. The boys are attitudes. Parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery, and bishops. Weather on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Ireland dear, trample the trampolars. Thunderation. Keep the darned milling-tary step. We fall. Bishop's booze box. Halt! Heave, too! Rugger! Scrum in! No touch-kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly, sorry. Query. Who's astanding this here, do? Proud possessor of Damol. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nanti salty. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Meat of our fathers for the Uberminch. Ditto. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabbie's coddle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stop short. Never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy. Karamba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avunculars got my timepiece. Ten-two. Obligated. Awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, dicks? Post-fact. Got bet be a bumblebee whenever he was set and sleeping in his bit-garden. Digs up near the maitre. Buckle he is. No is, donna. Yep, sartan I do, full of a doer. See her in her disher, billy. Peels off a credit. Lovely lovekin. None of your lean, kind, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two artelones. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall, don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine, fine. Got a prime pair of mince pies, no kid. And her take me to rests, and her anchor of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and all be plastered neck, you stole my heart, oh glupot. Sir? Spud again the rumities? All poppycock, you'll excuse me saiyan. For the hoy-polloy. I veer the beast-a-girt-vool. Well, doc? Backfro lepland? Your corporosity, sagaciating okay? How's the squalls and papooses? Woman body after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy berth. Hi. Spit in your own eye, boss. Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jessified, orchidized, polychemical Jesuit. Antiminds riding paw kinch. Batty bad Stephen. Lead astray, goody good Malachi. Haroo! Collar the leather, young'en. Round with a nappy. Here, jock bra, heintelman's your barley-bree. Lang may your lum reek and your kale-pot boil. My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my brand-new sit-nums. Gives a shake of peppy you there. Catch a halt. Care away seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus pendimus. Le petit femme. Bold, bad girl from the town of Malangar. Teller I was axing at her. Hoding Sarah by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for nine pence? McCree, McCrooskeen, smuddy mole for a mattress jig. And a pole altogether. X. Waiting, Governor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like. Seeing as how no shiners is it coming. Under con stumble? Have got the chink ad lib. Seed near a free pound on an a spell ago and said, War Hison, us come right up on your invite. See? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You learn that go off of there them Frenchy bilks. Won't wash here for nuts, no how. Little child, velly, solly. Eyes the cutest color coon down our side. Gods to Ruth, Charlie. We are nay foo. We are nay the foo foo. Our reservoir, musu. Thanks you. Tissure, what say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I see you sure. Bantam, two days, TT. Bossing, nought but clear twine. Garn, have a glint dew. Come, I'm jiggered. And bent to Barbary, Ev. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Operate like Rose of Castile. Rose of Cast. Police. Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Jim and I. He's going to holler. The Colleen Bonn. My Colleen Bonn. Oh, cheese it. Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winter today till I tipped him a dead cert. The roughen, kly, the nab of Steven Hand has given me the jaddy coppeline. He strike a telegram boy, paddock wire, big bug, bass to the depot. Shove him, a joey, and gram-wise. Marron form hot order. Guinea to a goose-gog. Telegram, that. Gospel true. Criminal diversion? I think that, yes. Sure thing. Land him in Chokichoki if the harm and back copp the game. Madden back, madden's a maddening back. Oh, 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 home, our Bantam. Horivar, among view. Dina forget the cow-slips for her cell. Cornfide. What give you then? Colt. Pal to pal. Yannick. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. Salt me, honest engine. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Five for you, no tell me. Val, I seize. If that ain't a sheeny-natchez, Val, I will get Misha Mishina. Thought you're our lord, our man. You move a motion? Steve, boy, you're going at some. More bluggy drunkables? Well, immensely splendiferous, standard permit. One stutter of most extreme poverty and one large slice grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation. Give us a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, stebu? Hootsman, a wee draptapri. Cut and come again. Right. Bon a face. Absent the lot. Nos omnes bibarimus veridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria. Closing time, gents. Eh? Rome boosts for the bloom-tough. I hear you say onions. Blue? Cages adds. Photos happily by all that's gorgeous. Play low, partner. Slide. Bonssois la campagne. And snares of the pox-fiend. Where's the buck in Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. A wheel ye morn in gangier gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Christian, will you help young man whose friend took bungalow? Key to find please where to laid crown of his head tonight. Cracky, I'm about sprung. Tarnally, dog gone my shins at this being at the bestest pateist long break yet. Item curate. Couple of cookies for this child. Cuts plued in Prandipals. None. Not a pite of sheezes. Thrust syphilis down to hell, and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, gents. Who wander through the world? Health all, a la vôtre. Golly, what in Tunkett's young guy in the Macintosh? Dusty roads. Peep at his wearables. By mighty, what's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril by James. Once it real bad. He can bear socks. Seedy cuss in the Richmond. Raw there. Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the bread, we call him. That, sir, was once a prosperous sit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Macintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck can turn in. Schedule time. Knicks for the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runafall? Chum a yarn passed in his checks? Let a messy. Poor pickin' innies. There'll be no telling me that, polled vague. Did'em's blubble, bleak splash criteria's caused from pen he took off in black bag. Of all the darkies, Massapatt was a very best. I never see the like since I was born. Tan, tan, but it is well sad. That, my faith, yes. Oh, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live, axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one, Janatze licks and ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, nyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any russian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wubblers. Night, night. May Allah the excellent one your soul this very night ever tremendously conserve. Your attention. Wernay the Foo. The Leith police dismisseth us. The Leith police wear hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Oook. Hark! Shut your obstropolis. Flap, flap! Blaze on! There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship! Mount streetway. Cut up! Flap! Tally ho! You not come? Run, skelter! Race! Flap! Lynch! Hey! Sign on, longa me! Denzil lane this way. Change here for body house. We too, she said, will seek the kips where Shady Mary is. Ride oh, any old time. Light at Bontour in Kubilibus, Suisse. You coming long? Whisper, who the suity hells the Johnny and 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. Flap! Oot in plarentour, scripturi. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake Medical Dick to his comrade Medical Davy. Christical! Who's this excrement yellow gospeler on the Marian Hall? Elijah is coming. Washed in the blood of the lamb. Come on, you wine fizzling, gin sizzling, booze guggsling existences. Come on, you dog-gone, bull-necked, beetle-browed, hog-jowled, peanut-brained, weasel-eyed, four-fleshers, false alarms and excess baggage. Come on, you triple extractive infamy. Alexander J. Christ Davy, that's my name, that yanked to the glory most half this planet from Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The day that he ain't no nickel-dime bum-show, I put it to you that he's on the square in a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet, and don't you forget it. Shout to salvation and King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Flap! Not half. He's got a cough mixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on. End of Section 38. Recorded by Richard Wallace, Liberty, Missouri. January 12, 2011. Section 39 of Ulysses. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ulysses by James Joyce. Episode 15. Cersei, Part 1. The Mabbott Street entrance of Nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled tram-siding, set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-of-the-wisps and danger signals, rows of grimy houses with gaping doors, rare lamps with faint rainbow fins, round rabiotes halted ice gondola, stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers, between which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children, the swan-comb of the gondola, high-reared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer. The calls. The answers. Round behind the stable. A deaf, mute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past. Shaken in St Vitus dance, a chain of children's hands in prisons him. The children. The idiot lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles. The children. The idiot. Gargahist. They release him. He jerks on. A pygmy woman swings on a rope, slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat, snores, groans grinding growling teeth and snores again. On a step, a gnome, totting among a rubbish-tip, crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone, standing by with a smoky oil-lamp, rams her last bottle in the moor of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs a skew his peaked cup, and hobbles off, mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, a squat on the doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls. Siddling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands, the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner, two night watch in shoulder capes, their hands upon their staff holsters loom tall. A plate crashes, a woman screams, a child wails. Oaths of a man, roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room, lit by a candle, stuck in a bottleneck, a slut combs out the tats from the hair of a scruffy-less child. Sissy Caffrey's voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane. I gave it to Molly, because she was jolly the leg of the duck, the leg of the duck. Private Carr and Private Compton, swagger sticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily right about face, and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A horse-virago retorts. Signs on you, hairy arse. More power to the cavern girl. Sissy Caffrey. More luck to me, Caven. Coat hill and bell to bet. She sings. I gave it to Nellie to stick in her belly, the leg of the duck, the leg of the duck. Private Carr and Private Compton turn counter-retort, their tunics blood-bright in a lamp-glow, black sockets of caps on their blonde cropped poles. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats. Private Compton jerks his finger. Wait for the person. Private Carr turns and calls. What, oh, partial? Sissy Caffrey, her voice soaring higher. She has it, she got it, wherever she put it, the leg of the duck. Stephen, flourishing the ash-plant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for Pascal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face. Stephen, the famished snaggle tusks of an elderly board protrude from a doorway. The board, her voice whispering huskily. Ssst, come here till I tell you, maiden head inside, ssst. The board spits in their trail her jet of venom. Trinity medicals, fallopian tube, all prick in no pence. And says the one, I've seen you at faithful place with your square pusher, the grease off the railway, in his come-to-bed hat. Did you, says I? That's not for you to say, says I. You never see me in the man-trap with a married islander, says I. The likes of her. Stag that one is, stubborn as a mule, and all walking with two fellows at one time, Kilbride the engine driver, and Lance Corporal Olyphant. And says the one, I've seen you at faithful place with your square pusher, the grease off the railway, in his come-to-bed hat. Did you, says I? That's not for you to say, says I. You never see me in the man-trap with a married islander, says I. The likes of her. Stag that one is, stubborn as a mule, and all walking with two fellows at one time, Kilbride the engine driver, and Lance Corporal Olyphant. Steven, triumph for lighter. Salvi facti sunt. He flourishes his ash-plant, shivering the lamp-image, shattering light over the world. A liver-and-white spaniel on the prow slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick. So that, Steven, looks behind. So that gesture, not music, not odour, would be a universal language, the gifted tongues rendering visible not the lay-sense, but the first inteliki, the structural rhythm. Lynch, pornosophical philatiology, metaphysics in Mecklenburg Street. We have true-written Shakespeare and hemp-hecked Socrates. Even the all-wisest Staggerite was bitted, bridled, and mounted by a light of love. Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my stick. Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going? Letcherous links to La Belle d'Aumseau, Mercedes, Eugene, and Johnson. Ah, damn key-latificate, you've unto them, ma'am. Steven thrusts the ash-plant on him, and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, downturned in planes intersecting, the fingers about to depart, the left being higher. Which is the jug of bread? It's skills not. That or the custom-house? Illustrate thou. Here, take your crotch and walk. They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gas-lamp, and, clasping, climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jackie Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose, and ejects from the father nostril a long, liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp, he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring crescent. Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the sea-wood reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tram-siding, on the farther side under the railway bridge. Bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a side pocket. From Gillan's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him Galant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him Love-lawn, long-lost, legubroom-bulu-hoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level. Bloom for bloom, he passes, struck by the stare of truckulent Wellington. But in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonnum eyes and fat chuck-cheek chops of Jolly Poldy, the Rick Sticks Doldy. At Antonio Paballotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arc lamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on. Bloom He disappears into Olhousen's The Pork Butchers, under the down-coming roll shutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter, puffing, poldy, blowing, blue-hoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crobbine, the other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with whole pepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then, bending to one side, he presses a parcel against his ribs and groans. Stiching my side. Why did I run? He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lamp-set siding. The glow leaps again. What is that, a flasher? Searchlight. He stands at Cormac's corner, watching. Aurora Borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. Southside anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. He hums cheerfully. London's burning, London's burning. On fire, on fire! He catches sight of the navvy, lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot Street. I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here. He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout. My doubt, mister. Two cyclists with lighted paper lanterns are swing. Swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling. Bloom halts erect, stung by a spasm. He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog, a dragon sand strewer, traveling at caution, slews heavily down upon him. It's huge red headlight winking. It's trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his foot-gong. Blood, bug, bloom. The break cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's white-gloved hand, blunders stiff-legged out of the track. The motorman thrown forward, pug-nosed on the guide-wheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys. Hey, shed-reachers, aren't you doing the hat-trick? Bloom trick-leaps to the curb-stone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parceled hand. No thoroughfare. Close shave that, but cure the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. On the hands-down, insure against street accident, too. The providential. He feels his trousers pocket. Poor mama's panacea. He'll easily catch and track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe-trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes him nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True words spoken in jest. That awful cramp in lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Ambom of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. He closes his eyes an instant. Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brain-fog-fag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow! A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against Oberyn's wall. A visage unknown. Injected with dark mercury. From under a wide-leaved sombrero. The figure regards him with the evil eye. Bloom. Buenas noches, senorita Blanca. Que calé es esta? The figure, impassive, raises a signal arm. Password. Straight. Ha ha. Merci. Esperanto. Slán lieth. He mutters. Gaelic league spy, sent by that fire-eater. He steps forward. A sack-shouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left. Rag sack man left. I beg. He swerves, sidles, step aside, slips past and on. Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the touring club at step-aside, who procured that public boon? I, who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish cyclist, the letter headed in darkest step-aside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. Offence, more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world. Jackie Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom. Oh. Shocked on weak hams he halts. Tommy and Jackie vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parceled hands. Watch, fob pocket, book pocket, purse pocket. Sweets of sin. Potato soap. Bloom. Beware of pickpockets. Hold thieves dodge. Collide, then snatch your purse. The retriever approaches, sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped, bearded figure appears, garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion, and a smoking-cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face. Rudolph. Second half grown, waste money today. I told you not to go with drunken goye ever, so you catch no money. Bloom hides the crubbing and trotter behind his back, and crestfallen feels warm and cold feet meet. What are you making down this place? Have you no soul? With feeble, vulture talons, he feels the silent face of Bloom. Are you not, my son, Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not, my dear son, Leopold, who left the house of his father, and left the god of his father's Abraham and Jacob? Bloom with precaution. I suppose so, Father. Mosin, Paul, all that's left of him. Rudolph, severely. One night they bring you home drunk as dog, you have to spend your good money, what you call them running chaps. Bloom in youth's smart blue Oxford suit, with white vest slips, narrow-shouldered in brown alpine hat, wearing gents, sterling silver waterbury keyless watch, and double-curb albat with seal attached. One side of him coated with stiffening mud. Harriers, Father, only that once. Once? Mud-head of wood, cut your hand open, lock your... They make you kaput, Leopold Leban. You watch them chaps. They challenged me to a sprint. Weekly. It was muddy. I slipped. Going knuckets. With contempt. Nice spectacles for your mother. Mama. Ellen Bloom In pantomime dames, stringed mob cap, widow twankies crinoline and bustle, blouse with mutton-leg sleeves buttoned behind, gray mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm. Oh, blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him? My smelling salts! She hauls up a reef of skirt, and ransacks the pouch of her striped blade petticoat, a file, an agnus-day, a shriveled potato, and a celluloid doll fall out. Sacred heart of Mary, where were you at all, at all? Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets, but desists, muttering, a voice, sharply, Holdy! Bloom. Who? He ducks and wards off a blow, clumsily. At your service. He looks up, beside her mirage of date-palms, a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. A white yash-mack, violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her large, dark eyes and raven hair. Bloom. Molly. Marion. Welly? Mrs. Marion, from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. Satirically. Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long? Bloom shifts from foot to foot. No, no. Not the least little bit. He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubbines for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jeweled toe-rings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetter-chain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howder. He ambles near with disgruntled hind-quarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch her gold-curb wrist-bangles, angrilying, scolding him in moorish. Nebuchadre. For minimum. The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking in his cloven hoof, then droops his head and, grunting with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog. I can give you, I mean, as your business manager, Mrs. Marion, if you— So, you notice some change. Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher, a slow, friendly mockery in her eyes. Oh, Polly-Polly, you're a poor old stick in the mud. Go and see life. See the wide world. I was just going back for that lotion white wax, orange flower water. Shop closes early on Thursday, but the first thing in the morning— He pats diverse pockets. This moving kidney. Ah! He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new, clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. We're a capital couple, a blooming eye. He brightens the earth. I polish the sky. The freckled face of Swayny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the soap sun. Tranapena, please. Yes, from my wife. Mrs. Marion, special recipe. Marion, softly. Polly. Yes, ma'am? In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered powder pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni. Are you sure about that volio? I mean the pronunciation. He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly board seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chin mole glittering. The board. Ten shillings of maiden head, fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There's no one in it, only her old father that's dead drunk. She points. In the gap of her dark den, furtive, rain bedraggled Bridey Kelly stands. Bridey. Hatch Street. Any good in your mind? With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard. Weaker. The board. Her wolf eyes shining. He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the police in plain clothes sees us. Sixty-seven is a bitch. Leering. Gertie McDowell limps forward. She draws from behind, ogling, and shows coily her bloodied clout. With all my worldly good I thee and thou. She murmurs. You did that. I hate you. Bloom. I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you. The board. Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters. Street walking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bed post, hussy like you. Gertie to Bloom. When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. She pours his sleeve, slobbering. Dirty married man. I love you for doing that to me. She glides away, crookedly. Mrs. Breen in man's freeze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway. Her roguish eyes wide open. Smiling in all her, her bivorous buck teeth. Mrs. Breen. Mr. Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the 16th instant. Mr. Bloom, you don't hear the haunt at sin. I caught you noisely. Scum. Not so loud, my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don't give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I… You're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalene Asylum, I am the secretary. No, don't tell a big fit. Holds up a finger. I know somebody wants like that. I just wait till I see Morley. Slyly. I count for a selfless frame in it. Oh, well, I betide you. Bloom looks behind. She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery, too, if she had money. Othello black brute. Eugene stratton. Even the bones and corner man at the livery more, Christie's. Oh, he-brothers, sweep for that matter. Tom and Sam Buhi. Coloured coons in white duck suits. Scarlet socks. Upstarched Sambo chokers. And large scarlet asters in their buttholes. Leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler, smaller, negroid hands. Jingle the twing twang wires. Flashing white kafir eyes and tusks. They rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs. Twinging, singing. Back-to-back, toe-heel-heel-toe with smack-fat-clacking nigger lips. There's someone in the house with diner. There's someone in the house I know. There's someone in the house with diner. Playing on the old banjo. They whisk black masks from raw, babby faces. Then chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle-diddle cakewalk dance away. Bloom with a sour, tenderish smile. A little frivolous, shall we, if you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second? Mrs. Breen screams gaily. Oh, you rock! You ought to see yourself. For old's sake, sake. I only met a square party, a mixed marriage, mingling of our different little conjugal's. You know I had a soft corner for you. Gloomily. To as I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle. Glory, Alice. You do look a holy show. Killing simply. She puts out her hand inquisitively. But you're hiding behind your back? Tell us, there's a deer. Bloom seizes her wrist with his free hand. Josie Powell, that was, pretty as deb and Dublin. How time flies by. Do you remember harking back in a retrospective arrangement? Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's house warming, while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thought reading? Subject, what is in this snuff box? You are the lion of the knife, it is serial comic recitation. And you look the part. They were always a favour of the ladies. Bloom, squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with watered silk facings, bloom a sonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother of pearl studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty. The dear-dear days, beyond recall, love's also its song. Bloom, meaningfully dropping his voice. I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present. Mrs. Breen, gushingly. She meant just a teapot. And I'm simply teapot all over me. She rubs sides with him. House at Apollo Mystery Games, and that crack is from the tree we saw in its jar-case, Ultraman, haunted a mistletoe to his company. Bloom, wearing a purple Napoleon hat, with an amber half-moon, his fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft, moist, meaty palm, which she surrenders gently. The witching hour of night, I took the splinter out of his hand carefully, slowly. Tenderly, as he slips on her finger, a ruby ring. L'assidarem la mano. Mrs. Breen, in a one-piece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel-self stired him on her brow, with her dance-card fallen beside her moon-blue satin slipper. Curves her palm softly, breathing quickly. Volia Inon, you're hot. You're scalding, till I've had nearest heart. When you made your present choice, they said it was beauty and the beast. I can never forgive you for that. His clenched fist at his brow. Think what it means. All you meant to me, then. Horsely. Woman, it's breaking me. Dennis Breen, white tall-hatted, with wisdom-heely's sandwich-boards, shuffles past them in carpet-slippers. His dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergen, coated in the pawl of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter. Alf Bergen points, jeeringly, at the sandwich-boards. Yo, Peay, up. Mrs. Breen, to Bloom. High-strings below stairs. She gives him the glad eye. Why didn't you kiss the spoil to make it well? You wanted to. Bloom shocked. Molly's best friend? Could you? Mrs. Breen, her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss. The answer is a lemon. Have your little press-it for me there. Bloom, offhandedly. Kosher, a snack for supper. The home without potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah, Mrs. Banderman Palmer, trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately, through away the program, rattling good place round there for pig's feet, feel. Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats, pinned on his head, appears weighted to one side by the black legal bag of collis and ward, on which a skull and crossbones are painted in white lime wash. He opens it, and shows it full of polonies, gippered herrings, finned on haddies, and tight-packed pills. Richie Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the kerbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait. Pat advances with a tilted dish of spilled, spilling gravy. Steak and kidney, bottle of lager, wait till I wait. Richie in ale. With hanging head, he marches doggedly forward. The navvy lurching by gores him with his flaming pronghorn. Richie, with a cry of pain, his hands to his back. Ah, bright, light. Bloom points to the navvy. A spy, don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament. Mrs. Breen I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But you must never tell. Not even molly. I have a most particular reason. Mrs. Breen All agog. Let's walk on, shall we? Let's. The board makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs. Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail. The board. Jew man's melt. Bloom in an oatmeal sporting suit. A sprig of woodbine in the lapel. Tony buff shirt. Shepherds plaid St Andrew's cross-scafety. White spats. Fawn dustcoat on his arm. Tawny red brogues. Field glasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat. Do you remember a long time, years and years ago, just after Millie, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together to fairy-house races, was it? Mrs. Breen In smart sacks tailor-made, white velour hat and spider veil. Leopard's town. I mean Leopard's town. And molly won seven shillings on a three-year-old named Nevertell, and coming home along by Foxrock and that old five-seater chanderadon of a wagonette you were in your heyday then. And you had on that new hat of white velours, with a surround of mole fur that Mrs. Hayes advised you to buy, because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen. And I'll lay you what you like, she did it on purpose. She did, of course, the cat. Don't tell me, nice advisor. Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toke with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you, and you honestly looked just too fetching in it, though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little might of a thing with a heart the size of a full stop. Mrs. Bream squeezes his arm, simpers. Not a cruel I was. Bloom, low, secretly, ever more rapidly. And molly was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs. Joe Gallagher's lunchbasket. Frankly though, she had her advisors or admirers. I never cared much for her style. She was... True. Yes. And molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse, and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter. Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up, and he asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. End of Section 39