I.6§3 (FW 152.04 - 159.93)

As my explanations here are probably above your understandings I shall revert to a ^|2more expletive^2| method which I frequently use ^|s2when I have to sermo^s2| with muddleclass pupils. Imagine for my purpose that you are a squad of urchins, snifflynosed, goslingnecked, clottyheaded, ^|2tangled in your lacings,^2| tingled in your pants etc etc. And you, Smith, take your tongue out of your inkpot! As none of you know javanese I will give you a free translation of the old ^|2fibulist fibulist's parable^2|. ^|2Audi, Joe Peters! Audi, Fax!^2|

the mookse and the gripes

A Mookse he would a walking go ^|2(My hood! ^|asays cries^a| Antony Romeo),º^2| so one evening, ^|2after his good supper of gammon and spittish,^2| having drubbed his eyes, ascented his nostrils, packed up his ears and comforted his throat, he put on his impermeable, seized his impugnable, harped on his crown and stepped out of his immobile ^|2De Rure Albo^2| and set off a spasso to see how badness was badness in the weirdest of all pensible ways. As he so set off with his father's sword he was girded on, and with that between his legs and his tarheels, our great and only Breakespeare, he clanked, to my clinking, every inch of an immortal. He had not walked over a pair of parsecs when at the turning of the wrong lane near
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Saint Patrick's-without-his-Walls he came
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upon the most unconsciously boggylooking stream he ever locked his eyes on. It looked little and it smelt of brown and it thought ^|2narrow in narrows^2| and it talked showshallow. And as it rinn it dribbled like any lively purl-it-easy: My, my, my! Me and me! Little down dream, don't I love thee! And, I declare, what was there on the yonder bank of the stream that would be a river, parched on a limb of the olum but the Gripes? And no doubt he was fit to be dried for why had he not been having the juice of his times?

His pips had been neatly all drowned on him; his polps were charging odours every older minute; he was quickly for getting the dresser's desdaign on the flyleaf of his frons; and he was quietly for giving the bailiff's distrain on to the bulkside of his cul de pompe. In all his specious heavings, as he lived by Optimus Maximus, the Mookse had never seen his brooder-on-low so nigh to a pickle.

Adrian (that was the Mookse's restingname) stuck still phiz-à-phiz to the Gripes in an outfit of Aurignacian. He sor a stone and on that stone he sate his seat which it filled to its fullest justotoryum and whereupon with his unfallable upon his alloilable and the pederect he always walked with cheek by jowl with his fresherman's blague, Bellua Triumphans, he looked the ^|2first and^2| last laical lakeness of Quartus the Fifth and Quintus the Sixth and Sixtus the Seventh giving allnight sitting to Leo the Faultyfindth.

— Good appetite us, Sir Mookse! How do you do it? cheeped the Gripes in a wherry whiggy woice and the jackasses
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all within bawl laughed ^|2and brayed for his intentions^2| for they knew their sly toad lowry now. I am blessed to see you, my dear mister. Will you not perhopes tell me everything, if you are pleased, sanity?

Think of it! A Gripes!

— Rats! roared the Mookse and the mice quailed to hear him at all, for you cannot wake a silken noise out of a hoarse oar. Blast yourself and your infairioriboos! No, hang you! I am superbly in my supremest poncif! Rot!

— I am till infinity obliged with you, bowed the Gripes, his whine having gone to his head. I am still always having a wish on all my extremities. By the watch, what is the time, pace?
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Figure it! To a Mookse!

— Ask my index! answered the Mookse, rapidly byturning clement, urban and celestian in the highest of goodhumour. Quote awhore? That is quite about what I came ^|2with my intentions^2| to settle with you. Let there be orlog. Let here be Irene. Let you be Beeton. And let me be Los ^|2Angelos Angeles^2|. Now measure your length! Now estimate my capacity! Well, sour? Is this space of our couple of hours too dimensional for you, temporiser? Will you give you up?

Sancta Patientia! You should have heard the voice that answered him!

— I was just thinking of that, noble Mookse, but I can never give you up, the Gripes whimpered from the nethermost of his wanhope. My temple is my own. But I will never be abler to tell you (here he near lost
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his limb) whose o'cloak you ware.

Incredible? Well, hear the inevitable!

— My building space is always to let to Men, the Mookse concluded. (What a crammer for the shapewrecked Gripes!) And I regret to announce that I cannot see my way to help you from being killed by time (what a thrust!) as we first met each other never so early. (Poor little squashed Gripes! I begin to feel contemption for him!) My side is as safe as houses, he continued, and I can see what it is to be seen. Parysis, tu sais, belongs to him who parises himself. I can prove that against you, my good enemy! I bet you this dozen of tomes.

He proved it to the extinction of Niklaus altogether (Niklaus ^|2Alopysius^2| having been the Gripes's hinder nimbum), by Neuclidius and by Inexagoras, by Mummsen and by Thumpson, by Orasmus and by Amenius. And after that he reproved it altogether by the binomial dioram and the penic walls and the inklespill legends and the rule of the hoop and the blessons of expedience and the jugicants of Puncher's Pylax.

— In a thousand years, Oh Gropes, you will be blind to the world, said the Mookse.

— In a thousand years, replied the Gripes, Ah Mookse, you may be still more bothered.

— I shall be chosen as the first of the last by the electress of Vale Hallow, said the Mookse nobly, for I am in the stabulary and that's what they all like best.

— I, confessed the Gripes limply, shall not even be the last of the first, I hope, when we are visited by the veiled horror. And, he added, I am relying entirely upon the weightiness of my breath.

And they villainised each and other with the wildest ever wielded ^|s2since Tarriestinus lashed Pissasphallium^s2|.

— Unicorn!

— Ungulant!

— Uvuloid!

— Uskybeak!
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^|s2And bullfolly answered volleyball.^s2|

Nuvoletta in her lightdress was looking down on them, leaning over the bannistars and listening all she childishly could. She was alone. All her nubied compinions were asleeping with the squirrels. Their mivver, Mrs Moonan, was off ^|v2for the evening, in the Fuerst quarterº^v2| scrubbing the backsteps ^|v2at of^v2| Number 28. And as for fuvver, ^|2that Skand,º^2| he was up in Norwood's sokaparlor eating oceans of Voking's Blemish. Nuvoletta listened as she reflected herself, though the heavenly one with his constellatria and his emanations stood between, and she tried all she tried to make the Mookse look up at her (but he was far too farseeing) and to make the Gripes hear how coy she ^|2was could be^2| (though he was much too auricular about himself to heed her) but it was all ^|2child's mild's^2| vapour ^|s2lost moist^s2|. Not even her dimmed reflection, Nuvoluccia, could they take their noses off, for their minds were beset with ^|2Heliogabolus Heliogobbleus^2| and Commodus and ^|2Enobarbus Enobarbarus^2| and whatever they did as they said. She tried all the winsome wonsome ways her four winds had taught her. She tossed her hair like la princesse de ^|2la Petite^2| Bretagne and she rounded her ^|2mignons^2| arms like Mrs Cornwallis-West and she smiled over herself like the beauty of the image of the pose of the daughter of the queen of the ^|2Emperor of Ireland Emperour of Irelande^2| and she sighed after herself as were she born
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to bride with Tristis Tristior Tristissimus. But she might just as well have carried her ^|s2daisy's grace daisy's worthº^s2| to Florida. For the Mookse ^|s2was were^s2| not amused and the Gripes was painfully obliviscent. “I see,” she sighed. “There are menner.”

The shades began to glidder along the banks, dusk unto dusk, and it was as glooming as gloaming could be in the waste of all peacable wolds. The Mookse had ^|s2a sound^s2| eyes ^|2yet ^|astill right^a|2| but he would not all hear. The Gripes had ^|s2still light^s2| ears ^|2left^2| yet he could but ill see. So he ceased, and he ceased, and it was ever so dusky of both of them. But still one thought of the deeps he would profound on the morrow and still the other thought of the scrapes he would escape if he had luck enough.

O, how it was dusk! It was so dusk that the tears of night began to fall, at first by ones
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and twos, then by threes and fours, at last by fives and sixes of sevens, for the tired ones were weeping, as we weep now with them. ^|2O! O! O! O!º Par la pluie!º^2|

Then there came down to the ⁽⁺²one hither^+)2| bank a woman of no appearance (I believe she was a Black ^|2(+with chillsº at her feet^+)2|) and she gathered up the Mookse where he was spread and carried him away to her invisible dwelling for he was the holy sacred solemn spit of her bushop's apron. So you see the Mookse he had reason as I knew and you knew and he knew all along. And there came down to the ⁽⁺²other thither^+)2| bank a woman to all important (⁽⁺²still we are told though they say^+)2| that she ⁽⁺²is was^+)2| comely^|2(+, spiteº the cold in her heed^+)2|) and, for he was as like it as blow it to a hawker's hank, she plucked down the Gripes from his limb and carried him away with her to her unseen
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shieling. And so the poor Gripes got wrong, for that is ^|2always^2| how a Gripes is, always was and always will be. And it was never so thoughtful of either of them. And there were left now an only elmtree and but a stone. O, yes! And Nuvoletta, a lass.

Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads of ^|2drifting^2| minds in one. She climbed over the bannistars. She gave a ^|s2childish childy^s2| cloudy cry: Nuée! Nuée! ^|2(+A lightdress fluttered.^+)2| She was gone. And into the river that had been a stream (for ⁽⁺²the thousand years had come and gone a thousand of tears had gone onº her and come on her^+)2|) there fell a tear, the loveliest of all tears (I mean for those who are “keen” on the pretty-pretty sort of thing ^|2you meet by Harrod's^2|) for it was a leap tear. But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh! I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!