Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable connections (an inlaw to Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Bloggg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of today knows that his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually was like to look at. Shem's bodily getup, it seems, included: an adze of a skull, an eighth of an eye, the whole of a nose, one all false arm, fortytwo hairs off his crown, eighteen to his mock lip, a quintet from his chin, the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, a stone and a half, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt's thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a bladder Tristended — so much so that young Master Shemmy at the very dawn of history seeing himself such and such, when playing with words in his nursery garden, asked of all his little ^|4brethren brothron^4| and ^|4sisters sweestureens^4| the first riddle of the universe: When is a man not a man? ^|4telling them take their time and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and^4| offering the prize of a bittersweet crab to the winner. One said when the heavens are ^|4rocking quakers^4|, a second said when ^|4other Bohemeand^4| lips, a third said when he, no, when, hold ^|4on a second hard a jiffy^4|, when ^|4the fair land of Poland he is a gnawstick
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and detarmined to^4|, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the ^|4wine is in ^|awife is wine wine is wife^a|4|, and still another when lovely ^|4woman wooman^4| stoops to ^|4conquer conk him^4|, one of the littlest said me, me, Sem, when ⁽⁴father pappa⁴⁾ papered the ⁽⁴parlour harbour⁴⁾, still one said when you are old ⁽⁴and I'm⁴⁾ grey ⁽⁴and fall⁴⁾ full of sleep, and still another when ⁽⁴office hours at last are over wee deader walkner⁴⁾, and another when ⁽⁴I was a boy with never a hole in my heart he is just only after having being semisized⁴⁾, another when ⁽⁴yes yeaº⁴⁾ he ⁽⁴has hath⁴⁾ no mananas, and one when ⁽⁴dose⁴⁾ pigs ⁽⁴they⁴⁾ begin ⁽⁴to fly now that they will flies up intil the looft⁴⁾. All were wrong, so Shem himself took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? —: When he is a Sham.

Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness ^|4came creeped^4| out first ^|4in via^4| foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen's teatime salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias' cans. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava beefsteaks or juicejelly legs of molten mutton or greasily gristly grunters' goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a
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swamp of bogoak gravy for him! He even ^|4went seceded^4| away by himself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Ireland's split little pea. Once when in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication he strove to lift a citron peel to either nostril, hiccupping apparently impromptued by his ^|4glottel glottal^4| stop, that he could live for ever by the smell, as the citr, as the cedron, like a cedar, of the founts, on mountains, with lemon on, of Lebanon. O, the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No ^|4likedbylike^4| firewater or firstserved firstshot or gutburn gin or honest liberal unionist beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic ^|4gester jester^4| sobbed himself sick of life on some sort of a wheywhinging rhubarbarous yellagreen applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had absorbed too many gourds of it retching off to his almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had ^|4had^4| enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch's hospitality when they
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found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, openwide sat, her why hide that, the winevat, of the most serene archduchess (if she's a duck she's a douches, snot her fault, nowisit?), artstouchups funny you're grinning at, fancy you're in her yet, Fanny Urinia. Ain't that swell, hey? Talk about lowness! Any dog's quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle, for the very first instant the ^|4Kelly-Turnbull Tulloch-Turnbull^4| girl with her kodak spotted the as yet ^|4unremunerated unremuneranded^4| national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Ameriga, after having buried a friend not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt into Patatapapaveri's, fruiterers and musical florists, she knew he was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.

Around that time one generally hoped or at any rate suspected he would early turn out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B. and do for himself one good time. Nay, one pelting night blanketed folk, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay, sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debt, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. With the devil's leave the born fraud diddled even death. You see, ^|4chaps,^4| he was low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every ^|4unkind word crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour's word,^4| and if ever, during a conversazione commoted in the nation's interest, delicate hints were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about what about trying
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to brace up and be a men insteed of a dem scrounger, desh it all, such as: Pray, what is
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the meaning of that continental expression, if you ever came across it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille? or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on ^|4rural rambles your gullible's travels^4| or during your ^|4tales of travel rural troubadouringº^4| happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman answering to the name of Low Swine who lives on loans and is thirtyfive yours of age? without one sign of haste, like the supreme prig he was, he would pull a vacant landlubber's face and then, lisping^|4, the prattlepate P parnella,^4| to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of God would any decent son of a bitch think, begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that conclamazzione (since appreciable physicians, trusted lawyers, belfry politicians, philanthropists sitting on as many boards round the peninsula at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong story of his entire low existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment blowing great blunderguns about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, and another moment ^|4giving crowing^{4| |4}3 three^4| jeers for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent as glib as eaveswater, to those present (who meanwhile with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smiles to drivel slowly across their faces), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a ^|4patience meticulosity^4| bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and ^|4telling cuttlefishing^4| every lie ^|4unthinkable unshrinkable^4| about all the
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other people in the story leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple word and person they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.

It went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and as often as he was called in to umpire any ^|4octugonal octagonal^4| argument among slangwhangers the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last
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speaker and agree to every word as soon as half uttered: your servant, good, quite true, I'm yoush, also good, quiso, your sulphur: and then at once focus his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener's eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more. One kailcannon night as very recently as ^|4twenty years some thousand rains^4| ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled personal violence, being kicked all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from 82 Mabbot's Mall as far as the lefthand eastend corner of Europa Parade by rival teams of argumentalists ⁽⁴counter quicklimers⁴⁾ who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther laetich, thought they had better be streaking for home one and all disgustedly, instead of kicking him back and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they ⁽⁴had⁴⁾ brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert's perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people,
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looking on him with ⁽⁴comparative contempt the contempt of the contemptiblesº⁴⁾, after first giving him a roll in the dirt might pity and forgive him⁽⁴, if properly deloused,⁴⁾ but the pleb was born ⁽⁴low a Quicklow⁴⁾ and sank ⁽⁴lower alowing⁴⁾ till he ⁽⁴sank stank⁴⁾ out of sight.

Darkies never done tug that coon out to play flesh and blood games same as piccaninnies play all day, those old games we used to play with old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yellow girl kicking him behind old Joe,
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games like Put the wind up the peeler, Hat in the ring, Healy Baba and the forty thieves, Soldier, soldier, will you marry me?, Sheila Harnett and her cow, I ^|4saw seen^4| the toothbrush with Pat Farrell, Here's the fat to grease the priest's boots. Now it is notoriously known how on that surprisingly bloody Unity Sunday, when the grand germogall allstar bout was gaily the rage between our fightingmen extraordinary and Irish eyes of welcome were smiling ^|4up their sleeves daggers down their back^4|, rank funk getting the better of him the scut in a bad fit of pyjamas fled like a leveret for his bare lives pursued by the scented curses of all the village belles and, without having struck one blow, corked himself up tight in his inkbottle house, badly the worse for ^|4drink boosegas^4|, where he collapsed carefully under a bedtick from Switzer's, his face enveloped ^|4in into^4| a dead warrior's telemac,
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with a whotwaterwottle
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at his feet, to stoke his energy of waiting, moaning feebly that his pawdry's purgatory was more than a nigger man could bear, hemiparalysed by all the shemozzle ^|4(Daily Maily, fullup lace! Holy Maly, mothelup Joss!)^4|, his cheeks and trousers changing colour every time a gat croaked. How is that for low, ladies and laymen? Why, whole continents rang with ^|4his this^4| lowness! ^|4Millions of women in dozens of countries Sheols of houris in chems upon divans^4| (revolted ^|4demimondaines stellas vespertine^4| among them) at a bare ^|4(O!)^4| mention exclaimed: ^|4O! Fish!^4|

But would anyone, short of a madhouse, believe it? Neither of those clean little cherubum, Nero or Nobookishonester himself, never nursed such a spoiled opinion of his monstrous marvellosity as did this mental and moral defective (here perhaps at his really lowest) who was known to belch rather than brag on one occasion, while drinking heavily of spirits, to an interlocutor a latere he used to pal around with⁽⁴, one Davy Dunn,º⁴⁾ in the porchway of a gipsy's bar (Shem always blaspheming, so holy writ, Billy, he would try, old Belly, and pay this one congregant of his four soups every lass of nexmouth, ⁽⁴Bully Bolly⁴⁾, as a taste for a storik's fortytooth ⁽⁴ony twenny minnies moe, Bolly,⁴⁾ to listen out⁽⁴, ony twenny minnies moe, Bully,⁴⁾ his Ballade Imaginaire, ⁽⁴which was to be called Wine, Woman and Waterclocks byº Maistre Sheames de la Plume,⁴⁾ some most dreadful stuff in a murderous handwriting) that he was awoopf aware of no other shaggyspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the ^|4shame seemsº^4| as woops as what he fancied or guessed ^|4the sames as^4| he was himself. After the thorough fright he got that bloody day, though every doorpost in muchtried Lucalizod was smeared with generous gore and every free for all cobbleway slippery with the blood of heroes crying
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to heaven for others and noahs and culverts agush with tears of joy, our low waster never had the common baalamb's pluck to stir out and about ^|4the compound^4| while everyone else of the city throng, slashers and sliced alike, waded around, chanting the Gillooly chorus, heads up, on their bonafide avocations while happy belongers to the fairer sex on their usual quest for higher things went stonestepping ^|4|aher their^a| bickerstaffsº^4| across the rainbow bridge set up over the slop by Messrs a charitable government, for the only once he did take a tompeep through a threedraw eighteen-hawkspower telescoop out of his westernmost keyhole, spitting at the impenetrable weather, with an eachway hope in his shivering soul of finding out for himself whether true conciliation was forging ahead or falling back and why he ^|4got the charm of his ^|aoptical^a| life when he^4| found himself at pointblank range blinking down the barrel of an irregular revolver of the bulldog with a purpose pattern handled by an unknown quarreler who, supposedly, had been told off to shade and shoot shy Shem should the shit show his shiny ^|4nose shnout^4| out awhile to look facts in the face before being ^|4hosed holedº^4| and creased by ^|4five or six six or a dozen^4| of the gayboys.

What was this interestingly low human type really at? The answer is: a drug and drunkery addict growing megalomane at a loose end. This explains the litany of septuncial lettertrumpets, honorific, highpitched,
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erudite, neoclassical, which he so loved as patricianly to manuscribe after his name. It would have diverted, if ever seen, the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany amid the inspissated grime of his ^|4glaucous^4| den making believe to read his eminently unreadable bluebook (even yet it can't be repeated!), turning over three sheets at a time, telling himself delightedly that every splurge on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling vision more gorgeous than the one before, a rose cottage by the sea for nothing for ever, a ladies' tryon hosiery raffle at liberty, a sewerful of guineagold wine and ^|4ten ounce sickcylinder^4| oysters worth a billion a bite: an entire operahouse of enthusiastic noblewomen flinging every coronetcrimsoned stitch they had ^|4on off^4| at his ^|4feet probscenium^4|, one after the ^|4other others^4|, when^|4, egad, sir,^4| he sang the topnote in After the Ball (geewhiz, jew ear that far! soap ewer! juice like a boyd!) for fully five minutes infinitely better than Barton McGuckin, with a scrumptious cocked hat and ^|43 three green trinity^4| plumes on his head and a crozier ^|4that he won for falling first over the hurdles, madam,^4| in the ^|4other odder^4| hand, but what with the murky light, the botchy print, the tattered cover, the jigjagged page, the fumbling fingers, the foxtrotting fleas, the lieabed lice, the scum on his tongue, the drop in his eye, the lump in his throat, the drink in his pottle, the itch in his palm, the wail of his wind, the grief from his nose, the dig in his ribs, the age of his arteries, the weight of his breath, the fog of his brainfag, the tic of his conscience, the height of his rage, the gush of his fundament, the fire in his gorge, the tickle of his tail, the rats in his garret, the hullabaloo and the dust in his ears, since it took him a month to steal a march he was hardset to memorise more than a word a week. Was there ever heard of such lowdown blackguardism? Positively it
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woollies one to think over it. Yet the bumpersprinkler used to boast aloud alone to himself when Hoy was corrected with the blackboard
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how he had been toed out of all the schicker families of the Klondykers from Pioupiouland, Swabspays, the land of Nod, Shruggers' Country, Pension Danubierhome and Barbaropolis, who had settled in the capital city after its metropoliarchialisation, ordered off the gorgeous premises in most cases on account of his smell which all the cookmaids objected to as resembling the smell that came out of the sink. Instead of chuthoring those ^|4finest model^{4| |4}families households^4| plain wholesome ^|4handwriting pothooks^4| (a thing he never possessed of his ^|4Nigerian^4| own) what do you think Vulgariano did but study with stolen fruit how cutely to copy all their various styles of signature so as one day to utter a colossal forged cheque on the public for his own private profit until, as just related, the ^|4Dublin Dullbin's^4| United Scullerymaids' and Househelps' Sorority turned him down and assisted nature by unitedly kicking the source of annoyance out of the place altogether in the heat of the moment, holding one another's ^|4nose gonk^4| (for no-one, hound or scrublady, dared whiff ^|4him the polecat^4| at close range) and making some ^|4pointed pointing^4| remarks as they ^|4did done^4| so aboon the ^|4low lyow^4| why a stunk.

One cannot even begin to figure out how ^|4low slow^4| in reality the Drumcondriac, called Hamish, really was. Who can say how many unsigned first copies of original masterworks, how many pseudostylic
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shamiana, how few or how many of the most venerated public impostures, how very many piously forged palimpsests, slipped in the first place by this morbid process from his plagiarist pen?

Be that as it may, but for his gnose's glow as it slid within an inch of its page Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin. By that rosy lampoon's effluvious burning ^|4and with help of the simulchronic flashº in his pann^4| he scribbled and scratched nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met, even sharing a shower under the dogs' umbrella of a public wall, while all over and up and down the four margins of this rancid Shem stuff the evilsmeller (who was devoted to Sardanapalus) used to stipple endlessly inartistic portraits of himself as a heartbreakingly handsome young man with love lyrics for the goyls in his eyols, a plaintiff's tenor voarse, a ducal income of one hundred and thirtytwo ^|4pounds a dranchmas per^4| yard derived from stranded estate, Oxford manners, cutting a great dash in a brandnew two-guinea dress suit and a burled shirt hired for a Furskay evenin merry pawty, anna ^|4lovely loavely^4| long pair of inky Italian moostarshes glistering with boric vaseline and frangipani. Pah! How unwhisperably ^|4low so^4|!

The house of Shem or Shame, known as the Haunted Inkbottle, one Brimstone Walk, Asia in Ireland, as it was infested with the raps, ^|4with his penname SHUT sepiasoaped on the doorplate and a blind of black sailcloth over its wan phwinshogue,º^4| in which he groped through life at the expense of the taxpayers, dejected into day and night with jesuist bark and bitter bite, by full and forty quisisanos, every day in everyone's way more exceeding in violent abuse of self and others, was the worst, it is hoped, even in our western playboyish world for pure mousefarm filth. The warped flooring of the lair and soundconducting walls thereof was persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback snaps, doubtful eggshells, you owe mes, fluefoul smut, fallen lucifers, vestas which had served, showered ornaments, borrowed brogues, reversible jackets, blackeye lenses, family jars, falsehair shirts, Godforsaken scapulars,
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neverworn breeches, cutthroat ties, counterfeit franks, best intentions, curried notes, upset latten tintacks, unused mill and stumbling stones, twisted quills, painful digests, magnifying wineglasses, solid objects cast at ^|4phantoms goblins^4|, once current puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mottage, unquestionable issue papers, seedy ejaculations, limerick damns, crocodile tears, spilt ink, blasphematory spits, stale chestnuts, schoolgirls', young ladies', milkmaids', washerwomen's, shopkeepers' wives', merry widows', ex nuns', vice abbesses', pro virgins', super whores', silent sisters', Charleys' aunts', grandmothers', mothers-in-laws', fostermothers', godmothers' garters, tress clippings from right and left, worms of snot, toothsome pickings, cans of Swiss condensed bilk, highbrow lotions, kisses from the antipodes, presents from pickpockets, borrowed plumes, relaxable handgrips, princess promises, lees of wine, deoxodised carbons, broken wafers, unloosed shoe latchets, convertible collars, crooked strait waistcoats, fresh horrors from Hades, globules of mercury, undeleted glete, glass eyes for an eye, false teeth for a tooth,
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war moans, special sighs, longsufferings of longstanding, ahs ohs ouis sis jas jos gias neys thaws sos, yeses and yeses and yeses, to which, if one has the stomach to add the breakages, upheavals, distortions, inversions, of all this chambermade music, one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish selfexiled in upon his ego, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an ineluctable phantom, writing the ^|4history mystery^4| of himself in furniture.

Of course our low hero was a selfvaleter by choice of need so up he got up whatever is meant by a kitchenette and fowlhouse for the sake of eggs which the jokesmith brooled and cocked and potched in an athanor with cinnamon and locusts and ^|4wild^4| beeswax and liquorice and Carageen moss and blaster of Barry's and Yellownan's embrocation and stardust and sinner's tears, chanting his cantraps, abracadabra calubra culorum (his oewfs à la Madame Gabrielle de l'Eglise, his oewfs à la Mistress B. de B. Meinfeldes, his oewfs à la Sulphate de
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Soude, his oewfs sowtay sowmonay à la Monseigneur, his soufflosion à la Mère Puard, his Frideggs à la Tricarême), in what was meant for a closet. His costive Satan's
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nature never needed such an alcove so, when Robber and Mumsell, the ^|4paper pulpic^4| dictators, ^|4on the nudgment of their legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex,º and under his own benefiction of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer,º^4| boycotted him of all muttonsuet candles and ^|4romeruled^4| stationery for any purpose, he ^|4went winged^4| away ^|4on a wildfool's chase across the kathartic ocean^4| and made synthetic ink and ^|4unruled pages sensitive paper^4| for his own ^|4use end^4| out of his wits' ^|4end waste^4|. You ask, in Sam Hill, how? Let manner and matter of ^|4it this^4| for these our sporting times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed cardinals that an Anglican ordinal, not reading his own rude tongue, may ever behold the brand of scarlet on the brow of her of Babylon and feel not the pink one in his own damned cheek.

Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram viviparam et cunctipotentem ^|4nec sine^4| ullo ^|4pudori pudore^4| nec ^|4venia venia, suscepto pluviali atque^4| discinctis ^|4perizomatis et perizomatis,^4| natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans, flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro exoneratus, classicum pulsans, stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones meas, in ^|4vasum vas^4| olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem ^|4sub invocatione fratrorum geminorum Medardi et Godardi^4| lente ac melliflue minxit, psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibilem (faked O'Ryan's, the indelible ink).

With this double dye^|4, gallic acid on iron ore,^4| through the bowels of his misery, minutely, nastily, appropriately, the first and last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one
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^|4human continuous present tense^4| integument slowly unfolded ^|4universal all manyvoiced moodmoulded cyclewheeling^4| history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual
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person life unlivable, transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness into a dividual chaos, perilous, potent, common to all flesh, human only, mortal) but with each word that would not pass away the squidself which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world ^|4grew darker and darker waned chagreenold and doriangrayer^4| in its outlook. So perhaps after all on his last public misappearance, on the deathday of Saint Ignaceous, circling the square and brandishing his bellbearing ^|4pen stylo^4|, the shining keyman of the ^|4door of blank wilds of change^4|, the blond cop who thought it was ink was out of his depth but bright in the main. Petty constable Sigurdsen it was, who had been detailed to save him from the effects of lynch law and mobmauling on looks, that greeted the tenderfoot on his way from a prostitute just as he was butting in round the corner of bad times with a hideful through his fongster, saying as usual: Where ladies have they that a dog meansort herring? Search me, the incapable reparteed and in he skittled. The allwhite poors ^|4guardian guardiant^4| was literally astounded over the sake and staggered thereto in his imaginations at the capacity of his wineskin and even more so during, upon looking his ^|4bigmost^4| astonishments, it was said him fun the concerned human outgift of dirt med drink how that he was namely coon at bringher at home two gallons full poultry till his murder.
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Polthergeistkotzdondherhoploits! What mother? Whose porter? Why namely coon? But enough of such porterblack lowness, too base for printink! We cannot stay here for the residence of our lives discussing Mr Ham of Tenman's thirst.

Stand forth, come boldly in your true colours (for no longer will I follow you through the inspired form of the third person singular but address myself to you direct), stand forth, jolly me, move me to laughter ere you be put back for ever till I give you your talkingto! Shem Macadamson, you know me and I know you and all your shemeries! Where have you been this hell of a time, my tooraladdy? How have you been enjoying yourself
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all the morning since your last wetbed confession? ^|4I thought so!^4| Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, ^|4sonny Sheem avick^4|. You were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two-easter island on the piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become ^|4a raw doubter in of twosome twiminds forenenst^4| gods ^|4known and unknown hidden and discovered^4|, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, heresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own ^|4far more than dubious most intensely doubtful^4| soul. Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger that you will neither serve nor let serve, pray nor let pray? While yet an adolescent (what do I say?), while still puerile in your tubsuit with buttonlegs, you got a handsome present of a selfraising syringe and twin feeders (you know, my friend, to your cost as well as I do, and don't try to hide it, the ^|4mechanism penal laws^4| I am now poking at) and the wheeze ^|4kind sortº^4| of was you should (if you were as bould a stroke now as the curate that christened you, sonny dout-the-candle!) repopulate the land of your birth and count up your progeny by the hundred head and the hundred thousand but you thwarted
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the ^|4pious wish wious pish^4| of your ^|4godmother cogodparents, soph,^4| on countless occasions of failing and have added the morosity of your delectations — a philtred love, ^|4blank blank blank trysting by tantrums, small peace in ppenmarkº —^4| to Lubbock's other pleasures of life, even extruding your strabismal apologia, when legibly depressed, upon defenceless paper and thereby adding to the already unhappiness of this our popeyed world, scribblative! — all that too with cantreds of ^|4overplussing females countless catchaleens^4|, the many as many as the chosen, congested around and about you for acres and roods and poles or perches, mutely braying for what would not have cost you ten cents of collarwork or the price of one pang, just a lilt, let us ^|4say sing^4|, of the oldest song in the wide wide world ^|4(two-we! to-one!),^4| accompanied by a plain gold band!

Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, resurrecter of lazars, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason have cutely foretold^|4, a ^|ajaphet jophet^a| in your own absence,^4| by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sores and pustules, by the auspice of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the augury of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamitisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot
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of sweettempered gunpowdered dust unto dust, but it never ^|4struck stphruck^4| your mudhead's
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obtundity that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you weep over, the more beef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel ^|4it more and more with more grease to your elbowº^4| the merrier smokes your new Irish stew.

Another thing occurs to me. You, let me tell you, were very ordinarily designed to do a certain office (what, I will not tell you) in a certain ^|4holy^4| office (nor will I say where) during certain ^|4agonising^4| office hours from such a year to such an hour on such and such a date at so and so much a week ^|4per annum pro anno^4| and do your little ^|4threepenny thruppennyº^4| bit right here where you drew the first gasp in your ^|4life lifesentence^4|, same as we, long of us, where you set fire to my tailcoat and I'll held the paraffin lamp under yours (I hope that at least is clear) but, slackly shirking both your bullet and your billet, you beat it ^|4backwardsº^4| like ^|4billy O the baker from Galway^4| to sing us a song of alibi, nomad, mooner by lamplight, antinos, shemming amid everyone's repressed laughter to conceal your coprophily by ^|4using mating^4|, like a thoroughpaste prosodite, ^|4masculine^4| monosyllables of the same ^|4mass numerical mus^4|, an Irish emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crooked
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sixpenny stile, an unfrillfrocked quackfriar, you (will you for the love of Shakespeare just help me with the epithet?) semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank!

There grew up beside you, oaf, outofwork, one remove from an unwashed savage, on his keeping and in yours, that
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other, that pure one, he who was well known to heavenly circles before he sped aloft, a chum of the angels, a youth they so particularly wanted as gamefellow that they asked his mother for little clay brother to let him tome to Tindertarten, pease, and bing his scooter too and 'tend they were all real brothers in the big justright home where Dod lives, that mothersmothered model, that goodlooker with not a flaw whose spiritual toilettes were the talk of half the town, and him you laid low with one hand one fine May morning^|4, your bosom foe,º^4| to find out how his innards worked! Ever hear of that monkey and the virgin heir of the Morrisons, eh, blethering ape?

Malingerer in luxury, what have you done with all the babyprams of cooked vegetables, the hatfuls of stewed fruit, the suitcases of coddled ^|4eggs ales^4|, ^|4the Parishº funds, me schamer, man,^4| that you ^|4cozened kittycoaxed^4| so flexibly out of charitable butteries by yowling heavy with a hollow voice drop of your horrible awful poverty of mind and as how you was bad no end, so you was, so whelp you, with the chicken's gape and pas mal de siècle which, by the by, is the ordinary emetic French for grenadier's drip. To let you have your plank and your bonewash (O, the sufferings of you!), to give you your pound of platinum and a thousand acres a year (O, you were excruciated^|4, in honour bound to the cross of your fiction^4|!), to let you have your Sarday spree and holinight sleep and leave to lie till Paraskivee (O, ^|4Jonathan,^4| your estomach!). Weep ^|4waterfalls cataracts^4| for all me, Pain the Shamman! Oft in the ^|4smelly^4| night will they wallow for ^|4a clutch of^4| the vanished hand, I say,
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them bearded jezebelles you hired to rob you, while on your sodden straw impolitely you encored (^|4Airish! Airish! Airish and ^|anawboggle aleesh nawboggaleesh^a|!^4|) those ^|4sacred hornmade ivory^4| dreams ^|4you raved^4| of the flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments of Marylebone. But the dormer ^|4moon she moonshee^4| smiled selene and the ^|4skysigns lightthrowers^4| knickered: who's whinging we? Where are the little apples we lock up in the little saltbox? Where is that little alimony nestegg against our predictable rainy day? Is it not the fact (gainsay me, cakeeater!) that
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you squandered among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a multitude of Hottentots crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Don't tell me you are not a loanshark! Look up, old son, be advised by me and take your medicine! Just a little tonic, my gem of all jokes, to make you go green in the face. And remember that golden silence gives consent, Mr Anklegazer! Whisht! Come here till I tell you a ^|4thing wig^4| in your ear. Look! Do you see your dial in the rockingglass, ^|4Mister Herr^4| Studiosus? Look well! Bend down a second till I! It's secret! In your ear. Sh! Shem, you are. Sh! You are mad!

Pariah, cannibal Cain, you who oathily forswore the womb that bore you and the paps you sometime sucked, you who ever since have been one black mass of jigs and jimjams, haunted by a convulsionary sense
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of not having been or being all that you might have been or meant to ^|4be becoming^4|,
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bewailing like a man that innocence which you could not defend like a woman, lo, it is to you then, and thank ^|4God Movies^4| from the innermost depths of your ^|4incontrite still attrite^4| heart for it is to you, firstborn and firstfruit of woe, to you, branded sheep, to you, pick of the wastepaperbasket, to you alone, windblasted tree of the knowledge of beautiful and evil, ay, to you, unseen blusher in an obscene coalhole, that your turfbrown mummy is acoming, running with her tidings, all the news of the great big world, with a beck, with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy, ducking under bridges, bellhopping the weirs, dodging by a bit of bog, rapidshooting round the bends, by Tallaght's green hills and the pool of the phooka and a place they call it Blessington and
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slipping sly by Sallynoggin, as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia!