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 stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar Blaubarb and Horrild Hairwire, and an inlaw to Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Bloggg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of the space 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.

^|9⇒^9| Shem's bodily getup, it seems, included: an adze of a skull, an eighth of a larkseye, the whole of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin ^|9(some ^|asalmone's sowman's^a| son!)º^9|, the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one glad stone avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt's thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a bladder Tristended — so much so that young Master Shemmy ^|9|aat on^a| his very first debouch^9| at the ^|9very ^|~proto very^~|9| dawn of ^|~9prehistory protohistory^~|9| seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their nursery garden, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat 111, Shuvlin, Old Hoeland (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and
{f39, 170}
sense? would we now for annas and annas? Would we for fullscore eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four testers one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!), asked of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: When is a man not a man? telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab^|9, a little ^|~previous from the first present from the past^{~| |x}(for their copper age was asº yet unminted)^x|,º^9| to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when, hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick
{f10, 135}
and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine's at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littlest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, still one said when you are old I'm grey fall full wi' sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, another when yea he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? —: When he is a — yours till the rending of the rocks — Sham.

Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via 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 fried-at-beliefstakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex's 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
{f39, 171}
swamp of bogoak gravy for that ^|9greekenhearted^9| yude! ^|9Rosbif of Old Zealand?º Heº could not ^|~attach attouch^~| it.^9| He even ran away with himself, and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland split little pea. Once when in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a citron peel to either nostril, hiccupping apparently impromptued by his glottal 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 likedbylike firewater or firstserved firstshot or gutburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhingingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yellagreen funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to his almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch's hospitality when they
{f10, 136}
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.

^|9⇒^9| 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 ^|9first instant fourth ^|atime snap^a|9| the Tulloch-Turnbull girl with her kodak shotted the as yet unremuneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Soak Amerigas, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt into Patatapapaveri's, fruiterers and musical florists, she knew ^|s+9he the vice ^s+|9| was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.

[Johns is a different butcher's. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen's spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs! ^|9Ex!^9| Feel how sheap! ^|9Exex!^9| His liver too is great value, a spatiality! ^|9Exexex!^9| COMMUNICATED.]

Around that time one generally hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early turn out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B. and do for himself one dandy time. Nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, 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 debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. ^|9He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with ^|~pneumani_unread pneumantics^~|; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod.^9| With the foreign devil's leave the fraidborn fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled from his asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here today, gone tomorry, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.

^|9⇒^9| You see, chaps, he was low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour's word, 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
{f10, 137}
to brace up and be a men insteed of a dem scrounger, desh it all, such as: Pray, what is
{f39, 173}
the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came ^|9across acrux^9| it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille? or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible's travels or during your rural troubadouring happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one corner of his mouth lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? without one sign of haste, like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber's face, root with earwaker's pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of God would any decent son of a shedog who had bin to an university think, begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that conclamazzione (since, still and before panesthetic physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agricolous manufraudurers, ^|9sacrestanes of the Pure River Society,^9| philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the peninsulounge 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 tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment croaghing three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a babbly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, 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 smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the
{f39, 174}
other people in the story leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple word and plague 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.

He wint 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 octagonal argument among slangwhangers the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last
{f10, 138}
speaker ^|9and clasp shakers ^|a(the handtouchº which is speech without words)^a|9| and agree to every word as soon as half uttered: command me! your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, gratias, I'm yoush, see wha'm hearing? also goods, please it, me sure? be filling this! quiso, you said it, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me? is their girlic-on-you? to your good self, your sulphur: and then at once focuss 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.

^|9⇒^9| One hailcannon night as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal violence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh's house at 82 Mabbot's Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther laetich, thought they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they had 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,
{f39, 175}
looking on him with the contempt of the contemptibles, after first giving him a roll in the dirt might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.

^|9⇒^9| All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already?

In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his Wife;
By Nowhom have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and Thunder for Life;
Not yet has the Emp up from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre;
Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made Warre;
Not yet Witchywitchy of Wench has struck Fire of his Heath from on Hoath;
Not yet his Arcobaleine has forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath;
Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel Blamefool Gardener's bound to fall;
Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will there's his Wall;
But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons leap o'er his Bier
And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff in her Ear.
{f10, 139}
Till the four shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eirewhiggs raille!
Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of Perce Oreille.

O fortunous casualitas! 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 Dina and old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yallow girl kicking him behind old Joe,
{f39, 176}
games like Thom Thom the thonderman, Put the wind up the peeler, Hat in the ring, Hely Baba and the forty thieves, Mikel on the luckypig, Nickel in the slot, Sheila Harnett and her cow, ^|9|~Adam and Ell, Humble bumble, Moggiesº on the wall, Twos and threes, American jump, Fox come out of your den, Broken bottles, Writing a letter to Punch, Tip top is a sweetstore, Postman's knock, Solomon silent reading, Appletree ^|apeartree, pearstone,º^a| I know a washerwoman, Hospitals, As I was walking, Battle of Waterloo, Colours, Eggs in the bush, Habberdasherisher, Telling your dreams, What's the time, Nap, Ducking mammy, Last man standing,^~|9| Handmarried but once in my life and I'll never commit such a sin agin, This is the way we sow the seed of a long and lusty morning, Hops of fun at Miliken's make, I seen the toothbrush with Pat Farrell, Here's the fat to grease the priest's boots, When his steam was like a raimbrandt round MacGarvey.

^|9⇒^9| Now it is notoriously known how on that surprisingly bloody Unity Sunday, when the grand germogall allstar bout was harrily the rage between our weltingtoms extraordinary and our pettythicks the marshalaisy and Irish eyes of welcome were smiling daggers down their backs, when the roth vice and blause met the noyr blank and rogues and the grim white and cold bet the black fighting tans, 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 inkbattle house, badly the worse for boosegas, there to stay for the life, where, as there was not a moment to be lost, after he had boxed a round with his fortepiano till he was whole bach and blues, he collapsed carefully under a bedtick from Switzer's, his face enveloped into a dead warrior's telemac,
{f10, 140}
with a whotwaterwottle
{f39, 177}
at his feet, to stoke his energy of waiting, moaning feebly^|9|+, while engaged in swallowing from a large bottle,^+|9| that his pawdry's purgatory was more than a nigger bloke could bear, hemiparalysed by ^|9|s+the tong warfare and^s+|9| all the shemozzle (Daily Maily, fullup lace! Holy Maly, mothelup Joss!), his cheeks and trousers changing colour every time a gat croaked.

^|9⇒^9| How is that for low, laities and gentlenuns? Why, whole continents rang with this lowness! Sheols of houris in chems upon divans (revolted stellas vespertine among them) at a bare (O!) mention ^|9of the scaly rybald^9| exclaimed: ^|9Fish! Poisse!^9|

But would anyone, short of a madhouse, believe it? Neither of those clean little cherubum, Nero or Nobookishonester himself, ever nursed such a spoiled opinion of his monstrous marvellosity as did this mental and moral defective (here perhaps at the vanessance of his lownest) who was known to grognt rather than gunnard upon one occasion, while drinking heavily of spirits, to that interlocutor a latere ^|9|s+and private privysuckatary^s+|9| he used to pal around with, one Davy Browne-Nowlan, his heavenlaid twin ^|9|s+and private privysuckatary^s+|9|, in the porchway of a gipsy's bar (Shem always blaspheming, so holy writ, Billy, he would try, old Belly, and pay this one manjack congregant of his four soups every lass of nexmouth, Bolly, so sure as thair's a tail on a commat, as a taste for a storik's fortytooth, that is to stay, to listen out, ony twenny minnies moe, Bully, his Ballade Imaginaire, which was to be dubbed Wine, Woman and Waterclocks or How a Guy Finks and Fawkes When He Is Going Batty by Maistre Sheames de la Plume, some most dreadful stuff in a murderous handwriting) that he was awoopf (parn me!) aware of no other shaggyspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the seems as woops (parn!) as what he fancied or guessed the sames as he was himself and that, though he was foxed fux to fux with all the teashop
{f39, 178}
lionses of Lumdrum up gagainst him, andallthatsortofthing, if reams stood to reason he would wipe alley english spooker off the face of the erse.

^|9⇒^9| After the thorough fright he got that bloody Swithun's day, though every doorpost in muchtried Lucalizod was smeared with generous erstborn gore and every free for all cobbleway slippery with the bloods of heroes crying
{f10, 141}
to Welkins 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 the compound while everyone else of the torchlit throng, slashers and sliced alike, waaded and baaded around, chanting the Gillooly chorus, O pura e pia bella!, in junk et sampam or in secular sinkalarum, heads up, on their bonafide avocations and happy belongers to the fairer sex on their usual quest for higher things went stonestepping their bickerstaffs^|9, plinkity plonk,º^9| across the sevenspan ponte dei colori 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 wetter, with an eachway hope in his shivering soul of finding out for himself whether true conciliation was forging ahead or falling back after the celestious intemperance and why he got the charm of his optical life when he 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 shnout out awhile to look facts in ^|9the their^9| face before being holed and creased (uprip and jack him!) by six or a dozen of the gayboys.

What, in the names of Deucalion and Pyrrha and the incensed privy and the licensed pantry gods and Stator and Victor and Kutt and Runn, was this disinterestingly low human type, this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity, this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at for he seems in a badbad case?

^|9⇒^9| The answer would sound: from pulling himself on his most flavoured canal the huge chesthouse of his elders he had flickered up and flinnered down into a drug and drunkery addict growing megalomane of a loose past. This explains the litany of septuncial lettertrumpets, honorific, highpitched,
{f10, 142}
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 glaucous den making believe to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles, édition de ténèbres (even yet, sighs the Most Different Dr Pointdejeuk, authorised bowdler and censor, it can't be repeated!), turning over three sheets at a ^|9time wind^9|, telling himself delightedly that every splurge on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling vision more gorgeous than the one before, t.i.t.s., a roseschelle cottage by the sea for nothing for ever, a ladies' tryon hosiery raffle at liberty, a sewerful of guineagold wine and sickcylinder oysters worth a billion a bite, an entire operahouse ^|9(there was to be stamping room only in the prompter's ^|abox loudboxº^a| and
{f39, 180}
everthemore his queueº kept swelling)^9| of enthusiastic noblewomen flinging every coronetcrimsoned stitch they had off at his probscenium, one after the others, in their gaiety pantheomime, when, egad, sir, he sang the topsquall in Deal Lil Shemlockup Yellin (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 three green trimmity plumes on ^|9the right-handledº side of^9| his head, a sponiard's digger at his ribs, and a dean's crozier that he won from Cardinal Lindundarri and Cardinal Carchingarri and Cardinal Loriotuli and Cardinal Occidentaccia (ah ho!) in the dearby darby doubled for falling first over the hurdles, madam, in the odder hand, a.a.t.s.o.t. 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 mindfag, the buzz in his braintree, the tic of his conscience, the height up his rage, the gush down his fundament, the fire in his gorge, the tickle of his tail, the rats in his garret, ^|9|xthe bats in his belfry, the budgerigars and bumbosolom beaubirds,^x|9| the hullabaloo and the dust in his ears, since it took him a month to steal a march he was hardset to mumorise more than a word a week.

^|9⇒ ^|xHake'sº haulin! Hak Hook's fisk! Can you beat it? Whawe?º I say, can you bait it?^x|9| Was there ever heard of such lowdown blackguardism? Positively it
{f10, 143}
woollies one to think over it. Yet the bumpersprinkler used to boast aloud alone to himself with a haccent on it when Mynfadher was a boer constructor and Hoy was a lexical student, parole, and corrected with the blackboard
{f39, 181}
(trying to copy the stage Englesemen he broughts their house down on, shouting: Bravure, surr Chorles! Letterpurfect! Culossall, Loose Wallor! Spache!) how he had been toed out of all the schicker families of the Klondykers from ^|9Pioupiouland Pioupioureich^9|, Swabspays, the land of Nod, Shruggers' Country, Pension Danubierhome and Barbaropolis, who had settled and stratified in the capital city after its hebdomodary metropoliarchialisation, as sunblistered, moonplastered, gory, wheedling, joviale, litcherous and full, ordered off the gorgeous premises in most cases on account of his smell which all the cookmaids eminently objected to as resembling the bombinubble ^|9smell that came puzzo that welled^9| out of the ^|9sink pozzo^9|. Instead of chuthoring those model households plain wholesome pothooks (a thing he never possessed of his Nigerian 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 ^|9a colossal anº epical^9| forged cheque on the public for his own private profit until, as just related, the Dustbin's United Scullerymaids' and Househelps' Sorority turned him down and assisted nature by unitedly shoeing the source of annoyance out of the place altogether in the heat of the moment, holding one another's gonk (for no-one, hound or scrublady, not even the Turk, ungreekable in purscent of the armenable, dared whiff the polecat at close range) and making some pointopointing remarks as they done so at the prefects of the Sniffey aboon the lyow why a stunk.

[Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned female costumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, rather full pair of culottes and onthergarmenteries, to start city life together. His jymes is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately committed one of the then commandments but she will now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies. ABORTISEMENT.]

One cannot even begin to figure out how slow in reality the ^|9excommunicated^9| Drumcondriac, nate Hamish, really was. Who can say how many unsigned first copies of original masterworks, how many pseudostylic
{f39, 182}
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 pelagiarist pen?

Be that as it may, but for his gnose's glow as it slid within an inch of its page (he would touch at its from time to other to ensign the colours
{f10, 144}
by the beerlitz in his mathness and his educandees to outhue to themselves in the cries of girlglee: gember! inkware! chonchambre! cinsero! zinnzabar! tincture and gin!) Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin. By that rosy lampoon's effluvious burning and with help of the simulchronic flash in his pann he scribbled and scratched nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met, even sharing a precipitation under the dogs' umbrella of a showerproof 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 in the act of reciting old Nichiabelli's monolook interyerear Hanno o Nonanno, acce'l brubblemm'! as, ser Autore, q.e.d., a heartbreakingly handsome young paolo with love lyrics for the goyls in his eyols, a plaintiff's tanner ^|9voarse vuice^9|, a jucal inkome of one hundred and thirtytwo dranchmas per yard derived from Broken Hill stranded estate, Camebreech mannings, cutting a great dash in a brandnew two-guinea dress suit and a burled hogsford hired for a Furskay evenin merry pawty, anna loavely long pair of inky Italian moostarshes glistering with boric vaseline and frangipani. Puh! How unwhisperably so!

The house O'Shea or O'Shame, Quivapieno, known as the Haunted Inkbottle, no number Brimstone Walk, Asia in Ireland, as it was infested with the raps, with his penname SHUT sepiascraped on the doorplate and a blind of black sailcloth over its wan phwinshogue, in which he groped through life at the expense of the taxpayers, dejected into day and night with jesuist bark and bitter bite, ^|9|+calicohydrants
{f39, 183}
of zolfor and scoppialamina^+|9| by full and forty queasisanos, 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. Smatterafact, Angles oftanon browsing there thought not Edam reeked more rare. My wud! The warped flooring of the lair and soundconducting walls thereof^|9, to say nothing of the uprights and imposts,^9| were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback snaps, doubtful eggshells, bouchers, flints, borers, puffers, amygdaloid almonds, rindless raisins, alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, ineffible tries at speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smut, fallen lucifers, vestas which had served, showered ornaments, borrowed brogues, reversible jackets, blackeye lenses, family jars, falsehair shirts, Godforsaken scapulars,
{f10, 145}
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 goblins, 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, lift and cintrum, 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 whine, 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, gloss teeth for a tooth,
{f39, 184}
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, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an ineluctable phantom (may the Shaper have mersery on him!), writing the mystery 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 jigsmith^|9, playing cookerynook,º^9| brooled and cocked and potched in an athanor with cinnamon and locusts and wild beeswax and liquorice and Carrageen moss and blaster of Barry's and Yellownan's embrocation and stardust and sinner's tears, chanting his cantraps of fermented words, abracadabra calubra culorum (his oewfs à la Madame Gabrielle de l'Eglise, his oewfs à la Mistress B. de B. Meinfeldes, his oewfs Usquadmala à la pomme de ciel, his oewfs à la Sulphate de
{f10, 146}
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. (Ah ho! If only he had listened better to the four masters that infanted him, Father Mathew and Le Père Noble and Pastor Lucas and Padre Aguilar — not forgetting Layteacher Baudwin! Ah ho!) His costive Satan's
{f39, 185}
nature never needed such an alcove so, when Robber and Mumsell, the pulpic dictators, on the nudgment of their legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex, and under his own benefiction of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer, boycotted him of all muttonsuet candles and romeruled stationery for any purpose, he winged away on a wildgoup's chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wits' waste.

^|9⇒^9| You ask, in Sam Hill, how?

^|9⇒^9| Let manner and matter of this for these our sporting times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed porpurates that an Anglican ordinal, not reading his own rude dunsky tunga, 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 sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali atque discinctis perizomatis, 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 suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum geminorum Medardi et Godardi 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 indelibile (faked O'Ryan's, the indelible ink).

Then, pious Eneas, conformant to the fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremulose terrian that, when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Urania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, ^|9|+brought to blood heat,^+|9| gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one
{f39, 186}
continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual
{f10, 147}
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 waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud. So perhaps after all on his last public misappearance, on the deathfeDte of Saint Ignaceous Poisonivy of the Fickle Crowd (hopon the sexth day of Hogsober, killim our king, layum low!), circling the square and brandishing his bellbearing stylo, the shining keyman of the wilds of change, the blond cop who thought it was ink was out of his depth but bright in the main.

^|9⇒^9| Petty constable Sistersen of the Kruis-Kroon-Kraal it was, ^|9|s+in the parochial watch,^s+|9| who had been detailed to save him from the effects of foul clay ^|9|s+in little clots^s+|9| and mobmauling on looks, that wrongcountered the tenderfoot an eveling near Knockmaree, Comty Mea, ^|9|s+reeling more to the right than he lurched to the left,^s+|9| on his way from a protoprostitute (he would always have ^|9|s+a (stp!)^s+|9| little pigeoness somewhure with ^|s+9an his^s+|9| arch girl^|9|s+, Arcoiris ^s+|9|) just as he was butting in rand the coyner of bad times under a hideful through his boardelhouse fongster, greeting as usual: Where ladies have they that a dog meansort herring? Search me, the incapable reparteed and, raising his hair after the grace, ^|9with the christmas under his clutcharm,^9| in he skittled. The allwhite poors guardiant was literally astundished over the painful sake wherend the whole current of the afternoon and staggered thereto in his countryports at the capacity of his wineskin and even more so during, upon looking his bigmost astonishments, it was said him fun the concerned human outgift of the dead med dirt, how that^|9|s+, arrahbejibbers,º^s+|9| he was namely coon at bringher at home two gallonts, as per royal, full poultry till his murder. ^|9Nip up ^|~& and^~| nab it!^9|
{f10, 148}

^|9⇒^9| Polthergeistkotzdondherhoploits! What mother? Whose porter? Which pair? Why namely coon? But enough of such porterblack lowness, too base for printink! We cannot, in mercy or justice, stay here for the residence of our ^|9lives existingsº^9| discussing Mr Ham of Tenman's thirst.

JUSTIUS (to himother): Brawn is my name and broad is my nature and I've breit on my brow and all's right with every feature and I'll brune this bird or Brown Bess's bung's gone bandy. ^|9|xI'm the boy to ^|~unread bruise^~| and braise. ^|~Bas! Baus!^~|x|9|

^|9⇒^9| Stand forth, Nayman of Noland, come boldly in your true colours (for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitensies of the deponent but address myself to you, with the imperative of my vindicative, pro vocative and out direct), stand forth, jolly me, move me, zwilling though I am, 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 in the uterim, enjoying yourself
{f39, 188}
all the morning since your last wetbed confession? ^|9I thought so! ^|xI advise you to conceal yourself, my little friend, as I ^|ahave^a| said a moment ago,º ^|~& and^~| put your hands in my hands and have a ^|~nights long homily nightslong homely^~| little confiteor ^|aover all that over it allº^a|.^x|9|

^|9⇒ Let us pry. We thought,º would ^|~& and^~| did. ^|aCur, quicquid, ubi, quando, quomodo, quoties, quibus auxiliis?º^a|9| Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick. ^|9There is not enough elem You will need all the elementº in the river to clean you after thisº ^|a|~& and^~| a fortefineº ^|bpriestpower popespriestpower^b| bull of attender to booth^a|!º^9|

^|9⇒^9| 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 (plunders to right of you, blunders what's left of you, flash as flash can!) and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, heresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own most intensely doubtful soul. Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Shehohem, that you will neither serve nor let serve, pray nor let pray? ^|9And here, pie the piety, must I ^|atoo^a| nerve myself to pray for the loss of selfrespectº to equip me for the horrible necessity of scandalisingº , (my dear sisters, are you ready?) by sloughing off my hope ^|~& and^~| tremors while we all swimº together in the pool of Sodom? ^|aI shall shiver for my purity while they will ^|~weeply weepbig^~| for your sins.^a| Away with covered words. ^|aOld Newº Solemonnitiesº for old ^|~bathsheebabs Badsheetbaths^~|!^{a| |~}That inharmonious detail, did you name it?^~| Cold caldor! Ice!º
{f10, 149}
Victory!^9| 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, ^|9my friend Monsieur Abgottº^9|, ^|9in your art of arts,^9| to ^|9your myº^9| cost as well as I do, and don't try to hide it, the penal lots I am now poking at) and the wheeze sort of was you should (if you were as bould a stroke now as the curate that christened you, sonny douth-the-candle!) repopulate the land of your birth and count up your progeny by the hungered head and the angered thousand but you thwarted
{f39, 189}
the wious pish of your cogodparents, soph, ^|s+9on among^s+|9| countless occasions of failing ^|9|x(for, said you, I will ^|~elencate elenchate^~|)º^{x|9| |9}and have added, adding to the malice of your transgressingº, yes, and changing its nature (you see I have read your theology ^|~unread for you^~|),º ^|~by _unreadcating alternating^~|9| the morosity of ^|9your my^9| delectations — a philtred love, trysting by tantrums, small peace in ppenmark — ^|9to ^|~among with^{~|9| |9}your myº^9| lubbock's other fear pleasures of a butler's life, sensibility, sponsability, passibility and probability, 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 countless catchaleens, the mannish as many as the minneful, ^|9accomplished women, ^|aindeed ^|~freshly fully^~| educanded,^a| far from being old ^|a|band not deterred eitherº by bad weatherº^{b| |~}when^~| consumed by an an amorous passionº^a| and richº behind ^|~their^~| dream of arrivismeº if they have only their honour ^|~left^~|,º^9| congested around and about you for acres and roods and poles or perches, ^|9thick as the fluctuant sands of Chalwador,^9| struggling to possess themselves of your boosh, one son of Sorge for all daughters of Anguish, ^|9|xsolus cum sola sive ^|~cuncti coram omnibus, cuncties cum omnibobs^~| (I'd have been the best man for you, myself),º^x|9| mutely aying for that natural knot, ^|9debituary vases or vessels preposterous,^9| for what would not have cost you ten bolivars of collarwork or the price of one ping pang, just a lilt, let us trillt, of the oldest song in the wooed woodworld (two-we! to-one!), accompanied by a plain gold band! Hail! Hail! Her eye's so gladsome we'll all take shares in the bridegroom!

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, a jophet in your own absence, 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
{f39, 190}
of sweettempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst, but it never stphruck your mudhead's
{f10, 150}
obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I'll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you ^|9weep cry^9| over, the more bullbeef 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 with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.

^|9|+O,º by the way, yes!^+|9| Another thing recurs to me. You, let me tell you ^|9|+withº the utmost politeness^+|9|, were very ordinarily designed, your birthwrong was, to ^|9fall in with Plan and^9| do a certain office (what, I will not tell you) in a certain holy office (nor will I say where) during certain agonising office hours ^|9|+(a clerical party all to yourself)^+|9| from such a year to such an hour on such and such a date at so and so much a week pro anno ^|9(Guinness'sº, may I remind, were just agulp for you,º ^|afailing in which you might have taken the scales off boilers likeº ^|~the any^~| boskop ofº Yorek^a|)^9| and do your little thruppenny bit right here in our place of burden^|9, your bourne of travail and ville of tares,º^9| where after a divine's prodigence you drew the first watergasp in your lifeterm, from the crib where you once was bit to the crypt you'll be twice as shy of, same as we, long of us, ^|9|~though where^~| you were as popular as an ^|~Armenian armenial^~| with the faithful,º^{9| |~9}where and^~|9| you set fire to my tailcoat ^|~9and I'll when I^~|9| held the paraffin smoker under yours (I hope that ^|~9at least is chimney's^~|9| clear) but, slackly shirking both your bullet and your billet, you beat it backwards like Boulanger from Galway (but he combed the grass against his stride) to sing us a song of alibi, nomad, ^|9homebreaker, ^|xhairytyke,º^x|9| mooner by lamplight, antinos, shemming amid everyone's repressed laughter to conceal your scatchophily by mating, like a thoroughpaste prosodite, masculine monosyllables of the same numerical mus, an Irish emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crooked
{f39, 191}
sixpenny stile, an unfrillfrocked quackfriar, you (will you for the ^|9love of Shikespoor laugh of Scheekspair^9| just help ^|9me mine^9| with the epithet?) semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank!

Shall we follow each others a steplonger whiles our liege is taking his refreshment?

There grew up beside you, amid our orisons of the speediest, in Novena Lodge, Novara Avenue, in ^|9Etwaspriduum-am-Bummel Patripodium-am-Bummel,^9| oaf, outofwork, one remove from an unwashed savage, on his keeping and in yours, that
{f10, 151}
other, Immaculatus, ^|9from head to foot, sir,^9| that pure one, he who was well known to celestine circles before he sped aloft, ^|9our handsome young spiritual physician that was to be, seducing ^|aevery eachº^a| sense to selfwilling ^|acelibacy celebesty^a|, ^|athe most winning counterfeuille on our incomeshare lotetree,^a|9| a chum of the ^|9angels angelets^9|, a youth ^|9they those reporters^9| so tickerly wanted as gamefellow that they asked his mother for little earp brupper to let him tome to Tindertarten, pease, and bing his scooter 'long and 'tend they were all real brothers in the big justright home where Dodd lives, ^|9|s+just to coax the life out of him and pat and pass him one with other like musk from hand to hand,^s+|9| that mothersmothered model, that goodlooker with not a flaw whose spiritual toilettes were the talk of half the town, ^|9|xfor ^|asunset ^|~sunsetted sunset^~|a| wear and ^|anightfall nightfallen^a| use and ^|adaybreak daybroken^a| donning and nooncheon stroke and showing and ^|ateatime the very thing ^|~to tease at teatime for teasetime,^{~|a|x|9| |~9}and but^~|9| him you laid low with one hand one fine May ^|9morning^9| in the Meddle of your Might, your bosom foe^|9, because he mussed your speller on you or because he cut a pretty figure in the focus of your frontispecs^9| (not one did you slay, no, but a continent!), to find out how his innards worked!

^|9⇒^9| Ever read of that greatgrand landfather of our visionbuilders, Baaboo, the bourgeoismeister, who thought to touch both himmels at the punt of his risen stiffstaff and how wishywashy sank
{f39, 192}
the waters his thought? ^|9|aor the heretic Ever thought of ^|~the that^~| hereticalist^a| Marcon and the two scissymaidies ^|~or and^~| how bulkily he shat the Ructions gunorrhal?º^9| Ever hear of that foxy, that lupo and that monkax and the virgin heir of the Morrisons, eh, blethering ape?

Malingerer in luxury, ^|9|+collector general,^+|9| what has Your Lowness done in the mealtime with all the hamilkcars of cooked vegetables, the hatfuls of stewed fruit, the suitcases of coddled ales, the Parish funds, me schamer, man, that you kittycoaxed so flexibly out of charitable butteries by yowling heavy with a hollow voice drop of your horrible awful poverty of mind ^|9|xso as you couldn't even pledge a crown of Thorne's to pawn a coat off Trevi's^x|9| and as how you was bad no end, so you was, so whelp you Sinner Pitre and Sinner Poule, with the chicken's gape and pas mal de siècle which, by the by, Reynaldo, is the ordinary emetic French for grenadier's drip. To let you have your plank and your bonewash (O, the hastroubles you lost!), to give you your pound of platinum and a thousand thongs a year (O, you were excruciated, in honour bound to the cross of your own fiction!), to let you have your Sarday spree and holinight sleep ^|9(fame wouldº come to you twixt a sleep ^|~& and^~| a wake)^9| and leave to lie till Paraskivee and the cockcock crows for Danmark (O, Jonathan, your estomach!). ^|9Weep The simian has no sentiment secretions but weep^9| cataracts for all me, Pain the Shamman! Oft in the smelly night will they wallow for a clutch of the famished hand, I say,
{f10, 152}
them bearded jezebelles you hired to rob you, while on your sodden straw impolitely you encored (Airish and nawboggaleesh!) those hornmade ivory dreams you reved of ^|9|xthe Ruth you called your companionate, a beauty from the bible,º^x|9| the flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments of Marylebone. But the dormer moonshee smiled selene and the lightthrowers knickered: who's whinging we? ^|9Comport yourself, you inconsistency!^9| 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
{f39, 193}
you squandered among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a hottentot of dulpeners crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Yes? Yes? Yes? ^|9Holy wax and holifierº!^9| Don't tell me, Leon of the fold, that you are not a loanshark! Look up, old ^|9jap sooty^9|, be advised by ^|9me mux^9| and take your medicine! ^|9The Goodº Doctor mulled it. ^|~And does marvels for those gripings of yours.^~| Mix it twice ^|ain the mealtimes ^|bat your mealtimes before ^|~repasture repastures^{~|b|a| |~}& and^~| powder threeº times a day. ^|~It's It does marvels for your gripingsº and it's^~| fine for the solitary worm.^9|

^|9⇒^9| Let me finish! Just a little judas tonic, my ghem of all jokes, to make you go green in the gazer. Do you hear what I'm seeing, hammet? And remember that golden silence gives consent, Mr Anklegazer! Cease to be civil, learn to say nay! Whisht! Come here till I tell you a wig in your ear. ^|9Iggri, I say, the ^|abooseliers booseleers^a|!º^9| Look! Do you see your dial in the rockingglass, Herr Studiosus? Look well! Bend down a stigmy till I! It's secret! ^|9|x|~It's We'll do^~| a whisper drive^|~., for^{~|x| |~}If if^~| the barishnyas ^|~knew got a twitter of it^~| they'd tell the housetops ^|~& and then^~| all ^|xB_unread Cadbury^x| wouldº go crackers.º^9| I had it from Lamppost Shawe. And he had it from the Mullah. And Mull took it from a Bluecoat schooler. And Gay Socks jot it from Potaupheu's wife. And Rantipoll tipped the wink from old Mrs Tinbullet. And as for her, she was confussed by pro-Brother Thacolicus. And the good brother feels he would need to defecate you. And the Flimsy Follettes are simply beside each other. And Kelly, Kenny and Keogh are up up and in arms. That a cross may crush me if I refuse to believe in it. That I may rock anchor through the ages if I hope it's not true. That the host may choke me if I beneighbour you without my charity! In your ear. Sh! Shem, you are. Sh! You are mad!

He points the deathbone and the quick are still. ^|9|+Insomnia,º somnia somniorum. — Awmawm.^+|9|

^|9MUSTEUS MERCIUS^9| (of hisself): Domine, vopiscus! My fault, his fault, a kingship through a fault! Pariah, cannibal Cain, I who oathily forswore the womb that bore you and the paps I sometime sucked, you who ever since have been one black mass of jigs and jimjams, haunted by a convulsionary sense
{f10, 153}
of not having been or being all that I might have been or you meant to becoming,
{f39, 194}
bewailing like a man that innocence which I could not defend like a woman, lo, it is to you then, and thank Movies from the innermost depths of my still attrite heart for ^|9|+(though that royal one has not yet drunk a gouttelette from his consummation and the flowerpot on the pole, the spaniel pack and their quarry, theº retainers and the public house proprietor have not budged a millimetre and all that has been done has yet to be done and done again, when's day's woe, and lo, you're doomed, joyday dawns and, la, you dominate)^+|9| it is to you, firstborn and firstfruit of woe, to me, branded sheep, to you, pick of the wastepaperbasket, to you alone, windblasted tree of the knowledge of beautiful and evil, ay, to me, unseen blusher in an obscene coalhole, because ye left from me, because ye laughed on me, because, O me lonly son, ye are forgetting me! that our turfbrown mummy is acoming, alpilla, beltilla, ciltilla, deltilla, running with her tidings, ^|+9all old^+|9| the news of the great big world, sonnies had a scrap, woewoewoe! bab's baby walks at seven months, waywayway! bride leaves her raid at Punchestime, stud stoned before a racecourseful, two belles that make the one appeal, dry yanks will visit old sod, and fourtiered skirts are up, mesdames, ^|9|+while ^|aParis ^|bParimiknee Parimiknie^b|a| wears popular short legs,º^+|9| and twelve hows to mix a tipsy wake, did ye hear, colt Cooney? did ye ever, filly Fortescue? with a beck, with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, rocks drops in her tachie, ^|+9tramtickets tramtokens^+|9| in her hair, all waived to a point and then all inuendation, 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
{f39, 195}
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!

He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak. ^|9|+

—^+|9|