—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats’ touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s morrice with caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
Everyman His Own Wife
or
A Honeymoon in the Hand
(a national immorality in three orgasms)
by
Ballocky Mulligan
He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:
—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
He read, marcato:
—Characters:
| Toby Tostoff (a ruined Pole). |
| Crab (a bushranger). |
| Medical Dick | |
| and | (two birds with one stone). |
| Medical Davy |
| Mother Grogan (a watercarrier). |
| Fresh Nelly |
| and |
| Rosalie (the coalquay whore) |
He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift
