LITMIR.BIZ

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bowed to a shape of air, announcing :

      — Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.

      — History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was there first. Thee was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies.

      — The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.

      — Hello?… Are you there?… Yes, he’s here still. Come across yourself.

      — Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.

      He flung the pages down.

      — Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.

      — Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

      Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.

      — Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up before the recorder…

      — O yes, J.J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!

      — They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan? Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense! Only in the halfpenny place!

      His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.

      Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then?

      RHYMES AND REASONS

      Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes : two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two.

      … … … … … … … .la tua pace

      … … … … … . .che parlar ti piace

      … .mentreche il vento, come fa, si tace.

      He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, per l’aer perso in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, in gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fè più ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night : mouth south : tomb womb.

      — Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

      SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY…

      J.J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.

      — My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery gutter sheet not to mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.

      LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE

      — Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!

      — Well, J.J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K. C., for example.

      — Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes. Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.

      — He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for… But no matter.

      J.J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly :

      — One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.

      And in the porches of mine ear did pour.

      By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?

      — What was that? the professor asked.

      ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM

      — He spoke on the law of evidence, J.J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the Vatican.

      — Ha.

      — A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!

      Pause. J.J. O’Mollooy too kout his cigarette case.

      False lull. Something quite ordinary.

      Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.

      I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

      A POLISHED PERIOD

      J.J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words :

      — He said of it : that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and prophecy which if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.

      His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.

      — Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.

      — The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

      — You like it? J.J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.

      Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J.J. O’Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying : — Muchibus thankibus.

      A MAN OF HIGH MORALE

      — Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J.J. O’Molloy said to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets : A. E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.

      Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don’t ask.

      — No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarette case aside. Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F. Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.

      He turned towards Myles Crawford and said :

      — You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.

      — He is sitting withim T Healy, J.J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission.

      — He is sitting with a sweet thing in a child’s frock, Myles Crawford said. Go on. Well?

      — It was the speech, mark you, the professor said,

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