Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/136

Rh 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?

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.

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.

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.