Page 1036 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

man supposing it was his own case he told, as people often
did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and
had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance
vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation

to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang
from the pen of our national poet) who expiated his
crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On
the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable
weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin
residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad
would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean
seas to draw the long bow about the schooner Hesperus
and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a
fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a
proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows
coined about him.
—Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure
invention, he resumed. Analogous scenes are occasionally,
if not often, met with. Giants, though that is rather a far
cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the midget queen. In
those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs,
as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t
straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles
here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion

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