Page 252 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can
imagine the style of his discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said,

rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford
said, in a child’s frock. Go on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a
finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring
in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath
but pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new
movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak,
therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be
on, raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with
trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black
rims, steadied them to a new focus.

IMPROMPTU

In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a
sickbed. That he had prepared his speech I do not believe
for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall.

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