Page 737 - ULYSSES
P. 737

Ulysses


                                  bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America.
                                  Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the
                                  composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:


                                         —Pope Peter’s but a pissabed.
                                         A man’s a man for a’ that.

                                     Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now
                                  appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing
                                  their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had
                                  just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec
                                  Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his
                                  intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles
                                  and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to
                                  express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a

                                  project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had
                                  been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the
                                  company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had
                                  printed that day at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend printed
                                  in fair italics:  Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator.
                                  Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was
                                  to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form
                                  the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop
                                  Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest
                                  task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well,


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