Page 738 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make
no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both.
‘Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of
the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his

hearers that he had been led into this thought by a
consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory
and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn
were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the
balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from
defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved
him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded
of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many
agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest
bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an
uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the
embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might
multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable
jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at
hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.
To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a
suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain
counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had
resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of
Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a

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