Page 740 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won
hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary’s
excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose
also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however

made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the
classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to
him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talis ac
tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matresfamiliarum
nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus
ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum
magnopere anteponunt, while for those of ruder wit he drove
home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest
glade, the farmyard drake and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being
indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied
himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat
upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the
company lavished their encomiums upon the project he
had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed
as he was at a passage that had late befallen him, could not
forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now
perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves
and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil

739 of 1305