No More Learning

The _New York World_ cabled for a
special. Remember that time?

Professor MacHugh nodded.

--_New York World_, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw
hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and
the rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?

--Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that
cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.
You know Holohan?

--Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.

--And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for
the corporation. A night watchman.

Stephen turned in surprise.

--Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?

--Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind
the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius
Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away.
Have you _Weekly Freeman_ of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?

He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.

--Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have
you got that? Right.

The telephone whirred.

A DISTANT VOICE


--I'll answer it, the professor said, going.

--B is parkgate. Good.

His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.

--T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon
gate.

The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his
waistcoat.

--Hello? _Evening Telegraph_ here. . . Hello? . . . Who's there? . . . Yes. . .
Yes. . . Yes.

--F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi,
Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F. A. B. P.
Got that? X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.

The professor came to the inner door.

--Bloom is at the telephone, he said.

--Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's
publichouse, see? CLEVER, VERY


--Clever, Lenehan said. Very.

--Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody
history.

Nightmare from which you will never awake.

--I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the
besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and
myself.

Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:

--Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.

--History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was
there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of
an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the
leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the _Star. _
Now he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He
was all their daddies!

--The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.

--Hello? . . . Are you there? . . . Yes, he's here still. Come across
yourself.

--Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. He
flung the pages down.

--Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke.

--Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.

Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.

--Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers
were up before the recorder?

--O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home
through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that
cyclone last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it
turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or
Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!

--They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.
Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those
fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan.
Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.

His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you
write it then?

RHYMES AND REASONS


Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be
some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same,
looking the same, two by two.

_. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . la tua pace
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . che parlar ti piace
. . . . mentreche il vento, come fa, si tace. _

He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in
russet, entwining, _per l'aer perso_, in mauve, in purple, _quella
pacifica oriafiamma_, gold of oriflamme, _di rimirar fe piu ardenti. _
But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth
south: tomb womb.

--Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.

SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY. . .


J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.

--My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false
construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for
the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away
with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and
Edmund Burke?
Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss,
Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery
guttersheet not to mention _Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences_
and our watchful friend _The Skibbereen Eagle_. Why bring in a master
of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the
newspaper thereof. LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE


--Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his
face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas.
Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!

--Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K. C. , for example.

--Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it
in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.

--He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for
. . . But no matter.

J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:

--One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life
fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide,
the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him. _And in the porches of mine
ear did pour. _


By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other
story, beast with two backs?

--What was that? the professor asked.

ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM


--He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice
as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the _lex talionis_. And he
cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.

--Ha.

--A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!

Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.

False lull. Something quite ordinary.

Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match,
that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives. A POLISHED
PERIOD


J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words:

--He said of it: _that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and
terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and
of prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor
has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring
deserves to live, deserves to live. _

His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.

--Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.

--The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.

--You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen.

Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He
took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles
Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy,
saying:

--Muchibus thankibus.

A MAN OF HIGH MORALE


--Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said
to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal
hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it.
She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee
interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to
ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have
been pulling A. E. 's leg. He is a man of the very highest morale,
Magennis.

Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say
about me? Don't ask.

--No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside.
Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I
ever heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical
society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had
spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days),
advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.

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. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy
beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he
looked (though he was not) a dying man.

His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards
Stephen's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His
unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his
withering hair. Still seeking, he said:

--When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply.
Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.

He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.
Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.

He began:

_--Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in
listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment
since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported
into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from
this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the
speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses. _

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes
ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. _And let our
crooked smokes. _ Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand
at it yourself?

_--And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian
highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard
his words and their meaning was revealed to me. _

FROM THE FATHERS


It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted
which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good
could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.

_--Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You
have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and
our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise
furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from
primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong
history and a polity. _

Nile.

Child, man, effigy.

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple
in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.

_--You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and
mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra.
Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel
is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her
arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at
our name. _

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it
boldly:

_--But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and
accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will
and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have
brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed
the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the
Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come down
with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in
his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw. _

He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.

OMINOUS--FOR HIM!

J. J. O'Molloy said not without regret:

--And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.

--A sudden--at--the--moment--though--from--lingering--illness--often--
previously--expectorated--demise, Lenehan added. And with a great future
behind him.

The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering
up the staircase.

--That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted. Gone with the
wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of
porches. The tribune's words, howled and scattered to the four winds.
A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all
that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.

I have money.

--Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I
suggest that the house do now adjourn?

--You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment?
Mr O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug,
metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.

--That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour
say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To
which particular boosing shed? . . . My casting vote is: Mooney's!

He led the way, admonishing:

--We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes,
we will not. By no manner of means.

Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his
umbrella:

--Lay on, Macduff!

--Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the
shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?

He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.

--Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are
they? That's all right.

He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office. LET US HOPE


J. J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:

--I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.

He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.

--Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it?