-- 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 gutter sheet not to mention paddy kelly's budget, pue's occurrences and our watchful friend the skibereen 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 cigarette case. false lull. something quite ordinary.