Ulysses
apart from circumstantial evidence.
On this knotty point however the views of the pair,
poles apart as they were both in schooling and everything
else with the marked difference in their respective ages,
clashed.
—Has been? the more experienced of the two object-
ed, sticking to his original point with a smile of unbelief.
I’m not so sure about that. That’s a matter for everyman’s
opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the
business, I beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is,
to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine
forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it’s
the big question of our national poet over again, who pre-
cisely wrote them like Hamlet and Bacon, as, you who know
your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn’t
tell you. Can’t you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir
it. And take a piece of that bun. It’s like one of our skipper’s
bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what he hasn’t got.
Try a bit.
—Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental or-
gans for the moment refusing to dictate further.
Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom
thought well to stir or try to the clotted sugar from the bot-
tom and reflected with something approaching acrimony on
the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lucrative) work.
To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay
did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they
were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts,
dramatic evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by