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repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce.
The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console
him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new
exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an ex-
otic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and
flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to
a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam
vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant,
acid and inoperative.
The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling
the ceremonial usage of the Sublime Porte by the second fe-
male infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence,
who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir
had been born, When he had betaken himself to the wom-
en’s apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the
afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for do-
mestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent
in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates,
chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and
hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence
which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician
rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues.
In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endea-
vouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was
too propitious for the display of that discursiveness which
seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent.
Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated:
the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesare-
an section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that