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hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness be-
cause meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like
those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any
ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long
bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when
all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself
couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale
whoppers other fellows coined about him.
—Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention,
he resumed. Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often,
met with. Giants, though that is rather a far cry, you see
once in a way, Marcella the midget queen. In those wax-
works in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they
are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten their
legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he
proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline
of the sinews or whatever you like to call them behind the
right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so
long cramped up, being adored as gods. There’s an example
again of simple souls.
However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying
adventures (who reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Led-
widge, when he occupied the boards of the Gaiety when
Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the
Flying Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of ad-
mirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to
hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse,
on the stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains) there
was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he conced-