"You will say it is most unenglish"

(158.19-160.24)  With the Mookse and the Gripes at a stalemate of sorts, today's reading opens with the two figures retiring for the evening (or for good).  The "tears of night" begin to fall, and the Mookse and the Gripes are each carried away by a woman.  (The secondary sources indicate that these two women will be reappearing in a later chapter.)  The narrator says that the Mookse "had reason" and that the Gripes "got wrong," indicating that the Mookse was on the "right" side of the debate.

In the place of where the two stood, on either side of the bank, remains a tree and a stone, and Nuvoletta alone remains on the scene.  In a beautiful passage, she vanishes, sending a tear ("a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears . . . for it was a leaptear") into the stream, which has now turned into a river and is named "Missisliffi" (for both "Mississippi" and "Liffey")  The river runs on, "lapping as though her heart was brook."

This concludes the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes, which I've found to be especially entertaining and fascinating.  Campbell and Robinson give a good analysis of the fable and its place within the overall answer to the eleventh question, but my quick summary of it is that it demonstrates our tendency to become too inwardly focused and overly concerned with issues that are relatively unimportant.  We waste our time battling over trivial things, oblivious to the beauty and wonder of life that is almost waiting to be uncovered.  Within the context of the eleventh question, the fable seems to indicate that we're too caught up with our own relatively insignificant issues to offer any significant assistance to anyone in need. 

With the fable completed, the professor Shaun dismisses his class and moves on to the next subject in his answer.  He begins by patting himself on the back, saying that he has "successfully explained to you my own naturalborn rations" and calling himself a genius.  He then begins to discuss a colleague, Gnaccus Gnoccovitch, who seems to be another stand-in for Wyndham Lewis (who figured in a passage a few days ago).  Shaun says that Gnoccovitch should move to a remote island, then goes off on a digression about trees.  Getting back to his subject, Shaun takes a few more jabs at some other colleagues or associates, then spurs himself onward:  "But I further, feeling a bit husky in my truths."  This seems like a good place to stop for the evening.