"I'll rattattatter it out of him"

(455.30-457.24)  With his time nearing an end, Shaun has grown hungry once again.  "But I fill twice as stewhard what I felt before when I'm after eating a few natives," he says.  The girls accordingly set before him a "hissing hot luncheon."  Shaun, with his tremendous appetite, eats a lot again (consistent with what was reported in the last chapter).  As the description goes on, he ends the mass which he began at the beginning of the chapter, saying, "Eat a missal lest" (paraphrasing, as McHugh notes, the Latin ending of the Catholic Mass, "Ite, missa est.").  Of particular note in this passage is the way that the language signifying the food Shaun eats breaks apart as Shaun chews that food, reducing it to a "clingleclangle":  "fudgem [fudge], kates [steak] and eaps [peas] and naboc [bacon] and erics [rices] and oinnos [onions] on kingclud [duckling] and xoxxoxo [cabbage -- the x's stand for consonants and the o's stand for vowels] and xooxox xxoxoxxoxxx [boiled protestants -- potatoes, as Tindall notes]."

Feeling "fustfed like fungstif" (stuffed like Falstaff), it's time for Shaun to set off and make his mail rounds.  He also has to collect "extraprofessional postages" owed to him by Thaddeus Kelly, Esq., who mailed "nondesirable printed matter."  Shaun is determined to get what Kelly owes him.  "I'll knock it out of him!" he says.  "I'll stump it out of him!  I'll rattattatter it out of him before I'll quit the doorstep of old Con Connolly's residence!  By the horn of twenty of both of the two Saint Collopys, blackmail him I will in arrears or my name's not pentitent Ferdinand!"

Now Shaun really has to be going, for if he doesn't leave, he says, he'd be tempted to become a priest.  With his hunger "weighed" and his anger "suaged," he tells the girls not to wait for him and boasts that he'll deliver a swift heel to the face of any "Clod Dewvale" who tries to get in his way.  "And you'll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by," he tells the girls.  "Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday."  Before they all know it, he concludes, they'll be lining the welcoming route for "his Diligence Majesty, our longdistance laird that likes creation."

"Toborrow and toburrow and tobarrow!"

(453.29-455.29)  "Lo, improving ages wait ye!" says Shaun at the beginning of today's reading, letting them know that better times are on the way.  He adds that "when yon clouds are dissipated after their forty years shower, the odds are, we shall all be hooked and happy, communionistically, among the fieldnights eliceam, élite of the elect, in the land of lost time."  The Lenten season is over, and it's time to live.  With these optimistic words, Shaun begins to take his leave.  "So for e'er fare the welt!" he says.  "Parting's fun.  Take though, the wringle's thine, love.  This dime doth trost thee from mine alms.  Goodbye, swisstart, goodbye!"

But Shaun isn't quite finished with the girls yet.  As he walks away, the narrator says that something "of a sidesplitting nature must have occurred to westminstrel Jaunathaun," for he began to laugh as he was walking away.  Hearing Shaun laugh, the girls begin to laugh as well.  Hearing this, Shaun turns around to see what's happening.  "So they stood still and wondered," the narrator says.  "Till first he sighed (and how ill soufered!) and they nearly cried (the salt of the earth!) after which he pondered and finally he replied[.]"

"There is some thing more," Shaun says in that reply.  "A word apparting and shall the heart's tone be silent."  Once again, he says, "Fare thee well, fairy well!"  But he does add that it will be necessary for them to pray while he's gone:  "It's prayers in layers all the thumping time."  This sets Shaun down a path of thought concerning heaven and earth.  "No petty family squabbles Up There nor homemade hurricanes in our Cohortyard, no cupahurling nor apuckalips nor no puncheon jodelling nor no nothing," he says.  "Postmartem is the goods," he goes on to explain, noting that heaven is much better than "our crass, hairy and evergrim life."  We can't live forever, he explains, but part of us must surely do that:  "We may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs but we're presurely destined to be odd's without ends."  Shaun ends today's passage with a rather lyrical flourish, noting that the miseries of our earthly life pale in comparison to "the Hereweareagain Gaieties of the Afterpiece" that we will encounter when "the Royal Revolver of these real globoes lets regally fire of his mio colpo for the chrisman's pandemon to give over."  After the Judgment Day, Shaun says finally, we will experience "Mark Time's Finist Joke":  "Allspace in a Notshall" (putting all of space into a nutshell, or nothing).

"we feel all serene"

(451.27-453.29)  Today's reading begins with Shaun wrapping up his description of his imagined future life with Isabel.  He pictures himself planting her "on the electric ottoman in the lap of lechery," in "the most uxuriously furnished compartments, with sybarate chambers."  He would also continue to rake in wealth:  "I'd run my shoestring into near a million or so of them as a firstclass dealer and everything."  He does worry, though, that his "alltoolyrical health" might suffer while he's "woabling around with the hedrolics in the coold amstophere till the borting that would perish the Dane and his chapter of accidents."  He says that he's telling the truth -- "I earnst." -- just as he punctuates this paragraph with a sneeze:  "Schue!"  (I myself am getting over a cold and, appropriately enough, sneezed as I read this part while going through McHugh's annotations.  Chalk this up as another great example of Joyce's mastery of onomatopoeia.)

With this daydream completed, Shaun returns to the task at hand.  He says that he recently had been thinking about "how long I'd like myself to be continued at Hothelizod.  His impending trip is making him a bit sentimental.  "'[T]is transported with grief I am this night sublime . . . to go forth, frank and hoppy . . . from our nostorey house, upon this benedictine errand," he says.  But, he recognizes, his task is "historically the most glorious mission, secret or profund, through all the annals of our -- as you so often term her -- efferfreshpainted livy."  He is going to meet "the overking of Hither-on-Thither Erin himself."  Recognizing that "[t]he Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin," he knows that someone suitable will come to take his place at home while he is gone:  "We only wish everyone was as sure of anything in this watery world as we are of everything in the newlywet fellow that's bound to follow" (that newlywet fellow may even be Shaun himself).

Having come to terms with this inevitable departure (and return), Shaun says, "Well, to the figends of Annanmeses with the wholebuelish business!"  He declares that he's "beginning to get sunsick," for he's "not half Norawain for nothing," so it might be time for him to get moving.  While he's gone, he asks that the girls avoid creating a scene while mourning him (like the mourners do in "Finnegan's Wake"), saying, "I don't want yous to be billowfighting your biddy moriarty duels, gobble gabble, over me till you spit stout, you understand."  His leaving is not really anything to mourn, and he instead suggests that his absence will serve as "my gala bene fit."

"Birdsnests is birdsnests."

(449.26-451.27)  Today's reading is another in a series of readings in which I've found myself ending mid-paragraph.  Perhaps as a testament to Shaun's penchant for being long-winded, much of this chapter seems to consist of multi-page paragraphs, so it's become increasingly difficult for me to break the readings into two-page segments.  I broke off today's reading, for instance, three-quarters of the way down page 451.  The paragraph I'm in the middle of ends seven lines into page 452, but I've decided to cut it off rather than go the extra half-page or so tonight.  It might be dumb, but for the time being I'm trying to keep it as close to two pages per day as possible, or else I risk getting confused with where I'm supposed to read to or burned out.

Anyway, although Shaun said at the end of yesterday's reading that it was too late to stay since it was two o'clock in the morning, today's reading begins with him picking back up with the idea of him remaining home and living as a bird in a bush.  Shaun imagines that he could sit there safely, "laughing lazy at the sheep's lightning and turn a widamost ear dreamily to the drumming of snipers" until he watched the moon roll itself to sleep amid the clouds.  He then imagines himself as a fish, eager to "melt my belt for a dace feast of grannom with the finny ones," and "flashing down the swansway, leaps ahead of the swift MacEels, the big Gillaroo redfellows and the pursewinded carpers."  When seeking time alone, he'd recline by the river and alternately play a pipe, smoke a pipe, fish, and teach the "twittynice Dorian blackbudds" (the 29 girls) how to sing.

"But enough of greenwood's gossip," says Shaun, collecting himself.  "Birdsnests is birdsnests."  He now pictures himself amassing great wealth, sinking "every dolly farting" into investments and asserting that "I'm the gogetter that'd make it pay like cash registers as sure as there's a pot on a pole."  After all, he says that "mony makes multimony like the brogues and the kishes."  This great wealth would help Shaun to fully win over Isabel:  "And before you knew where you weren't, I stake my ignitial's divy, cash-and-cash-can-again, I'd be staggering humanity and loyally rolling you over, my sow-white sponse."  He would spoil Isabel altogether, he says, and he concludes today's reading by adding, "There'd be no standing me, I tell you."

"All ends vanishing!"

(447.21-449.26)  We pick up today with Shaun offering more subjects for the girls to research.  "Explain why there is such a number of orders of religion in Asea!" he says, for instance.  "Why such an order number in preference to any other number?  Why any number in any order at all?"  Referencing the legend (noted by McHugh) that on a particular day of the year Ireland is visible from Spain, Shaun asks, "Where is the greenest island off the black coats of Spaign?" 

Soon, Shaun returns to the topic of dear dirty Dublin's problems, and he suggests an experiment to the girls.  He asks them to head to Aston Quay in central Dublin and "take a good onging gaze into any nearby shopswindow you may select at."  After looking in the window for 32 minutes, he tells them to "proceed to turn aroundabout on your heehills toward the previous causeway."  If they do, he says, "I shall be very cruelly mistaken indeed if you will not be jushed astunshed to see how you will be meanwhile durn weel topcoated with kakes of slush occasioned by the mush jam of the cross and blackwalls traffic in transit."  Fixed on this subject and looking at a complaint book, he asks, "Where's Cowtends Kateclean, the woman with the muckrake?"  He also wonders when "the W.D. face of our sow muckloved d'lin" will get "its wellbelavered white like l'pool and m'chester."  When will the city get hospitals, he asks, and who will advocate on its behalf?  "The royal commissioners!" he suggests mockingly.  "'Tis an ill weed blows no poppy good."  The job should fall to Shaun:  "If I hope not charity what profiteers me?  Nothing!"  But, he tells the "liddle giddles" (the little girls, who are like Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll's model for the title heroine in Alice in Wonderland), he has been advised by "the smiling voteseeker who's now snoring elued" (HCE) to leave the country until he can get a government order granting him a car, new shoes, and time to recover at a spa.

With this thought concluded for the moment, Shaun once again addresses Isabel, "Sis dearest."  "O, the vanity of Vanissy!" Shaun says.  "All ends vanishing!  Pursonally, Grog help me, I am in no violent hurry."  He doesn't want to leave Ireland, and he says he would turn back on his journey "if I could only spoonfind the nippy girl of my heart's appointment, Mona Vera Toutou Ipostila, my lady of Lyons, to guide me by gastronomy under her safe conduct" (McHugh notes that Joyce collaborated with Stuart Gilbert on his essay, Prolegomena to Work in Progress, in which Gilbert explains this passage by saying that it means that Shaun would like to find a girl who has a job to support him).  He'd like to stay where he is, like a bird happily living in a bush, but it's too late, for the "owledclock . . .  has just gone twoohoo the hour."

"mortinatality"

(445.26-447.21)  As his sermon continues, Shaun shifts away from his offensive against Isabel's imagined lover and turns toward a kind of daydream.  He says that he will return from overseas a "nuncio."  While he's away, he'll think of Isabel "with deepest of love and recollection by rintrospection," for, as he says, "a big corner fill you do in this unadulterated seat of our affections."  Upon his return, he intends to take her as his lover:  "Aerwenger's my breed so may we uncreepingly multipede like the sands on Amberhann!"  If he's proved to Isabel's "sallysfashion" that he's "a man of Armor" (both a tough man of war and a tender man of amour, or love), he'd like to see her "isabellis" (the body of Isabel, including her belly . . . McHugh notes this word coincides with the French "déshabillé," which translates to "undressed," further cementing the fact that Shaun wants to see Isabel naked).  If he survives his trip, Shaun continues, he'll take her hand in his and cover her checks with "zuccherikissings."  With the two thus united, he says, "you will be there and then, in those happy moments of ouryour soft accord, rainkiss on me back, for full marks with shouldered arms."

"Slim ye, come clum with me and rally rats' roundup!" says Shaun, as he begins to explain how his union with Isabel will revolutionize Ireland.  "'Tis post purification we will, sales of work and social service, missus, completing our Abelite union by the adoptation of fosterlings."  The two will "pull of our working programme" and "circumcivicise all Dublin country."  Shaun is apparently already eager to memorialize his unrealized deeds, for he tells the girls, "Write me your essayes, my vocational scholars, but corsorily, dipping your nose in it, for Henrietta's sake, on mortinatality in the life of jewries and the sludge of King Haarington's at its height, running boulevards over the whole of it."  I like the word "mortinatality," for in mingling "mortality" and "natality," it encompasses death and birth and, by implication, all of human experience.  (McHugh also notes that Sir John Harington came up with the idea for a toilet, which also incorporates a universal human experience of sorts.)

The remainder of today's passage (and it looks like at least the very beginning of tomorrow's) consists of subjects Shaun would like the girls/vocational scholars to cover.  "I'd write it all by mownself if I only had here of my jolly young watermen," Shaun notes (for those like me who were in the dark, McHugh points out that a Waterman is a type of pen).  Initial subjects of interest to Shaun include cleaning the streets and the exploits of various religious orders ("the Mirist fathers' brothers," "White Friars," and "them caponchin trowlers").  More to come tomorrow.

"Hay, dot's a doll yarn!"

(443.16-445.25)  Shaun continues with his offensive against the imagined lover of Isabel by saying, "I'll not be complete in fighting lust until I contrive to half kill your Charley you're my darling for you."  He goes on to describe this man, whom he compares to "Rollo the Gunger" (or Rolf Ganger, who, McHugh notes, was the first Duke of Normandy and thus theoretically an ancestor of the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland).  McHugh suggests that the description could double as one of Joyce's father, while Tindall wonders whether it's describing Joyce himself.  It could be both, I suppose, and maybe also HCE:  "a man in brown around town," "well over or about fiftysix or so," "perhops five foot eight," "with a toothbrush moustache and jawcrockeries," "of course no beard," and "with tar's baggy slacks, obviously too roomy for him," among other colorful descriptors.  This man, with his "good job and pension in Buinness's" will engage Isabel in sophisticated talk about "our trip to Normandy" and the "filmacoulored featured at the Mothrapurl skrene about Michan and his lost angeleens."  He's not perfect, though, as he goes about "seeking relief in alcohol and so on" and has "a dash of railwaybrain, stale cough and an occasional twinge of claudication."

"So let it be a knuckle or an elbow, I hereby admonish you!" Shaun continues.  And if "there be no misconception," he adds, Isabel will have to deal with the baby while "the dirty old bigger'll be squealing through his coughin."  Shifting back to didactic mode for a moment, Shaun says, "The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime."  

The remainder of today's passage sees Shaun switching back and forth between threatening to punish Isabel for any misdeeds and threatening to seduce her.  "I'll have it in for you," he says.  "I'll teach you bed minners, tip for tap, to be playing your oddaugghter tangotricks with micky dazzlers if I find corseharis on your river-frock and the squirmside of your burberry lupitally covered with chiffchaff and shavings."  He can see through her anticipated excuses:  "Cutting chapel, were you?  and had dates with slickers in particular hotels, had we?  Lonely went to play your mother, isod?  You was wiffriends?  Hay, dot's a doll yarn!  Mark mean then!"  If she and her lover go walking upon the railway, Shaun says, "I'll goad to beat behind the bush!"  If Isabel will give her self to Shaun and satisfy his lusty urges, though, he'll overlook her indiscretions:  "I'll have plenary sadisfaction, plays the bishop, for your parital's indulgences if your my rodeo gell."  Otherwise, he'll "just draw my prancer and give you one splitpuck in the crupper."  At the end of today's reading, he says by way of a momentary conclusion that he'll be the one to greedily bottle up her beauty because he's the one with the pair of arms that "carry a wallop."

"We are all eyes."

(441.24-443.16)  The paragraph that comprises today and part of tomorrow's readings begins with Shaun feeling the effects of his fantasy at the end of yesterday's reading.  He shouts, kicks, and brays "as his voixehumanar swelled to great, clenching his manlies, so highly strong was he, man, and gradually quite warming to her" (McHugh notes that "vox humana" is Latin for "organ stop," indicating that the highly strung Shaun is grabbing his manly parts as his male organ swells).

Perhaps to deflect his attention, he goes on the offensive against an imagined paramour of Isabel, and he remains on this offensive for the duration of today's reading (and, I'm guessing, into tomorrow's).  "Divulge," shouts Shaun at the beginning of today's passage.  After the bit above, he resumes by telling Isabel to "divorce into me and say the curname in undress . . . of any lapwhelp or sleevemongrel who talks to you upon the road where he tuck you to be a roller."  The jealous Shaun needs to know who might be after Isabel, and he "don't care a tongser's tammany hang who the muck is nor twoo hoots in the corner nor three shouts on a hill."  He goes on to ensure that "as we value the very name in sister that as soon as we do possibly it will be a poor lookout for that insister."

Shaun asks Isabel (and perhaps the other girls) why the "insister" will "be a markt man from that hour."  When he doesn't get a reply, he somewhat uncharacteristically insults her, saying, "You are an ignoratis!"  He answers his own question, anyway, saying, "Because then probably we'll dumb well soon show him what the Shaun way is like how we'll go a long way towards breaking his outsider's face for him for making up to you with his bringthee balm of Gaylad and his singthee songs of Arupee."  And once Shaun's finished with his attack, he might "think strongly about giving the brotherkeeper into custody to the first police bubby cunstabless of Dora's Diehards in the field I might chance to follopon," or he may even bring him up for proceedings "before a bunch of magisrafes and twelve good and gleeful men."  This, Shaun said, would "prove more or less of an event and show the widest federal in my cup."

As a side note to today's reading, there's a famous story, perhaps most prominently noted in Richard Ellman's biography of Joyce, that as Joyce dictated parts of the Wake to Samuel Beckett, there was once a knock on the door.  Beckett didn't hear the knock, so when Joyce said, "Come in," Beckett wrote those words down, figuring that they were part of the text.  When later asked if he'd like to remove the unintended phrase, Joyce said, "Let it stand."  The story, if true, sheds light on the way Joyce sometimes relied upon luck or happenstance when composing the Wake.  I haven't yet come across the words "come in" in the text, but today's reading does include something close in this passage:

We'll he'll burst our his mouth like Leary to the Leinsterface and reduce he'll we'll ournhisn liniments to a poolp.  Open the door softly, somebody wants you, dear!  You'll hear him calling you, bump like a blizz, in the muezzin of the turkest night.  Come on now, pillarbox!  I'll stiffen your scribeall, broken reed!

At first, I thought that I'd found the sentence Ellman had mentioned.  Rather than "come in," though, it's, "Open the door softly, somebody wants you."  One could argue that it is out of place with the text around it, but, then again, it does flow into the following sentence, which begins, "You'll hear him calling you."  McHugh notes that in Arrah-na-Pogue, the character Sean the Post sings, "Open the dure softly, Somebody wants ye, dear," so this probably puts to rest my theory that this was the line Joyce unintentionally tossed in to his book.

Hugh B. Staples suggests that the "come in" line might be found on pages 222-223, where during the children's play we find the sentence, "Sammy, call on."  This would be Joyce telling Beckett to call on whoever's at the door.  This might be a better suspect than mine, but McHugh does note that the phrase could stand for "semicolon," and thus be "mere" verbal punctuation.  (In either case, maybe Joyce left in the unintended part, then later revised it to fit better within the text, both in terms of narrative and word play.)

"The inimitable in puresuet of the inevitable!"

(439.15-441.23)  Shaun resumes his sermon today.  He begins this new paragraph slowly, almost as if he's catching his breath, and takes a moment to admire the sound of his own voice (e.g., "And the topnoted delivery you'd expected be me invoice!").  He does acknowledge his own sinfulness, and hints that he may have inherited some of his father's lusty nature:  "I feel spirits of itchery outching out from all over me and only for the sludgehummer's force in my hand to hold them the darkens alone knows what'll who'll be saying of next."  Moving away from his "upperotic rogister," he goes back to dispensing his "brokerly advice . . . free of price."

After a couple bits of random advice (such as "Be vacillant over those vigilant who would leave you belave black on white."), Shaun turns his attention toward literature.  First, he says, "I'd burn the books that grieve you."  Then, he suggests reading material suitable for the girls:  the "Weekly Standerd"; classics like "Through Hell with the Papes . . . by the divine comic Denti Alligator"; "pious fiction" that has been "licensed and censered by our most picturesque prelates, Their Graces of Linzen and Petitbois, bishops of Hibernites"; and "Sifted science" such as "Egg laid by Former Cock and With Flageolettes in Send Fanciesland."

Shaun goes on to dispense more random advice (including "The lad who brooks no breaches lifts the lass that toffs a tailor.") before urging the girls (and Isabel in particular) to prize their virginity above all else:  "Sooner than part with that vestalite emerald of the first importance, descended to me by far from our family, which you treasure up so closely where extremes meet . . . , rather let the whole ekumene universe belong to merry Hal and do whatever his Mary well likes."  He then takes a detour while discussing marriage and overeating.  Ultimately, though, he comes back to that virginity thing.  This time, he gives in to that lust that's a part of his nature.  "Guard that gem, Sissy, rich and rare, ses he," Shaun states.  "In this cold old worold who'll feel it?  Hum!"  Few will get to have sex with Isabel, Shaun suggests, but he imagines himself being one of those few:  "Sing him a ring.  Touch me low.  And I'll lech ye so, my soandso.  Show and show.  Show on show.  She.  Shoe.  Shone."

Tomorrow, we'll see if Shone/Shaun continues to go in this incestuous direction.

"his seat of unwisdom"

(437.16-439.14)  As Shaun's sermon continues, he spends less time offering seemingly random bits of advice and focuses more on developing certain themes.  Today's passage begins with Shaun saying, "Be a sportive."  Soon after he adds, "Stamp out bad eggs."  But then he strikes upon a particular pet subject for him when he brings up the "too friendly friend sort, Mazourikawitch or some other sukinsin of a vitch" after having cautioned the girls to avoid "furnished lodgers paying for their feed on tally with company and piano tunes."

Mazourikawitch is a Shem-type figure who Shaun fears may try to seduce the girls while Shaun is gone.  He paints a picture of the girl having gotten "used to basking in his loverslowlap, inordinately clad, moustacheteasing."  The man will seduce her, precipitating her downfall.  She'll move on to another fling and become a favorite subject of peeping toms and the local gossip.  Then, she'll find herself in "a whorable state of affairs altogether" when "the redcolumnists of presswritten epics, Peter Paragraph and Paulus Puff" snap scandalous photos of her, causing her to be no longer marriageable and ending with her bottoming out as a prostitute.

With all this in mind, Shaun says, "I'll have no college swankies . . . trespassing on your danger zone in the dancer years."  If he does catch any of the girls deviating from the prescribed course, he says, "I'll tackle you to feel if you have a few devils in you."

We've now reached the conclusion of what looks to be the opening salvo of Shaun's sermon.  More to come tomorrow . . . .

"Berrboel brazenness!"

(435.12-437.16)  Shaun's sermon continues in today's pages (and tomorrow's).  As I noted yesterday, this passage is largely straightforward (and entertaining!), so I don't have any real summary or analysis to add at this point.  With that in mind, I'll just memorialize today's reading with a couple of my favorite bits from Shaun's monologue:

• "Put off the old man at the very font and get right on with the nutty sparker round the back."  (Perverting, as McHugh notes, the words of the Anglican baptism rite and tossing a little more dirt on HCE's grave.)
• "Stick wicks in your earshells when you hear the prompter's voice."  (Urging the girls to resist temptation, but also urging them to succumb to temptation, as McHugh notes that "wick" is a slang term for penis.)
• "Keep airly hores and the worm is yores."
• "While there's men-a'war on the say there'll be loves-o'women on the do."
• "When parties get tight for each other they lose all respect together."
• "You'll pay for each bally sorraday night every billing sumday morning."  (Pertinent wisdom for me, as I've just had an action-packed weekend.)
•  "Mades of ashens when you flirt spoil the lad but spare his shirt!"

"look before you leak, dears"

(433.10-435.12)  With his text for the mass in hand, Shaun (for convenience's sake, I'm probably going to all him by his actual name, and not Jaun, for most of this chapter) begins what might be called his sermon or homily.  For the first two pages, at least, this sermon consists primarily of instructions or admonishments for the girls to follow in their quest to lead good and virtuous lives.  (One amusing and notable digression occurs when Shaun inquires about the disappearance of some biscuits:  "And, by the bun, is it you goes bisbuiting His Esaus and Cos and then throws them bag in the box?  Why the tin's nearly empty.")  The advice is pedantic (would we expect anything less from the blustery Shaun?), and seems to flow out of Shaun's mouth with little concern for pace or order.

The sermon is straightforward (for Finnegans Wake) and its rambling length is part of the point (Shaun's trying to bludgeon as much as persuade), so I'll just point out a few of my favorite bits here:

• "Never park your brief stays in the men's convenience."
• "Where you truss be circumspicious and look before you leak, dears."  (Here, Shaun urges the girls to avoid the mistake of the two young women in the park, which occasioned HCE's downfall.)
• "Give back those stolen kisses; restaure those all-cotten glooves."
•  "Scenta Clauthes stiffstuffs your hose and heartsies full of temptiness."
• "For if the shorth of your skorth falls down to his knees pray how wrong will he look till he rises?  Not before Gravesend is commuted."

The passage for today ends with a man named Autist Algy (whom Shaun says "reappears" on the scene at this moment).  Algy seems to be keen to tempt the girls toward the proverbial flood, as he's "stated by the vice crusaders to be well known to all the dallytaunties" and will take his target to the "playguehouse," where he will slyly ask her to "be an artist's moral and pose in your nudies" before the four old men (here four "voluble old masters," Bottisilly, Titteretto, Vergognese, and Coraggio) and the dozen jurors/pub patrons ("the usual bilker's dozen of dowdycameramen").  "O the frecklessness of the giddies nouveautays!" Shem exclaims.

"Comeallyedimseldamsels"

(431.21-433.9)  Addressing Izzy, his "Sister dearest," Jaun says that he believes she will miss him when he moves along, but it is about time for him to shove off.  He explains to her that his sense that it's time to go comes from "the gross proceedings of your teachings in which we were raised, you sis, that used to write to us the exceeding nice letters for presentation."

Before Jaun goes, though, he has a message to deliver, and he will present it in the form of a Catholic mass.  Jaun has gotten confidential advice on how to proceed from Father Mike (who has told Jaun (in reciprocal confidence) that he has informed two virgin women that his life as a parish priest is an awful one, and he's ready to marry).  Jaun calls the girls to "siddle down and lissle" and to "[k]eep me in view!"  Before officially beginning the proceedings, he tells them that, during his upcoming absence, they should "adhere to as many as probable of the ten commandments touching purgations and indulgences" for "in the long run they will prove for your better guidance along your path of right of way."

Jaun then has to figure out which day in the liturgical year it is.  "Where the lisieuse are we and what's the first sing to be sung?" he asks.  Eventually, he decides that "I've a hopesome's choice if I chouse of all the sinkts in the coldander," indicating that he's going to do whatever he wants.  His ultimate choice shouldn't surprise us:  "Here she's, is a bell, that's wares in heaven, virginwhite, Undetrigesima, vikissy manonna."  He picks Isabel, who's feast day is the 29th (from the Latin "undetricesima," as McHugh notes) and calls for white vestments.  What is surprising is the identity of the person who wrote the words to be used in this particular liturgy.  They are "taken in triumph" and come "from the sufferant pen of our jocosus inkerman militant of the reed behind the ear," or Jaun's despised brother, Shem the Penman.

"amid the embracings of a monopolized bottle"

(429.1-431.20)  Campbell and Robinson call this second chapter of Book III of Finnegan's Wake "amusing and easy-to-read."  Tindall gets a little more poetic in calling the chapter's pages "among the most diverting of the most diverting book."  Reading the Wake has been completely rewarding, but I'm not going to complain about diving into a chapter that's diverting and "easy."

Shaun's new name is now "Jaun," crossing his given name, as both Tindall and McHugh note, with that of the famous Don Juan.  The action begins with Jaun having halted in his journey "maybe nine score or so barrelhours distance off" to catch his breath and loosen his shoes.  Sizing Jaun up, the narrator says in an aside, "[G]racious helpings, at this rate of growing our cotted child of yestereve will soon fill space and burst in systems, so speeds the instant!"  This strikes me as both the narrator noting with astonishment young Jaun's physical and mythical growth over the course of this dream-narrative and Joyce commenting on how long his book's getting.  Jaun has been "amply altered for the brighter, though still the graven image of his squarer self as he was used to be."  His foot has fallen asleep, so he props himself against a sleeping constable, Sigurdsen, who is "buried upright" after having become "equilebriated amid the embracings of a monopolized bottle" (if that's not the best description of someone whose alcohol intake has caused him to pass out standing up, let me know).

Not far off from where Jaun has taken his rest are 29 girls from St. Brigid's "national nightschool," who are sitting outside "learning their antemeridian lesson of life" (maybe the post-midnight lessons of love?).  These girls, "all barely in their tytap teens," are drawn to "the rarerust sight of the first human yellowstone landmark (the bear, the boer, the king of all boors, sir Humphrey his knave we met on the moors!)."  This landmark seems to be a statue of HCE ("sir Humphrey"), indicating that the sleeping constable has merged with the man he hunted down.  The girls "paddled away, keeping time magnetically with their eight and fifty pedalettes," moving toward the statue even though they are repelled by its snores, which sound like it moaning, "Dotter dead bedstead mean diggy smuggy flasky!" (McHugh translates this from its equivalent Danish as "this is the best, my fat beautiful bottle").

Jaun doffs his hat at the girls, who swarm around him, "making a tremendous girlsfuss over him pellmale."  All but one -- "Finfria's fairest" -- dote upon him and grope him.  He asks about their lives, queries whether they've "read Irish legginds," and offers a few suggestions about how some of them could make their dress more modest, for "he was by the way of becoming . . . the most purely human being that ever was called man" and loved all of creation, from the lion to the microscopic organisms.  With these preliminaries out of the way, Jaun sees "his fond sister Izzy" (the fairest, and twenty-ninth one) whom he loves and thinks "the world and his life of her sweet heart could buy."

"we miss your smile"

(427.10-428.27)  "He was ours, all fragrance," the crowd says as Shaun drifts away under the shining stars.  "And we were his for a lifetime."  As the charming scene (made all the more charming by the exquisite prose of today's reading) continues, Shaun's lamp goes out, "for it couldn't stay alight."

The chapter's final paragraph functions as a kind of ode to Shaun, who will go down the river, drift into the ocean, and float from Germany ("Tuskland," which McHugh equates to the Danish word for Germany, "Tyskland") to America ("Amiracles").  Shaun, "the walking saint," is proclaimed as "[w]inner of the gamings, primed at the studience, propredicted from the storybouts, the choice of ages wise!"  McHugh notes that each of these four titles correspond with the four chapters of Book II of the Wake (dealing with, respectively, the children's games, the children's studies, HCE and the patrons' stories, and Tristan and Iseult's love affair).  The crowd, which refers to itself here as "poor twelve o'clock scholars" (implying that the crowd consists of the twelve patrons of the pub -- and members of the jury that finds HCE guilty -- in their midnight, sleep-induced dream state), asks Shaun to remember them and to come home.  

The people of "Samoanesia" will not forget him, and the four old men will mark his journey.  The crowd wishes him the blessings of the four elements -- earth, water, fire, and wind ("And may the mosse of prosperousness gather you rolling home!  May foggy dews bediamondise your hooprings!  May the fireplug of filiality reinsure your bunghole!  May the barleywind behind glow luck to your bathershins!") -- and proclaims that he'll be named a saint "some canonisator's day or other."  Until then, the crowd offers Shaun a final blessing:  "may the tussocks grow quickly under your trampthickets and the daisies trip lightly over your battercops."  This being the Wake, though, it's unsurprising that Shaun will return just as soon as we begin the next chapter.

"Acomedy of letters!"

(425.4-427.9)  As the first chapter of Book III of the Wake winds toward its imminent (and eminent) conclusion, the crowd asks its final question of Shaun.  It's actually more of an assertion than a question, really:  Seeing that he's "so strikingly brainy and well letterread," the crowd tells "ingenious" Shaun that they fancy he "could use worse of yourself" and best Shem's letter, if only Shaun would take the time and trouble to do so.

"Undoubtedly, but that is show," Shaun answers.  He's liable to do just that any time he likes, and if he would, he'd "far exceed what that bogus bolshy of a shame, my soamheis brother, Gaoy Fecks, is conversant with in audible black and prink."  It's all in his "mine's I," he says, but "I would never for anything take so much trouble of such doing."  Why wouldn't he take the trouble, though?  "Because I am altogether a chap too fly and hairyman for to infradig the like of that ultravirulence."  So, Shaun says that he has the capacity for writing a great work of literature, but to do so would be beneath him.  What's more, he's taken offense to the damage to his mother's reputation, and he swears that "I will commission to the flames any incendiarist whosoever or ahriman howsoclever who would endeavour to set ever annyma roner moother of mine on fire."

This defense of his mother gets the large and brawny Shaun all worked up, and he begins to weep.  After all, the narrator explains, he "had harvey loads of feeling in him" and was "as innocent and undesignful as the freshfallen calef."  He's concerned about keeping up appearances, though, so he quickly "dished allarmes away and laughed it off with a wipe at his pudgies and gulp apologetic, healing his tare be the smeyle of his oye, oogling around."  Exhausted, Shaun is no longer in the mood to talk, and he instead looks up at the stars.  While gazing upward, he grows unsteady, "lusosing the harmonical balance of his ballbearing extremeties," and falls over "like a flask of lightning."  He then rolled backward down the valley until "he spoorlessly disappaled and vanesshed, like a popo down a papa, from circular circulatio."  With this, the narrator announces, like an auctioneer, that Shaun was "Gaogaogaone!"

"The last word in stolentelling!"

(423.10-425.3)  Today's passage begins with Shaun continuing his vitriolic description of Shem's literary habits.  After calling Shem an "imitator," Shaun adds that "it was entirely theck latter to blame."  Thus, as ALP's letter recounts the downfall of the father, HCE, it brings forth the downfall of the son, Shem.  Shaun paints "Shem Skrivenitch" as an "unbloody housewarmer" who was "always cutting my phrose to please his phrase."  "He's weird, I tell you, and middayevil down to his vegetable soul," says Shaun as he continues to pile on.  "Never mind his falls feet and his tanbark complexion.  That's why he was forbidden tomate and was warmed off the ricecource of marrimoney, under the Helpless Corpses Enactment."  Penniless, unloved, and unfit for formal education ("he was pusched out of Thingamuddy's school by Miss Garterd, for itching"), Shem sought religion with "the society of jewses" (both Jewish society and the Jesuit order) and eventually considered joining "the clericy as a demonican skyterrier" (a Dominican friar).  With no true place in the world for Shem, Shaun says that "Tiberia" (Siberia) is waiting for him.  He punctuates this long rant with "Ex.  Ex.  Ex.  Ex."  As McHugh notes, this both indicates Shem's excommunication and references the finale of ALP's actual letter way back in Book I of the Wake.

But for what, and why was he excommunicated, the crowd asks?  "For his root language," Shaun replies.  Shaun goes on to quote one example of this rude or fundamental language, another thunderword that includes numerous references to Norse mythology including Thor's hammer (here, "molnir") and the Norse apocalypse (here, "rackinarockar").  The crowd recognizes this "hundredlettered name" as the "last word of perfect lanuage."  But, they ask, couldn't Shaun have come up with a word almost as good as the one Shem created?

"Peax!  Peax!" replies Shaun, trying to get the crowd to come to its senses and "taking a slug of Jon Jacobsen" whiskey.  Shaun says that Shem didn't come up with any words, because he's a plagiarist.  "Every dimmed letter in it is a copy," he says.  Shem's work, his brother continues, is "rightdown lowbrown schisthematic robblemint!"  Shaun says that as Shem was writing his letter, he was stealing "the tale of me shur."  So, it seems that what's ultimately got Shaun so worked up is that he believes Shem surely stole his tale, as if it were the tail of Shaun's shirt.

"your cerebrated brother"

(421.15-423.10)  I don't have too much to say about today's reading.  Maybe it's more of a transition bit, leading toward a big finish for the chapter's end (which arrives in five pages).  The passage begins with the crowd reluctantly pointing out that Shaun has used language ten times as worse as the language he faults his "cerebrated brother" Shem for using.  This offends Shaun, who replies, "Your words grates on my ares."  "Notorious" is the word he would use to describe his brother, whom Shaun believes to be in sorry shape (delirious and syphilitic, among other ills) and fit for imprisonment.  "Ho's nos halfcousin of mine, pigdish!" Shaun concludes.

The crowd presses on, asking Shaun to tell them how (perhaps as in "how did things get to be this way?").  After the hungry Shaun takes a bite out of "his Braham and Melosedible hat," he says that he thought the crowd knew the old and commonplace story involving HCE ("Old Knoll"), the two young women ("the liliens of the veldt, Nancy Nickies and Folletta Lajambe"), and the three soldiers ("mem and hem and the jaquejack").  After the events unfolded themselves, Shem laid out "his litterery bed" and listened for two days as ALP shouted about HCE.  Shem, the "cribibber like an ambitrickster" collected everything in "the idioglossary he invented under hicks hyssop!"  It's pretty clear that Shaun is not very sympathetic toward his brother.

"decent Lettrechaun"

(419.11-421.14)  The crowd appreciates Shaun's telling of the story of the Ondt and Gracehoper.  "How good you are in explosition!" they say.  "How farflung is your fokkloire and how velktingeling your volupkabulary!"  But what they really want is to hear Shaun read "the strangewrote anaglytics" of ALP's letter.

Shaun says that he's just the man to read the letter:  "I am, thing Sing Larynx, letter potent to play the sem backwards."  But Shaun has already read the letter himself, and he does not approve of its contents.  "It is a pinch of scribble, not wortha bottle of cabbis," he says.  "Overdrawn!  Puffedly offal tosh!  Besides its auctionable, all about crime and libel!"  It tells the story of HCE and the pipe-smoking Cad ("a cat with a peep"), the two young women urinating in the park ("two madges on the makewater"), and the three soldiers who watched HCE watching the women ("treefellers in the shrubrubs").

As he goes on, Shaun doesn't actually read the letter aloud, but instead details his numerous unsuccessful attempts at delivering it.  As McHugh and Tindall each note, many of these addresses are places where Joyce once lived, and others are locations significant in Joyce's life (such as "Finn's Hot," which stands for Finn's Hotel, where Joyce's wife Nora worked when the two met).  Shaun encountered so many problems trying to deliver the letter, from "Nave unlodgeable" (name illegible) to "None so strait" (no such street) to "Wrongly spilled" (wrongly spelled) and "Closet for Repeers" (closed for repairs). 

"why can't you beat time?"

(417.24-419.10)  The Gracehoper observes the Ondt on his throne and sees this regal figure "boundlessly blissfilled" and "ameising himself hugely" as he canoodles with the four women whom the Gracehoper once fancied.  Standing in stark contrast to the Ondt is the "impossible" Gracehoper, who is physically inferior to the Ondt and who reeks of sinful despair.  The successful Ondt -- who "makes the melody that mints the money" -- writes off the Gracehoper as phony, self-defeating, and evil.  Still, the sight of his counterpart amuses the Ondt.

Almost a full page of today's reading consists of a song sung by the Gracehoper to the Ondt.  This song recalls themes from earlier in the Wake, including the reconciliation between Shaun and Shem in the first chapter of Book II (in which Shem ultimately defers to Shaun) and the space-time dichotomy explored in the sixth chapter of Book I.  The song begins with the Ondt laughing hysterically at the Gracehoper.  The weeping Gracehoper forgives the Ondt and asks that he take good care of Floh, Luse, Bienie, and Vespatilla.  He realizes that "I once played the piper" and that "I must now pay the count."  The Gracehoper goes on to point out, however, that the two are twins and will not achieve wholeness unless their diametrically opposed natures are united:

Can castwhores pulladeftkiss if oldpollocks forsake 'em
Or Culex feel etchy if Pulex don't wake him?
A locus to loue, a term it t'embarass,
These twain are the twins that tick Homo Vulgaris.

At the conclusion of the song, the Gracehoper concedes that the Ondt's reach is "worldwide" and "sublime," but, he ultimately asks, "why can't you beat time?"  In effect, the Gracehoper concedes that the Ondt's materialistic approach to life will lead to worldly success, but he will not yield in his pursuit of more ephemeral fulfillment (e.g., art, Truth), and believes that time will prove him right.

"Grausssssss! Opr! Grausssssss! Opr!"

(415.25-417.23)  The Ondt is not impressed with the Gracehoper, to say the least.  "Libelous!" he exclaims as he looks at his own reflection in his window.  "Inzanzarity!"  The Ondt says that he will not "come to party" at the Gracehoper's, "for he is not on our social list."  Instead, he prays that the Gracehoper's filth will not stain him.  He projects big things for himself:  "As broad as Beppy's realm shall flourish my reign shall flourish!"

Shaun goes on to describe the Ondt as "a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied" and "sair sair sullemn and chairmanlooking."  With the Ondt's bona fides established, Shaun turns his attention back toward the "sillybilly" Gracehoper, who has fallen victim to his vices, including drinking, bilking, and whoring.  In his sorry state, he could find neither food nor hospice.  Eventually, he makes a move toward repentance:  "O moy Bog, he contrited with melanctholy.  Meblizzered, him sluggered!  I am heartily hungry!"

In a particularly great passage, we learn that the Gracehoper has consumed the substance and soul of the world around him, as well as time itself:

He had eaten all the whilepaper, swallowed the lustres, devoured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas and seccles, ronged the records, made mundballs of the ephemerids and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the ternitary.

Eventually, he strolls around the globe three times and sees the world torn apart.  He is called back by the sound of "Grausssssss!  Opr!  Grausssssss!  Opr!"

Upon his return, which occurs after he "promptly tossed himself in the vico," he beholds "a world of differents."  "His Gross the Ondt" is now the royal sovereign who "sits upon his dhrone."  The four women of yesterday's reading -- Floh, Luse, Bieni, and Vespatilla -- dote upon the regal Ondt, "[a]s entomate as intimate could pinchably be."  The Gracehoper is amazed:  "Emmet and demmet and be jiltses crazed and be jadses whipt!"  He closes today's passage exclaiming, "[W]hat have eyeforsight!" 

"hoppy on akkant of his joyicity"

(413.27-415.24)  The crowd seems a bit taken aback by Shaun's suggestion regarding the "verdigrease savingsbook" he introduced in yesterday's reading.  "Two venusstas!" they exclaim, referencing the two sisters from whose estates Shaun would establish the savings account.  "Qweer but gaon!"  Shaun does go on, and protests that the entire sum "was handled over spondaneously by me."  "I never spont it," he explains.  "Nor have I the ghuest of innation on me the way to.  It is my rule so.  It went anyway like hot pottagebake."

The misunderstanding regarding the money brings Shaun to his "fresh point," which the crowd "will now parably receive" in the form of the parable of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.  The crowd had hoped that this fresh point would come in the form of a song, but Shaun counters that "I would rather spinooze you one from the grimm gests of Jacko and Esaup," indicating that this fable from Aesop will touch upon the brother-struggle exemplified by the biblical Jacob and Esau.  The parable comes after Shaun clears his throat, symbolized by a thunderword composed of various foreign words for "cough."

The parable begins with the Gracehoper, who we learn "was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity."  When he wasn't jigging, he "was always making ungraceful overtures to Floh and Luse and Bienie and Vespatilla," seeking "to commence insects with him" (McHugh notes that each of the four women's names translate to a form of insect -- flea, louse, bee, and wasp -- which is typical of the voluminous insect references in this part of the chapter).  And if he wasn't jigging or trying to commence insects, "he was always striking up funny funereels with Besterfarther Zeuts, the Aged One" (another form of HCE).  The songs sung during these "funny funereels" included "Satyr's Caudledayed Nice," "Hombly, Dombly Sod We Awhile" (the humpty-dumpty theme again), and "Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake!" (the "Finnegan's Wake" theme again).  These dances were great fun:  "A high old tide for the barheated publics and the whole day as gratiis!"  While the old father is dead and buried, the new generation -- "his sunsunsuns" -- "still tumble on," in an apparent effort to "kick time."

"Inditty I did."

(411.22-413.26)  As the dialogue between the crowd and Shaun continues, the crowd points out that he has painted the town "wearing greenridinghued," indicating that he's painted the town green (in keeping, as McHugh notes, with the historical fact that Ireland's mailboxes were painted green after the country gained its independence).  "Inditty I did," Shaun confirms.  "All lay I did.  Down with the Saozon rule!"  Anyone who thinks that what he did was wrong, Shaun continues, would have "never made a more freudful mistake."  His actions appear to be a type of campaigning, for he goes on to promise "[n]ew worlds for all!"

After noting how "mielodorous" his words are, the crowd offers an obscure question that offends Shaun:  "But do you mean, O phausdheen phewn, from Pontoffbellek till the Kisslemerched our ledan triz will be?  we gathered substantively whether furniture would or verdure varnish?"  McHugh interprets this question as wondering whether the postboxes (the "furniture") or the green pain (the "verdure") will vanish, or, in other words, whether Ireland's future is secure.  Given Shaun's confidence and grand plans, this is probably his interpretation of the question, too (or at least close enough to his interpretation).  After hearing the question, Shaun, "naturally incensed" to the point that he has to shake "the red pepper out of his auricles," shouts, "It is a confoundyous injective so to say."  He goes on to say that the old ways of the Irish post office were inefficient:  "allbethey blessed with twentytwo thousand sorters out of a biggest poss of twentytwo thousand, mine's won, too much privet stationery and safty quipu was ate up larchly by those nettlesome goats out of pension greed."

In response to this problem, Shaun intends "to compound quite the makings of a verdigrease savingsbook in the form of a pair of capri sheep boxing gloves."  This savingsbook, as set forth in the final paragraph of today's passage is established in a form of bequeath using the "twenty thousand quad" left by "two little ptpt coolies," "Mrs Sanders" and "her shester Mrs Shunders."

Looking past today's challenging passage (the first significant hurdle of the chapter), it appears that tomorrow's reading will begin the fable of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, which I've heard quite a bit about and have been looking forward to reading.

"How are them columbuses!"

(409.8-411.21)  With Shaun's opening remarks concluded, the narrator begins to recount in today's passage a dialogue between Shaun and the assembled crowd.  The crowd first asks Shaun who gave him the permit to take up the occupation of postman.  His reply is evasive.  He's fatigued, and his life is one of burden:  "My heaviest crux and dairy lot it is, with a bed as hard as the thinkamuddles of the Greeks and a board as bare as a Roman altar."  He says that he spent some time a few fortnights ago with a pair of men from "the Headfire Clump" who taught him about workers' rights, and he adds that he has heard prophecies of future "sabotag" (either the Saturday at the end of the week, in which the workers can rest, or general sabotage).

With their question pretty much left unanswered, the crowd pursues it from a slightly different angle, asking whether Shaun had been ordered to be a postman.  He answers that he did not want to work, but "it was condemned on me premitially by Hireark Books and Chiefoverseer Cooks in their Eusebian Concordant Homilies."  The job, he continues, "is put upon me from on high out of the book of breedings."  His "hairydittary" job feels to him like a "bad attack of maggot."  He's fed up of wandering "like them nameless souls, ercked and skorned and grizzild all over," and he dreams of sneaking away to find himself, or, as he says, "to isolate i from my multiple Mes."

The crowd understands his feelings, but has hopes that Shaun might be the one "who will bear these open letter."  Shaun responds that he has the "gumpower" to do that.

In today's last question, the crowd asks where he's able to work.  "Here!" Shaun curtly replies before elaborating.  He's "too soft for work proper," so he walks "sixty odd eilish mires a week" along his route, as is his "vacation in life."  He must do his job, for if he engages in "unnecessary servile work of reckless walking of all sorts" he would "get into a blame there where sieves fall out" (and he wouldn't want to fall like his father, HCE).  All in all, he says, "I am awful good, I believe, so I am, at the root of me, praised be right cheek Discipline!"  He brings home groceries for his family, and he is a devout believer. 

"Shaunti and shaunti and shaunti again!"

(407.10-409.7)  Today's passage begins with words indicating some type of performance is about to take place:  "Overture and beginners!"  The narrator says that he heard the "the voce of Shaun" sweeping like a breeze across Europe and toward North America.  Shaun now appears, and the narrator describes the hand gestures he made before beginning his address.

That address of Shaun's starts with an overly humble or even self-deprecating tone, but only after the narrator notes that he yawned (as a result of his previous feast) and, speaking as if giving a dress rehearsal, complained about the venue and audience.  With that out of the way, Shaun wiped his teeth off with his fingers and sat down on the ground, "exhaust as winded hare, utterly spent."  He was a bit put off by the fact that he's so portly:  "Well, I'm liberally dished seeing myself in this trim!"  A "mere mailman of peace, a poor loust hastehater of the first degree," Shaun professed that he believed himself "all too unwordy" for his position as postman.  In fact, he said, the job should have gone to Shem:  "It should of been my other with his leickname for he's the head and I'm an everdevoting fiend of his."

Shaun didn't defer too much to his brother, though.  "He looks rather thin, imitating me," he stated.  Later, he added, "But he' such a game loser!"  In fact, Shaun concluded that Shem was best off dead:  "Down among the dust bins let him lie!  Ear!  Ear!  Not ay!  Eye!  Eye!  For I'm at the heart of it."  Yet, even given this opinion, Shaun still presented himself with that humility:  "Yet I cannot on my solemn merits as a recitativer recollect ever having done of anything of the kind to deserve of such.  Not the phost of a nation!"

As evidenced here, the chapter continues to be "easy reading" compared to some of the previous parts of the Wake.  We'll see how things progress as we move forward . . . .

"And better and better on butter and butter."

(405.3-407.9)  The chapter's opening "picture primitive" of Shaun continues in today's reading.  Even though the narrator likens himself to the "poor ass" or "fourpart tinckler's dunkey" that followed the four old men, he thought that the person standing before him was "Shaun in proper person."  Shaun looked great to the narrator, and was "in much more than his usual health."  "He was immense," the narrator goes on to explain, for he had just finished a 24-hour-long feast.

The bulk of today's passage going forward is devoted to detailing the tremendous amount of food and drink that Shaun enjoyed during that feast.  This ranges from breakfast food ("blood and thirsthy orange" and "half of a pint of becon with newled googs") to entrees ("a half a pound or round steak, very rare" and "a pair of chops") to alcoholic beverages ("a fingerhot of rheingenever" and "the best of wine").  Shaun enjoyed this feast, "For his heart was as big as himself, so it was, ay and bigger!"

"Thus thicker will he grow now, grew new," the narrator says.  "And better and better on butter and butter."  We shouldn't mistake him for saying that Shaun "was guilbey of gulpable gluttony as regards chewable boltaballs," he cautions, but "between gormandising and gourmeteering, he grubbed his tuck all right."

The reading concludes with Shaun standing before the narrator, "plainly out on the ramp and mash, as you might say."  We leave off with Shaun just about to speak.