of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald.  His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary’s excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle.  Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention:  TALIS AC tanta DEPRAVATIO HUJUS SECULI, O Quirites, ut MATRESFAMILIARUM NOSTRAE LASCIVAS CUJUSLIBET SEMIVIRI LIBICI TITILLATIONES TESTIBUS PONDEROSIS ATQUE EXCELSIS ERECTIONIBUS CENTURIONUM ROMANORUM MAGNOPERE ANTEPONUNT, while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck.

Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced.  The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour.  Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give?  Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place.  Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach.  For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though ’tis pity she’s a trollop):  There’s a belly that never bore a bastard.  This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight.  The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.