_
there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were
genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the
big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them
like _Hamlet_ and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely
better than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that
coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It's
like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what
he hasn't got. Try a bit.

--Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir
or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something
approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and
lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or
nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they were in
run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings
and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower
orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection
they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently
associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for
her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was
to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak
of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas he
remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't
remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical inspection,
of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly
accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the
medical analysis involved.

--Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being
stirred.

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and
took a sip of the offending beverage.

--Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid
food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular meals as the _sine qua non_ for any kind of proper work, mental
or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different
man.

--Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking aw