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     Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few
toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he
was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines
of Ragonar Blaubarb and Horrild Hairwire and an inlaw to Capt.
the Hon. and Rev. Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Blogg was among
his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man
in the land of the space of today knows that his back life will
not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth
and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid
actually was like to look at.
     Shem's bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an
eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a
sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip,
a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman's son), the
wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial
tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of
thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of
two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot
of all evil, a salmonkelt's thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a
bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on
his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing
himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their
garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old
Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and