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7

Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is jokey for Jacob. A few

roughnecks are still getable 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

hight 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 (showman's son), the