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whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word.

The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave the likeness there on the plea he. But it was scarcely etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now for sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to satisfy a need. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear however and looked away thoughtfully. In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because then he recollected the morning littered bed etcetera.

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingué and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of letterpress. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they cohabited and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and nisi was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanantsº, wrapped up as they were in one another, could
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^|2safelyº^2| afford to ignore it as they very largely did. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last, trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen, penetrated into the printing offices works of United Ireland (a by no means by the way appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the practised pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the ertswhileº tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained ^|2a minor injury from^2| the prod of some chap's elbow lodging in the stomach, fortunatelyº not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off and Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush and returned it to him with the utmost celerity who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the country what's bred in the bone ^|2instilled into him in infancy^2| came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights, history repeating itself with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone
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in his glory.

On the other hadº what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on who passed it off as a jest pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and made no bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around about a lady when she chose to be tired of wedded life to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women and younger men, no doubt.

It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible doubts as to whether he would find much satisfaction of sm ^|2basking^2| in the company of smirking misses bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter and of complimentplaying leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father but something substantial he certainlyº ought to eat even were it only the homely Humpty
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Dumpty boiled.

— At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face.

— Some time yesterday, Stephen said.

— Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve.

— The day before yesterday, Stephen said.

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of satisfaction in itself) he had a sneakingº for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question bulked largely in people's mind though not contributing a copper to the cause or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums he in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession ^|2(a partiality, however, he was subsequently partially cured of)^2| and even was twitted with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in this the views he inculcatedº which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him metaphorically one in the gizzard though, so far as politics were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed ^|2as a foregone conclusionº^2| on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.

Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time
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to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered. On the other hand it was altogether too late for the Sandymountº or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night with a rug or to and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties off Sheriff street lower would be the best
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clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with six chamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical and mauling their largesized charms between whiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of the usual blarney about himself for as to who he really was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the county Sligo.

— I propose, he eventually suggested after mature reflection while prudently pocketingº her photo, you just come home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot.

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who didn't seem to.

— Yes, that's the best, he assured. Stephen to whom for the matter of that it was all more or less.

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) brain, education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering resorts packed with theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he
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more than suspected he had his father's voice so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in that direction just to.

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdriver's association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge. To which echo answered why.

— Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some impatience.

— And welcome, answered the old party thus addressed.

The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.

— Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk queried.

— Why, answered the seafarer, staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose was she.

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what during which time the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new ^|2or secondhand^2| boot which manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, either simply looking on or passing a trivial remark.

Bloom was the first to rise
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from his seat having first and foremost taken the wise precaution to motion to mine host, a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking, to the effect that the amount due as forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously seen on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly worth the money.

— Come, he counselled to close the séance.

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter or shanty together and the elite society of oilskins and company. Stephen, who confessedº to still feeling poorly ^|2and fagged out^2|, paused at the, for a moment, the door.

— One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put chairs upside down at night on the tables in cafés.

To which impromptu the neverfailingº Bloom replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off:

— To sweep the floor in the morning.

So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins.

— It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk. Come. It's not far. Lean on me.

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accordingly.

— Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh approach him, sinewless
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and wobbly and all that. Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc where the municipal supernumeraryº, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as they say. And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituenciesº that ratted at the time of the split. and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.

So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart's Twelfth Mass, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme of musical expression. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might even say, putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit ^|2fathers'^2| church in upper Gardinerº street, the sacred edifice being thronged to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the ^|2generally expressed unanimous^2| opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say ^|2in a place of worship^2| for music of a sacred character there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring
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preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he heard or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland ^|2who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus,^2| an instrument he was contemplatingº purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son ^|2with their dux and comes conceits,^2| and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them and ^|2one^2| Tomkins ^|2who made toys or airs,^2| and John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching beyond the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up, so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull, the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence.
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By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:

— Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at a head of a horse not worth sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it was a fourwalkerº, a hipshaker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, will would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way, like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling ^|2blank grapes^2| into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger, my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes occupied his mind somewhat distracted from
{ms, 051}
Stephen's words while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old.

— My wife, he intimated, would be very much interested to make your acquaintance, as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that way built.

Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's ^|2Irish^2| industries, concert on the preceding Monday and aristocracy in general.

Exquisite variations he was now ^|2describing^2| on an air Youth here has end by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men.

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten.

These opening bars he sang and translated. Bloom, nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which he did.

A phenomenally beautiful voice like that, the rarest of boon boons, which Bloom appreciated at the first note he got out, could easily command its own price. where baritones were ten a penny and procure for
{ms, 052}
its fortunate possessor in the near future an entrée into ^|2the best^2| fashionable houses ^|2in the best residential quarters,^2| of financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his university degree of B.A. and gentlemanly bearing he would infallibly score a distinct success if his clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society's niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. Added He could easily foresee him at their musical and artistic conversaziones causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation cases of which^|2, as he happened to know,^2| were on record. Added to which of course would be the ^|2pecuniary^2| emolument. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy period space of time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment. when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos. Yes,
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beyond a shadow of a doubt he could, with all the cards in his hand, make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem ^|2and, booking ahead, give a grand concert in the King street house^2|, given a backerup, if one were forth coming, a big if however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too much fêted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the other in the least as he could^|2, being his own master,^2| practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing. ^|2In fact, he had the ball at his feet.^2|

The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs, advising him to sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage and even deprecate him to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in Bloom's humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character^|2, no pun intended^2|.

The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, ^|2let added his quota by letting^2| fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in his scythed car.

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright and, stepping over a strand of mire, went across
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towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.

Und alle Schiffe brücken.

The driver never said a word but merely watched the two figures, both black, one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing their tête à tête (which, of course, he was well out of) about sirens, enemies of man's reason, and a number of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind.