--You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may
be 1160 important because I belong to the FAUBOURG SAINT PATRICE called
Ireland for short.

--I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.

--But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.

--What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter
portion. What was it you ...?

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170

--We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down
but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put
on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was
clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy
spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his
sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost
importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been
familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the
young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some
consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more
especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw
much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of
cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of
premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there
was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably
connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose
other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody
all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit
of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual DENOUEMENT after the fun had
gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be
spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from
John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under
section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those
subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur
to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together,
six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so
forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the
seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life
the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the
upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of
the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and
crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a
number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by
nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on
though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was
except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another
it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who
like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his
and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal
islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others
who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of
their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not
exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having
in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of
someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection
would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he
felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which
was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the
here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of
events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in
especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers,
scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve
the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything
approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing
suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully
intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. MY EXPERIENCES, let
us say, IN A CABMAN'S SHELTER.

The pink edition extra sporting of the TELEGRAPH tell a graphic lie lay,
as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling
again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the
preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was
addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over
the respective captions which came under his special province the
allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du
Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio.
Lovemaking in Irish, 200 pounds damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration
Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.
Victory of outsider THROWAWAY recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's
dark horse SIR HUGO captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York
disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr
Patrick Dignam.

So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he


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