of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.

Did Stephen obey his sign?

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed
softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted
candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a
turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's
house.

What did Bloom do?

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen
with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary,
knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped
sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram
coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and
M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of
paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential
energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements
to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two,
had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the
college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county
of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his
first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his
godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia
Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his aunt Sara, wife of Richie (Richard)
Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil street: of
his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve
North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis Xavier
1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of
university College, 16 Stephen's Green, north: of his sister Dilly
(Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.

What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the
fire towards the opposite wall?

Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope,
stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the
chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded
unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies'
grey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual position
clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the
third at their point of junction.

What did Bloom see on the range?

On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
(larger) hob a black iron kettle.

What did Bloom do at the range?

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle
to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it
flow.

Did it flow?

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of
2400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of
filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant
cost of 5 pounds per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of
the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a
distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving
tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge,
upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply
of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the
overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks
engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the waterworks
committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other
than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being
had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893)
particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration
of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had
been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of
their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr
Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another
section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier,
returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in
seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's
projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific
exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface
particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence
of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic
quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides:
its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar
icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance:
its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its
indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region
below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability
of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and


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