where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still.
All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it
began.

--Up the Boers!

--Three cheers for De Wet!

--We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.

Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.
The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and
civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows
used to. Whether on the scaffold high.

Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey
Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the
gaff on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths
on to get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the
castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always
courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up
against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And
who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying
anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young
student fooling round her fat arms ironing.

--Are those yours, Mary?

--I don't wear such things ... Stop or I'll tell the missus on you.
Out half the night.

--There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.

--Ah, gelong with your great times coming.

Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.

James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so
that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back
out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's
daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the
Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.

You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our
lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom.
Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.
That the language question should take precedence of the economic
question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them
up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme
seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease
before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with
the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays
best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over
those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun
rising up in the northwest.

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:
squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies
mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed
groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second
somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.
Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the
blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of
pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.
Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets
his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they
have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn
away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions.
Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble,
sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's mushroom houses built of breeze.
Shelter, for the night.

No-one is anything.

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate
this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.

Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well
tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid
me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware
opposite in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed,
unseeing.

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a
coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't
meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a
corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's
uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his
high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the
woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a
pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the
city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess


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