Page 262 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

mathematics and I’m taking constitutional history. There
are twenty subjects. I’m taking botany too. You know I’m a
member of the field club.
He drew back from the other two in a stately fashion and
placed a plump woollen-gloved hand on his breast from
which muttered wheezing laughter at once broke forth.
—Bring us a few turnips and onions the next time you go
out, said Stephen drily, to make a stew.
The fat student laughed indulgently and said:
—We are all highly respectable people in the field club.
Last Saturday we went out to Glenmalure, seven of us.
—With women, Donovan? said Lynch.
Donovan again laid his hand on his chest and said:
—Our end is the acquisition of knowledge. Then he said
quickly:
—I hear you are writing some essays about esthetics.
Stephen made a vague gesture of denial.
—Goethe and Lessing, said Donovan, have written a lot
on that subject, the classical school and the romantic school
and all that. The Laocoon interested me very much when I
read it. Of course it is idealistic, German, ultra-profound.
Neither of the others spoke. Donovan took leave of them
urbanely.
—I must go, he said softly and benevolently, I have a
strong suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that
my sister intended to make pancakes today for the dinner
of the Donovan family.
—Goodbye, Stephen said in his wake. Don’t forget the
turnips for me and my mate.

262 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man