Page 1106 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from
level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic,
photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants
of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the

human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine
marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools
in the waning moon.
Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning
coals, why did he return to the stillflowing tap?
To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed
tablet of Barrington’s lemonflavoured soap, to which paper
still adhered, (bought thirteen hours previously for
fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold
neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and
hands, in a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a
wooden revolving roller.
What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom’s
offer?
That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by
immersion or total by submersion in cold water, (his last
bath having taken place in the month of October of the
preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass
and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.

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