Page 825 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

sevenmonths’ child, he had been carefully brought up and
nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been
lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf

and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead
a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the
affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An
acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from the
footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while
the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the
windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of
scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell’s
wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn
bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars
grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on
the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary
round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes
the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the
organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops
and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever ...
(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters
complain that they cannot hear.)
LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (Without looking
up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots.

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