Page 844 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

BLOOM: (As before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now
and then. Childish device. (Lewdly) The mouth can be
better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.

ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: (In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with
red floating tie and apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir
Walter Ralegh brought from the new world that potato
and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption,
the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will
understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a
hundred years before another person whose name I forget
brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look
at our public life!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of
Dublin!
BLOOM: (In alderman’s gown and chain) Electors of
Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North
Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket
to the river. That’s the music of the future. That’s my
programme. Cui bono? But our bucaneering
Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance ...
AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief
magistrate!

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