Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for
College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was
worth. It’s the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news
in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in
the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of
Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule
pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets
exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake’s weekly Pat
and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin’s
queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I’d like
that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P.
Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World’s biggest
balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms
laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than
the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he
got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they’d clank on
and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle
the whole thing. Want a cool head.
—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently
over the dirty glass screen.
—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said,
pointing backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.
—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.
He hurried on eagerly towards the _Freeman’s Journal_.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.