Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of short stories written by James Joyce published in 1914. I finished it this morning with "Grace" (I read them out of order.) Collections are always great since they always have some continuity and such a continuity stringing through apparently separate works serves well for such an objective as portraying the message for such a book titled "Dubliners". Continuity resides in alcoholism, Catholicism, Irish politics, music and epiphanies. K let's go.

So Joyce has often been called the greatest writer of the 20th century. I've only read this so far. His most famous work is "Ulysses", though "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is very well-acclaimed as well. I plan to read them in the future, but as of now, "Dubliners" has already convinced me that Joyce is an absolute genius. On a side note, I've always had a thing about the name James, a good thing, so yeah, that's another plus. Anyways, what makes him so good? Well, we'll do characters, though that's a bit more difficult with a collection of short stories, and then writing style, which again may be tough, but then we'll open it up to the themes of the stories mentioned above. Those are the key interesting points, I think.

Despite the last paragraph making me sound like I might concede at this point, guess what. It's still true. The characters are the most important aspect of a book, or story now, I guess. I'll concede that. Congratulations. Well, so each story focuses on one specific character with the exception of "The Boarding House" in which there are presumably three main characters. For the most part though, there is one. This is significant in that most of the stories are in third person. The first three are in first person, and also incidentally, all take the voice of a young boy, but the rest are third, and the rest older too. The narrator follows the life of a character for a day or a few, and though separating once in a while, sticks mainly to that character and dictates the thoughts of the character often, sometimes explicitly with words like "She remembered" but often without saying it and only implying it by the reminiscent position the character is in (Evelin looking out the window, very still) and the personal way in which the sentences are written (using exclamation points and posing questions.) So we get a character for each story. New paragraph.

The characters all tend to be very flawed. They are either controlling like Mrs. Kearney, timid like Little Chandler, bitter like Mr. Duffy, naive like the boy in Araby, lost like Farrington, small like Gabriel, or alcoholic like most everyone else. There's a huge array of different people and different insecurities. They all act quite painfully stupid quite often, though they really can't be blamed for it. If you narrate any of our lives, we'd probably seem pretty stupid. Why is this. Dramatic irony. There it is. When one acts like an idiot, one usually does not know why exactly one is doing such a thing, and when an observer knows this, one seems in such a way when one is really only acting in a very forgivable, human ignorance. For example, there's Evelin, who we see standing up impulsively and screaming internally as she clings to iron railings at docks, and the first to escape this house she is trapped at and the second to stay. She seems very keen on going when she stands and keen on staying when she clings, and so we see that Evelin, you are acting like an idiot. Why not be cruel to her and say straight out that she is an idiot? Well, because her mommy died and her daddy beats her and Frank loves her and she is only nineteen. Of course she's confused and of course she has all the right to be, and of course, then she'll act like this. Then she turns all passive and unresponsive. This is an epiphany, here, showing her that she has no choice whether to stay or to go, so it doesn't matter what she wants or what she decides, because in the end, she's staying. So, there is one example of a character and the complexity of her. We see her develop. We see her thoughts and her feelings and confusions and past, and we see how she turns out. The thing is that it is only from this one event that we see her. We will address this later.

So Evelin had her debut, sympathy and epiphany, and so do the other characters. The main ones at least. My favorite was Chandler because of how genuinely confused he gets and how genuinely well Joyce portrays both his thoughts about Dublin and his life, and what we should see of Dublin and his life, and how this affects what we think of Chandler and his mentality. He's pretty screwy, to tell you the truth. So we have that, and we have sub-characters. Yay! So there are a lot of characters. A lot! And they all live in Dublin, so they do seem to overlap. They might nit actually, but you could definitely interpret it that way, with the priest that died in The Sisters and Araby being the same person and such. There are also character names that repeat, like Holohan. Then there is the fact that the chronology of the stories influences the characters too, like the girl in "Araby" and Evelin that follows right afterwards. The list of characters grow as you go on through the book. In the first one, "The Sisters", you have the sisters (aunts), the boy, the dead priest, the uncle and Old Cotter. You could list them, that's the point. In the end, "The Dead", has so many characters it gets a bit ridiculous to call it a short story. See most of these characters are not so very significant anyways, like Miss Daly and Miss Power. Oh, Miss Power may be a connectionn to Mr. Power from "Grace", don't you think? And "Grace" is right before "The Dead". Well, too bad Miss Power is not so very significant. Darn, that'd've (get the Cather in the Rye connection?) been a cool connection. Well, looks like this blog may turn out to be even longer than "A Doll's House." So let's wrap up characters. You're in first and third person but you almost always focus on a single character rather intimately and you see how they grow away from their flaws to a final self-realization, usually. This growth though, is not always all that great of a thing. Sometimes they degenerate, like Farrington beating his kid, though that may happen quite often, or Joe drinking a lot, or Lenehan going through with meeting Corley to finish their master plan of screwing over that poor slavey girl. Note: If you are a weeper and if you don't like being a weeper, avoid this book; it's totally depressing.

So writing styles. We talked about voice a bit, like how you get really close sometimes. You keep your distance from sub-characters often, as the main character also keeps his distance in understanding, and all this always serves a purpose, like when we keep very close to Gabriel but far from Gretta, and this makes Gabriel every annoyed because he has no idea what's going on in her head. So closeness and farness always there. Good. There are gaps. Gaps!! Don't we all love gaps? Yes. That's the answer. yes we do because I LOVE gaps. They're so telling, which is so nice and ironic. Anyways, we have the dotty line quite often in the stories, especially the later ones. For example, in "Grace" we have a gap between the conversation and the church scene. This is probably just because the rest of the conversation after getting Tom to go and the days until the journey and the journey there are probably pretty uninteresting. There are more meaningful gaps though. Like when there's one after Farrington loses the second arm wrestle and before he is shown on the corner on his way home. Here we see that during this time he must have degenerated into a n awful state, and I'm sure it would have been interesting to see how he would then have departed from the bar, but we don't see, and maybe that's to create this next effect.

After the pause in "Counterparts", Farrington is referred to at first as "A very sullen-faced man" rather than "Farrington". Joyce does this often. He uses these round-about descriptions for characters rather than names. Often, Farrington becomes simply "the man" and sometimes "a man" like this time. This creates a distance and also lets the reader start over with the character, especially if it is at the beginning after the gap. See this pat at home in "Counterparts" could work in itself apart from the story before and still function well. This is very much attributed to this "a man" because this lets us start over and learn from then on the situation and the character without relying too much on the past. It is characteristic of the stories thus; to end with little dependency on the majority of the book. For example,if you simply read "The Dead" without analyzing it very critically, it becomes quite difficult to see any connection between the party in the beginning and middle and practically all the book, and the ending action of the wife's story and the snow and thoughts. Of course there is a connection. If the previous day had not been so, Gabriel may not have thought so profoundly, but having experienced the different lives and thoughts of Dublin, he does, and he thinks of Aunt Julia, aging for inevitable death but singing her heart out all the while. Such delicate, subtle idea are what will get you that legitimate enjoyment. Much of the story is for scene setting too. You get very accurate ideas of what the surroundings are like and how the characters feel about them and so how the characters are feeling when whatever traumatic thing happens to them. We have "The Encounter" for example, where you have most the story describing how these kids go on a ferry and play cowboys and indians and wait for a kid that doesn't come and a bunch of stuff like that. Then there's this encounter that happens all of a sudden, which is significant in itself, since meeting a pedophile is always a significant moment in a child's life, but also significant all the more because of it's contrasting with the scene set before of innocent peaceful youthful happiness. So Joyce has build-ups and final brief boom finales. Also, he leaves us hanging often with ambiguous phrases, such as at the end of "Araby" when the kid looks out into darkness, or the end of "A Little Cloud" when Chandler tears up in the darkness. There's a lot of dark and light that goes on, by the way. Side-note. A very good theme that you could probably talk for years about.

Anyways, alcoholism. It comes out all over; I mean, it's Dublin after all. Joyce is very critical of Dublin, and all these things fit. He was very critical of all people though but being it Ireland and being him possible bitter over the fact that the Irish had allowed themselves to create this image of drunkenness upon themselves, it's particularly Ireland, Dublin. There are actually points when the characters themselves don't even like Dublin. There's Mr. Duffy in "A Painful Case" when he lives outside Dublin just to avoid it, and there's "A Little Cloud" when Gallaher, talking about how great the rest of the world is, gets Chandler to start despising Dublin for holding him back. Chandler actually says you have to get out of Dublin if you want success before meeting up with Gallaher, so even before Gallaher, he's already thinking about outside Dublin. There's a whole thing abut foreign countries in this too, the fantasy of London and all. We'll get into it with politics. Anyways, alcoholism is particularly noticeable in "Grace", "Counterparts", "Clay", and "A Painful Case" I suppose since there are specific and important characters in each that are suffering from alcoholism. There's an interesting connection between "Clay" and "A Painful Case" since they are next to each other and "Clay" is about how a woman Maria works at a rehab for fallen alcoholic women, and in "A Painful Case" Mrs. Sinico falls to alcoholism. Alcoholism just tends to be associated with men, so it's interesting to see both these characters dealing with it concerning women. Also, in "A Painful Case" it is debatable that Mrs. Sinico committed suicide, so it might be some connection to the respect we should give Maria for giving such help to women like Mrs. Sinico who really need it. In "Grace", the main character is an alcoholic and suffers because of it, and his friends try to help him with Catholicism later. Will discuss. In "Counterparts", the issue is again alcoholism and how Farrington turns violent because of it. Then there's not really not alcoholism but just casual alcohol in all "After the Race", "Two Gallants", "A Little Cloud", "Ivy Day in the Committee Room", and "The Dead". In the first three, the drinking has negative connotations. "After the Race" is about partying all night after all, and "Two Gallants" about swindlers, though this may be deeper because Lenehan may be hiding his own sensitivities and so may be drinking as a distraction, and "A Little Cloud" with Little Chandler being practically forced to drink by Mr. Bad-Influence. Those all portray non-alcoholics though, and we see that alcohol is present in everyday life for most everyone. "Ivy Day" and "The Dead" are lighter about alcohol. In "Ivy Day", for example, they all drink but nobody gets raging drunk, it's just something you do when you're with a bunch of friends. Same with "The Dead". It's a party after all. There is Freddy Malins who is a drunk, but he doesn't seem all that abrasive either, just happier and more confident. These characters are significant because often, Joyce seems to begin implying that alcohol is always awful, but that's just because so many characters are aggressive drunks, frightening. However, many people can drink with control and if they get drunk, it may just be funny. Those people are always fun. Nevertheless, we often see alcohol, and often alcohol acts as a symbol in many of the books. In "A Little Cloud", Little Chandler progressively drinks more, and these intervals are done in one sentence indentations. So you could easily track how his alcohol intake coincides with his growing resentment of Gallaher and his own life. It acts across books as symbols too, like in "Clay" when naively Maria sits next to the old man, but when she describes the smell of alcohol about him, the reader can suspect something bad happening because across the previous stories, we've already had drunks who did terrible things. So yes, alcohol is very useful.

Catholicism. Catholicism and Ireland. Catholicism and Ireland written by a Jesuit-school guy. Wow. Right, so of course Joyce is being critical again, going on about how the Dubliners are too obsessed with their religion, or how they are too frightened of other religions, or how the religion in general is ridiculous. Now personally, I don’t agree since I’m Catholic, but Joyce makes quite the good argument and good points. The first story, “The Sisters”, is very religious and it starts us off with a priest dying and all the pressure of this. I’d like to concentrate on this story for a bit. So the dead priest’s name is James Flynn (hint hint James Joyce) and the kid that’s the first person before is pretty Joycian, I think, since he was all quiet and contemplative and sensitive but blind all the way through. But the voice stops being close to the kid half-way through, and that’s when the priest emerges. Twist! Anyways, that has nothing to do with religion. It’s just interesting. What has to do with religion is that the priest dies and the priest sort of goes insane before dying and this insanity is caused by the fact that he couldn’t handle being a priest, since it’s a lot more pressure than you could really conceive. He ends up chuckling alone in a dark confessional box. It’s creepy, so you could see how this could be critical in the sense that priesthood drove him crazy. And then there’s stuff like in “Grace”, how the guys discuss religion for hours making a bunch of mistakes and yet claiming to be Catholic, and then going to the confessional retreat where the priest rambles about some excerpt that is impossible to understand that he probably doesn’t either. The religion conversation is done over drinks, casually, and you think they cannot possibly be serious. They might be, but the thing is that they are convinced they could do absolutely anything because all they have to do afterwards is go to confession and then they’re good to go. This is a key issue between Protestants and Catholics, this idea of confession, the loophole, and so Joyce may be criticizing this of the church too. These two stories are the most religious of the stories, and the other ones mostly consist of sinful people. This story is called Dubliners, so is it suggesting that Dublin, a Catholic city, is filled with sinners, and so most people are sinners, and not just sinners but actual sinners, wife-beating, child-beating, alcoholic, spiteful sinners? Maybe. The hopeful part of it though, is that most of the stories end with the sinner realizing or working to realize what he has done or is doing, and in these two very religious story, there is much hope. The majority of the main characters in Dubliners are solitary, misunderstood, and sad characters. Nobody tries to help them and nobody they know really can. For example, Little Chandler in “A Little Cloud” has an issue about being timid and so missing out on life, or rather taking his life for granted by resenting a perfectly fine life. His confidants are Gallaher, a friend from eight years ago who is adventurous, self-absorbed, and so opposite of Chandler that he couldn’t possibly understand him and who rejects Chandler’s invitation straight off, his wife who is part of the timidity by causing him to be some intimidated that he can’t read to her, and his baby. So there’s no one to help him, and so he has to wallow in his self-pity, cling to fantasies, be turned to Gallaher’s bad influence, and finally yell at his baby before he finally realizes his misunderstanding. If only there was someone to just talk to the poor guy, right? Well, there are in “The Sisters” and “Grace”, thank God. It’s religious, and the only two religious stories are filled with legitimately good people. Sure Tome Kernan drinks, but he loves his wife and is loved by her, has good friends, and says “I’m very much obliged to you” in a slurred voice, but slurred and said is better than not. And sure Old Cotter in “The Sisters” is a bitter old man that talks smack about dead guys, but it’s not like he’s all bad, and the story focuses on the good old priest, the good little child, and the mourning sisters that comfort each other. It’s nice. And “Grace” ends in a church with misunderstandings, but it’s not like their paying lip-service. They are there to heal and to be peaceful, and that’s all religion is, really, and they’ve pulled it off, those drunkards. It’s all around nice; the boys helping Tom and the priest helping all of them just by being a priest and coming to talk to them. Whether what he says is legitimate doesn’t matter all that much then. In the end of “The Dead” you get this final, well-rounded, all-Irish epiphany with snow and the living and the dead and the whole bucket, and during this realization, Gabriel is described as being in that place of the dead, meaning, there must be some kind of afterlife. And it is very peaceful. Joyce likes religion after all, maybe not so much how obsessed people get over it or how immature it is in practice at times, but there is hope to be found in it, and peace, and niceness. People are better for being religious, that is.

Irish politics now. How controversial that is. Well, pretty much it’s the nationalists and everyone else. You get politics most in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”, which is a great story, by the way, though it may be a bit difficult to keep up with it. It sort of makes you feel nationalistic. This is actually another one of the stories filled with legitimately good people. They’re not politicians, they promote one, but they all are definitively nationalist aside from Crofton, who was conservative, but had to switch when the party withdrew. So basically, I’ll just explain this story and that’ll do politics, and maybe we’ll talk about West Britons accusation in “The Dead.” Actually, let’s do that now. Basically, in “The Dead”, Gabriel writes in a British newspaper and he isn’t very troubled by this himself because he thinks literature trumps politics, which is true, but Mrs. Ivors, the patriotic type, accuses him for being a West Briton, who are people that think Ireland ought to still be part of Britain, hence the name. Of course she probably doesn’t think that, but she probably still does have an issue with him writing for the English. She leaves after this and says she’s cool and all, but as readers we’re all thinking she might still be irked and all about the West Brit. Anyways, so stuff like this crops up all over the book, little interactions concerning the government, little controversies, but Ivy Day is the big one.

It’s called Ivy Day, first of all, which is the day in Ireland that they celebrate the memory of Charles Parnell, the idolized nationalist Irish politician. People pin ivies on their shirts on that day, as Mr. Hynes does. He was my favorite character, mostly because there’s another gap concerning hi. So anyways, summary: there are two guys, O’Connor and Old Jack, who are hanging out in a committee room and then people keep coming in, all canvassers for Tierney, the politician who’s supposed to be paying them but isn’t, and they all drink and talk and eventually they get Hynes to read his poem about Parnell and they all applaud and sit in graceful and proud memory. So there are a bunch of characters and this is one of my favorite stories because it is so interesting how these voices mesh and these ideas bounce around. They mostly all discuss the coming of King Edward and whether it is right to give him a reception and all. Mr. Hynes pints out that Parnell would never allow a reception. O’Conner thinks it’s fine. Old Jack doesn’t really take place, concerning mostly with the subject of child-rearing in the beginning and gazing off into the fire in silence (I LOVE when that happens in literature! Fires and windows and landscapes and trains, gazing in general at anything) and then coming back to mostly answer and agree to people. Hynes I love because he seems to be a legitimately good guy, assuring them they’ll get paid, laughing, modestly standing up for the working man with gentle reason, calling O’Connor Mat, being called Joe, wearing the ivy, calling him King Eddie, saying ‘bye ‘bye, getting embarrassed in reading, walking slowly, being accused and writing awesome poetry. There’s a point when Hynes leaves which is very interesting in that nobody says anything except for O’Connor who only suddenly says ‘Bye Joe” and Joyce actually wrote it out. Very interesting. People must all have something in their minds or it might be characterizing a distance we see around Hynes. Then Henchy calls him a spy for Colgan, the other politician. It’s very strange, really, and saddening, because obviously, I think he’s a decent skin too. Anyways, it says something about Henchy and also how blazé they are about there being a spy around. Mr. Henchy comes after Hynes. He always rubs his hands. He says ‘No money, boys’ first, which I love too. I love anything that shows how close any people are, and these guys are clearly great friends, calling each other boys, first names, obsessing over the same things, turning up in the same spot and sharing drinks all around without a thought with the old man being referred to as both Jack and the ‘old man’ among young men, lovely lovely. I just love when any closeness occurs, especially in a book like Dubliners, it’ very endearing and reassuring. Anyways, Henchy quotes people a lot in a ranting, mocking way, but is not superior or intelligent enough to do great harm; it’s just friendly conversational complaining. He talks about votes a lot. Anyways, after Joe leaves, in their discussion about him being a spy, I get to liking O’Connor because he thinks he’s a decent chap because of his writing, and I get to wondering about Jack since he agrees with Henchy, which is pretty free of him. Henchy though is the worst and goes on about he doesn’t trust smart guys and says goes on a rant on Mr. Sirr, whoever that ism and how he’d sell his country for four pence. Then a priest, Father Keon, comes for a bit in a rally random way, and says he was looking for Mr. Fanning, turns around and leaves, saying a lot of No’s concerning coming in and being accompanied out. Mr. Henchy, John, seems a pretty decent guy then, and then they talk about whether the priest is actually a priest or not. They say he’s a black sheep, meaning he works for himself without any institution he’s connected to, and then they drop it when Mat says he thought the priest was their drinks they ordered. They talk about how to get their drinks then, and the kid comes with the drinks, and the kid gets a corkscrew, they drink, and the kid, 17, drinks too and leaves. Then Henchy calls Crofton, another canvasser, the Conservative, useless in getting boats, and then fat Crofton and thin Lyon come in. They give them bottles Henchy pops the cork off of by heating them by the fire (allowing sound effects) and then they finally start talking about the King. Crofton is revealed as a guy that doesn’t speak much because he thinks he’s above the others. They talk of Parnell and his memory and the King and all with different levels of nationalism and reason. O’Connor is totally for Parnell, while Lyon is a bit doubtful on how great Parnell really was and Henchy thinks the King’s alright. Crofton says shortly he respects Parnell for being a gentleman. Then Hynes comes in slowly. Slowly! Great stuff this story, this Hynes. Henchy puts a bottle for him by the fire and O’Connor and him get all excited about Hynes’ poem, which he doesn’t really remember (he’s so humble) and then remembers and reads out after a massive pause. We get the whole poem, which is really good. It’s followed by silence, applause, and then the Pok! of Hynes’ bottle which he ignores as they sit in that silence that follows glorious greatness. We get O’Connor’s praise, then Henchy’s asking for Crofton’s and then “Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing.” It ends with Crofton. So politics, we see is as casual as alcohol, as religion, as family, as friends. Politics are wonderful in these situations. It’s their reason to be together, really. They aren’t politicians, they’re buds. You got how overly excited I got over the characters. They’re great, that’s why. Sure the politics matter, but amid child-rearing, “spies” and black sheep. Crofton and Hynes matter, the Conservative and the spy. Does the Conservative not speak because he feels separate, because of his conservatism along with his education? Does Hynes leave because he feels separate, because of his “spying” or accusation of spying as well as his education? Joyce is definitely as always, ambiguous, but no doubt, this story ends beautifully.

As for music, Joyce is a mastermind, and he shows it in “The Dead” and “A Mother” as well as in “Clay” and “Eveline”. “The Dead” is about a middle-class musical society, and “A Mother” about Mrs. Kearney’s daughter Kathleen in a concert. In both there are needless musical references, showing how much he knows, but of course, how he uses it is what is important. In “A Mother” Joyce shows the difficulties of the music business since nobody goes to the concerts, ad then there is the corruption of music and performance by people like Mrs. Kearney who sacrifice music for making points and making money. It’s really sad, and you do feel bad for Kathleen. Mrs. Kearney’s the type of person that could make a first-class pianist learn to hate the instrument just by bossing you around too much. “The Dead” is about people who are absolutely obsessed with music, but kind of seem snobby at times because of it, but then again, that’s probably because the reader just isn’t so keen about music as the characters. The characters are very good, of course, at what they do. There’s Aunt Julia, for one, with her amazing song. There are times when music seems misunderstood too though, like when Gabriel can’t find the melody in Mary Anne’s piano piece and people leave during it, while the song very well might have been impressionist, where there is no clear cut folksy melody but only a river of sound. There’s also when Freddie that’s about the amazing tenor who’s a black man and people doubt it because he’s black, which is totally shallow and makes you question how much these characters care purely for music or for the prestige and formality that comes with it. Hmm. Then again they might just not like black voices. Maybe. Anyways, there is then the interesting connection between music and memories, like with Gretta in “The Dead”, Eveline and the organ in “Eveline”, and Joe and the song in “Clay”. They all are pulled by that music to some emotional memory, and they all are very much affected by it in some significant way concerning the plot of the story. In Eveline it reminds her of her mother’s death, Joe of his gentle childhood, and Gretta of her dead first love. So music is a great transition for plots. It’s intimate, sensitive and coincidental.

So concerning epiphanies, honestly, I think we’ve already covered it after 5164 words. The thing to remember is that nobody said these epiphanies were right or that they’re going to stick. For example, the last and most significant epiphany, the one by Gabriel in “The Dead” says that we all are equal, the dead and the living and all of Ireland, and we are all part of something greater. This may be true and is very much implied so by Joyce by just the sheer beauty of the writing and the sleepy transcendent state that the character thought this in. However, Gabriel is sleepy, and when you’re sleepy, your mind is free and you may do these things, but when you wake, you hardly ever remember. Epiphanies are profound and they are emotional, and this emotion is profound and so difficult to reach. So, will any of these epiphanies stick? I hope so, but there’s no saying. There are moments in our lives though when we are smarter and more wonderful people than we could ever have expected of ourselves, and so there is always that comfort that there is something within us - even though we may only understand it or realize it in vague and fleeting moments of passionate emotion, and maybe even in total depression - that we could take pride in for pointing at us as individuals of significance and beauty. So we will forget, or at least never be so honest as in those moments, but we could trust it to be there and that is how man was created in the image of God and how time has passed since then.

“I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas.” –The Sisters

“A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived.” – An Encounter

“The cold air above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent streets” - Araby

“It was hard work – a hard life – but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.” - Eveline

“Then an impromptu square dance, the men devising original figures. What merriment!” – After the Race

“The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets.” – Two Gallants

“She had been made awkward by her not wishing to receive the news in too cavalier a fashion or to seem to have connived and Polly had been made awkward not merely because allusions of that kind always made her awkward but also because she did not wish to be thought that in her wise innocence she had divined the intention behind her mother’s tolerance.” – The Boarding House

“They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the river-banks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of the night to bid them arise, shake themselves and begone.” – A Little Cloud

“Darkness, accompanied by a thick fog, was gaining upon the dusk of February and the lamps in Eustace Street had been lit.” – Counterparts

“And Maria laughed again until the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin” – Clay

“He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.” – A Painful Case

“Mr. Hynes came in slowly.” – Ivy Day in the Committee Room

“He was extremely nervous and extremely jealous of other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy with an ebullient friendliness.” – A Mother

“Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was quite helpless.” – Grace

“A few taps on the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again.” – The Dead

Read folks, Read.