The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration.  No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill.  The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides.  Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch’s castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury’s Hotel, S. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley’s hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal’s Cave—­all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.

—­Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?

—­That’s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman.

—­And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. 
Also now.  This very moment.  This very instant.

Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.

—­Robbed, says he.  Plundered.  Insulted.  Persecuted.  Taking what belongs to us by right.  At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle.

—­Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.

—­I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom.

—­Right, says John Wyse.  Stand up to it then with force like men.

That’s an almanac picture for you.  Mark for a softnosed bullet.  Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun.  Gob, he’d adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse’s apron on him.  And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag.

—­But it’s no use, says he.  Force, hatred, history, all that.  That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred.  And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.