Henry Flower.  You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way.  Simple bit of paper.  Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland.  Shows you the money to be made out of porter.  Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say.  Skin breeds lice or vermin.  A million pounds, wait a moment.  Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter.  One and four into twenty:  fifteen about.  Yes, exactly.  Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.

What am I saying barrels?  Gallons.  About a million barrels all the same.

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.  Barrels bumped in his head:  dull porter slopped and churned inside.  The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows.  Stepping into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband.  Damn it.  I might have tried to work M’Coy for a pass to Mullingar.

Same notice on the door.  Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African Mission.  Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.  The protestants are the same.  Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion.  Save China’s millions.  Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee.  Prefer an ounce of opium.  Celestials.  Rank heresy for them.  Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum.  Taking it easy with hand under his cheek.  Josssticks burning.  Not like Ecce Homo.  Crown of thorns and cross.  Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock.  Chopsticks?  Conmee:  Martin Cunningham knows him:  distinguishedlooking.  Sorry I didn’t work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t.  They’re taught that.  He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he?  The glasses would take their fancy, flashing.  Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening.  Still life.  Lap it up like milk, I suppose.

The cold smell of sacred stone called him.  He trod the worn steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.

Something going on:  some sodality.  Pity so empty.  Nice discreet place to be next some girl.  Who is my neighbour?  Jammed by the hour to slow music.  That woman at midnight mass.  Seventh heaven.  Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed.  A batch knelt at the altarrails.  The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands.  He stopped at each, took out a communion,