The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dubliners, by James Joyce

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Title: Dubliners

Author: James Joyce

Posting Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #2814]
Release Date: September, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUBLINERS ***

Produced by David Reed, and Karol Pietrzak

DUBLINERS

By James Joyce

CONTENTS

The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace
The Dead

DUBLINERS

THE SISTERS

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night
after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied
the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it
lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought,
I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew
that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said
to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle.
Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window
I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded
strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word
simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some
maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to
be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs
to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if
returning to some former remark of his:

"No, I wouldn't say he was exactly... but there was something queer...
there was something uncanny about him. I'll tell you my opinion...."

He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his
mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather
interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him
and his endless stories about the distillery.

"I have my own theory about