Happy Bloomsday

[George Thompson]

Those of you who have memorized Ulysses -- and I hope that that is all
of you -- will remember that in the chapter set in the National Library
there is the following passage:

        Lenehan gave a loud cough.  -- Ahem! he said very softly.  O,
for a fresh of breath air! [sic] I caught a cold in the park.  The gate
was open.
        James Joyce, Ulysses.  (The "Omnium Gatherum" subsection of the
chaper "Aeolus" (ch. 7).  vol. II, p. 281 of the Hans Gabler edition)

I was reading an issue of the Evening Chronicle from 1837 just the
other day, and found the following foreshadowing of Lenehan's joke:

        Two loafers slept in the Park last night, taking the precaution
to keep the gates shut.

And what was the date of this newspaper?  June 16, 1837!  Pretty
spooky, eh?  And some people say there is no god, and that James Joyce
wasn't him.

(I apologize for sending this Bloomsday wish out a few days early, but
I expect to be on the road on the 16th.)

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.