Portrait of the Artist as a Young Square
A text derived from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
1. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty.
2. It was Wells who had shouldered him into the square ditch the day before because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty.
3. It was a mean thing to do, to shoulder him into the square ditch, they were saying.
4. They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle in the square one night.
5. What did that mean about the smugging in the square?
6. But why in the square?
7. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at most, going half way down one of the side streets but when he had made a skeleton map of the city in his mind he followed boldly one of its central lines until he reached the customhouse.
8. I walked bang into him, said Mr. Dedalus for the fourth time, just at the corner of the square.
9. In his coat pockets he carried squares of Vienna chocolate for his guests while his trousers’ pocket bulged with masses of silver and copper coins.
10. The swift December dusk had come tumbling clownishly after its dull day and, as he stared through the dull square of the window of the schoolroom, he felt his belly crave for its food.
11. The figure of his old master, so strangely re-arisen, brought back to Stephen’s mind his life at Clongowes: the wide playgrounds, swarming with boys; the square ditch; the little cemetery off the main avenue of limes where he had dreamed of being buried; the firelight on the wall of the infirmary where he lay sick; the sorrowful face of Brother Michael.
12. As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light laughter of a girl reached his burning ear.
13. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all?
14. The green square of paper pinned round the lamp cast down a tender shade.
15. Another head than his, right before him in the first benches, was poised squarely above its bending fellows like the head of a priest appealing without humility to the tabernacle for the humble worshippers about him.
16. They turned their faces towards Merrion Square and went for a little in silence.
17. Square feet.