Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/620

handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an entrée into fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where, with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to, so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society’s sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record, in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have... Added to which of course, would be the pecuniar y emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time but a step in the required direction it was, beyond yea or nay, and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue, as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin’s musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he could, with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city’s esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King Street house, given a backer-up, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak — a big if, however — with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too much fêted prince of good fellows and it need not detract from the