“Before my patience are exhausted”

Leopold Bloom is conducting a clandestine correspondence with someone who identifies herself as Martha Clifford. Bloom is writing as Henry Flower, the name on a card he’s tucked inside the leather headband of his Plasto’s high grade ha (the “sweated legend” on the crown of the hat has lost its t ). The correspondence began with a classified advertisement that Bloom placed in the Irish Times: “Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work.” He’s received forty-four replies.

On the morning of June 16, 1904, he finds a reply to his reply to Martha. She has enclosed a flower. From the “Lotus-Eaters” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

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