Araby
by james joyce (excerpt)
north richmond street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the christian brothers' school set the boys free. an uninhabited house of two
storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. the other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within then, gazed
at one another with brown imperturbable faces
the former tenant of our house, a priest had died in the back drawing-room air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the
waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. among these i found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and
damp: the abbot by walter scott the devout communicant and the memoirs of vidocg. i liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. the wild
garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which i found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. he had
been a very charitable priest in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister
when the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. when we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. the space of
sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the streetlifted their feeble lanterns. the cold air stung us and we played
our bodies glowed our shouts echoed in the silent street. the career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran
the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous
stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness
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