Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or…” I could understand it if you were… National School boys.

I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink. “The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning. “This page or this page? This page Now, Dillon, up! ‘Hardly had the day’… Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’… Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?”Įveryone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face. One day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school. I liked better some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. Nevertheless it was true.Ī spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. He looked like some kind of an Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling:Įveryone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. His parents went to eight-o’clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs. But, however well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon’s war dance of victory. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles.

He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us.

An encounter james joyce