"for safe and sane bets"

(38.9-40.14)  After another missed day this week, I'm back for Post #1 of a Saturday doubleheader.  It's actually a good time for a doubleheader because it looks like the sentence beginning at the bottom of page 39 doesn't end until page 41.  Rather than extend the reading to three pages, I figure I can double up and read through page 42 later this afternoon.

We pick up here with the story of the Cad, whose habit for spitting attracts the attention of his wife (or, as she's called here, the Cad's "bit of strife").  After the Cad's meal is finished, she "glaned up as usual," meaning that she both cleaned the room after the meal and gleaned the gist of HCE's defense after hearing the Cad recite what HCE had said.  What follows is an interesting illustration of how rumors spread.  The Cad's wife tells what she knows of HCE's story to her priest, who she trusts will keep the story a secret.  (The priest is an interesting figure embodying a number of elusive contradictions.  He is identified as a member of both the Jesuit and Vincentian orders.  He is also alternately Mr. Browne and a Nolan, and accordingly represents Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, one of Joyce's favorite philosophers (and heretics), whose writing on contradictory natures forms a basis for the Wake.  A lot could be said about the priest, but now isn't the time to get bogged down in all that . . . .)

The priest ends up going to the racetrack after speaking with the Cad's wife, and while he's there he whispers what he's learned about HCE to Philly Thurnston, "a layteacher of rural science and orthophonethics."  We learn the results of the "classic Encourage Hackney Plate" (there's those initials again:  c-E-H).  There seems to be general confusion from readers of Finnegans Wake as to which horse actually wins the race, but I read it as Saint Dalough winning the race by two noses over Bold Boy Cromwell.  After all, the plate is "captured by two noses in a stablecloth finish . . . from the cream colt Bold Boy Cromwell after a clever getaway by . . . Saint Dalough."  This would imply an Irish victory over the invading force from across the waters, which also means a victory for the locals over the immigrant HCE.  Maybe I'm spending too much time thinking about the results of this horse race, but the Belmont is two weeks away and California Chrome's trying to win the first Triple Crown in my lifetime, so maybe I've got the horses on my brain.

Anyway, the conversation between the priest and Philly Thurnston about HCE is overheard by two lowlife types, Treacle Tom and Frisky Shorty.  These two are out looking for a quick buck and "ear the passon . . . touchin the case of Mr Adams."  (Mr Adams here stands for HCE, the First Man/Adam figure of the book.)  Treacle Tom's been taking it relatively easy, but he loves race nights and consequently ends up getting drunk.  He spends the night at the housingroom "Abide With Oneanother" and "alcoh alocho alcoherently" "resnore[s]" what he's heard from "the evangelical bussybozzy."  This now fourth-hand account of HCE's defense of himself is told "in parts" "oft in the chilly night" "during uneasy slumber," so it's fairly clear that the original message is being very diluted and distorted in this Joycean game of telephone.  Who's listening to Treacle Tom's account?  That's what we're about to find out.