five minutes
to five
But when this brief pride of silence upheld him no longer he was glad to find himself still in the midst of common lives , passing on his way amid the squalor and noise and sloth of the city fearlessly and with a light heart . Near the hoardings on the canal he met the consumptive man with the doll 's face and the brimless hat coming towards him down the slope of the bridge with little steps , tightly buttoned into his chocolate overcoat , and holding his furled umbrella a span or two from him like a divining rod . It must be eleven , he thought , and peered into a dairy to see the time . The clock in the dairy told him that it was five minutes to five but , as he turned away , he heard a clock somewhere near him , but unseen , beating eleven strokes in swift precision . He laughed as he heard it for it made him think of MacCann ; and he saw him a squat figure in a shooting jacket and breeches and with a fair goatee , standing in the wind at Hopkins ' corner , and heard him say : -- Dedalus , you 're an antisocial being , wrapped up in yourself . I 'm not . I 'm a democrat and I 'll work and act for social liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the United States of the Europe of the future .