The Boarding House The Boarding House "The Boarding House" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection "Dubliners." Mrs. Mooney, separated from her husband, a butcher who descended into alcoholism, runs a boarding house for working men. Her daughter Polly entertains the boarders by singing and flirting with them. Mrs. Mooney learns that her daughter is having an affair with Mr. Doran, a man in his mid-thirties who has worked in a Catholic wine-merchant’s office for many years. On Sunday nights Polly, Mrs. Mooney's daughter, would sing with the various guests in the boarding house. It is noted that
The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants part were largely taken from literary and oral traditions and as such contain supernatural materials (what "Bamboo-Inquiring Master", possibly Shi Yukun himself, described as "the occasional strange and bizarre event"). In comparison, the second part exclusively represents Shi's creative genius and is devoid of superstition. The 1879 novel does not complete by the 120th and final chapter, instead, in the final page the readers are referred to a sequel book titled "The Five Younger Gallants" (小五義), which was said to be "close to a hundred chapters". In 1890, a novel with that title was published by another Beijing publisher, Wenguang