Sentence No. 72 · 7 June 2026
It cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses and decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches
James Joyce, Dubliners
James Joyce — Dubliners (1914) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The subject "It" refers back to "The glow" in the previous sentence — a pronoun opening like this signals the phrase belongs mid-passage, never first. When you spot a lone "It" phrase, look for the noun it replaces nearby.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A man reflects on the dimming light of a city evening. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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