six in the morning
A tomb ! ... Bitterly he granted the aptness of that description of his cubicle : mausoleum of his every hope and aspiration , sepulchre of all his ability and promise . In this narrow room his very self had been extinguished : a man had degenerated into a machine . Everything that caught his eye bore mute witness to this truth : the shabby tin alarm clock on the battered bureau was one of a dynasty that had roused him at six in the morning with unfailing regularity three hundred and sixty-five times per year -LRB- Sundays were too rare in his calendar and too precious to be wasted abed -RRB- . From an iron hook in the window frame dangled the elastic home-exerciser with which it was his unfailing habit to perform a certain number of matutinal contortions , to keep his body wholesome and efficient . Beneath the bed was visible the rim of a shallow English tub that made possible his subsequent sponge bath ... . A machine ; a fixture ; creature of an implacable routine ; a spirit immolated upon the altar of habit : into this he had degenerated in ten years .