three in the afternoon
The bearded poet , perspiring in furs and boots of reindeer skin , declaimed verses of his own composition about the wild life of the Alaskan mining camps . The Japanese youth , in the silk robes of the Samurai two-sworded nobles , read from his own works -- `` The flat-bordered earth , nailed down at night , rusting under the darkness , '' `` The brave , upright rains that came down like errands from iron-bodied yore-time . '' The Christian Scientist , in funereal , impressive black , discussed the contra-will and pan-psychic hylozoism . The university professor put on a full dress suit and lisle thread gloves at three in the afternoon and before literary clubs and circles bellowed extracts from Goethe and Schiler in the German , shaking his fists , purple with vehemence . The Cherokee , arrayed in fringed buckskin and blue beads , rented from a costumer , intoned folk songs of his people in the vernacular . The elocutionist in cheese-cloth toga and tin bracelets , rendered `` The Isles of Greece , where burning Sappho loved and sung . '' The Chinaman , in the robes of a mandarin , lectured on Confucius .