eleven in the morning
The looks of these men , who were huddled into the parlor , were enough to dismay the most resolute observer . Their pale faces and painfully set mouths indicated the sense of an awful crisis which wisdom did not know how to meet or avoid . A well-known citizen read the dispatches to them as they were received , and torn as I was by impatience , my curiosity held me there to hear . It was now about half-past eleven in the morning . The rapidity with which events had moved since I got up was made startlingly apparent by the information here furnished . The authorities , together with a number of influential citizens , had come together as if by a common instinct at the Fifth Avenue Hotel . The Mayor , the Police and Fire Commissioners , several wealthy bankers , and a number of prominent clergymen were holding some kind of council and sending out appeals for co-operation and addresses to the public , which latter were entirely unheeded .