midnight
Directly I came into the London atmosphere , tasting freedom , tasting irresponsibility and the pull of new forces altogether , my discipline fell from me like a garment . Wimblehurst to a youngster in my position offered no temptations worth counting , no interests to conflict with study , no vices -- such vices as it offered were coarsely stripped of any imaginative glamourfull drunkenness , clumsy leering shameful lust , no social intercourse even to waste one 's time , and on the other hand it would minister greatly to the self-esteem of a conspicuously industrious student . One was marked as `` clever , '' one played up to the part , and one 's little accomplishment stood out finely in one 's private reckoning against the sunlit small ignorance of that agreeable place . One went with an intent rush across the market square , one took one 's exercise with as dramatic a sense of an ordered day as an Oxford don , one burnt the midnight oil quite consciously at the rare respectful , benighted passer-by . And one stood out finely in the local paper with one 's unapproachable yearly harvest of certificates . Thus I was not only a genuinely keen student , but also a little of a prig and poseur in those days -- and the latter kept the former at it , as London made clear . Moreover Wimblehurst had given me no outlet in any other direction .