nearly midnight
My instructor sometimes looked in upon me when he was out for an evening tramp , and I noticed that he was more likely to linger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in , and if he found a bottle of Bénédictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked , at his elbow . He was , I had discovered , parsimonious about small expenditures -- a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character . Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody , and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again , to tramp the streets of Lincoln , which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those of Black Hawk . Again , he would sit until nearly midnight , talking about Latin and English poetry , or telling me about his long stay in Italy . I can give no idea of the peculiar charm and vividness of his talk . In a crowd he was nearly always silent . Even for his classroom he had no platitudes , no stock of professorial anecdotes .