four o'clock before
Liquor was ever his master , and to-day the King 's health had been a fair excuse . He did not spy me , but the roar of his ballad had startled the two men outside , and so , while he was stumbling over chairs , and groping for a tinder-box , I slipp 'd out in the darkness , and downstairs into the street . Guess , any of you , if these events disturbed my rest that night . 'T was four o'clock before I dropp 'd asleep in my bed in Trinity , and my last thoughts were still busy with the words I had heard . Nor , on the morrow , did it fair any better with me : so that , at rhetoric lecture , our president -- Dr. Ralph Kettle -- took me by the ears before the whole class . He was the fiercer upon me as being older than the gross of my fellow-scholars , and -LRB- as he thought -RRB- the more restless under discipline . `` A tutor 'd adolescence , '' he would say , `` is a fair grace before meat , '' and had his hourglass enlarged to point the moral for us .