three
o'clock
It could n't have been worse on -- any one . At half-past one no one remembered to feed him . At two , in another man 's operation , he saw the richest merchant in the city go wafted out into eternity on the fumes of ether taken for the lancing of a stye . At three o'clock , passing the open door of one of the public waiting-rooms , an Italian peasant woman rushed out and spat in his face because her tubercular daughter had just died at the sanitarium where the Senior Surgeon 's money had sent her . Only in this one wild , defiling moment did the lust for alcohol surge up in him again , surge clamorously , brutally , absolutely mercilessly , as though in all the known cleansants of the world only interminable raw whisky was hot enough to cauterize a polluted consciousness . At half past three , as soon as he could change his clothes again , he re-broke and re-set an acrobat 's priceless leg . At five o'clock , more to rest himself than anything else , he went up to the autopsy amphitheater to look over an exhibit of enlarged hearts , whose troubles were permanently over .