one o’clock
The licensing day came , and the red-faced landlord of the Jolly Boatmen walked into the town-hall , looking as jolly as need be , having actually put on an extra fiddle for that night , to commemorate the anniversary of the Jolly Boatmen 's music licence . It was applied for in due form , and was just about to be granted as a matter of course , when up rose Nicholas Tulrumble , and drowned the astonished corporation in a torrent of eloquence . He descanted in glowing terms upon the increasing depravity of his native town of Mudfog , and the excesses committed by its population . Then , he related how shocked he had been , to see barrels of beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after week ; and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two days together , to count the people who went in for beer between the hours of twelve and one o'clock alone -- which , by-the-bye , was the time at which the great majority of the Mudfog people dined . Then , he went on to state , how the number of people who came out with beer-jugs , averaged twenty-one in five minutes , which , being multiplied by twelve , gave two hundred and fifty-two people with beer-jugs in an hour , and multiplied again by fifteen -LRB- the number of hours during which the house was open daily -RRB- yielded three thousand seven hundred and eighty people with beer-jugs per day , or twenty-six thousand four hundred and sixty people with beer-jugs , per week . Then he proceeded to show that a tambourine and moral degradation were synonymous terms , and a fiddle and vicious propensities wholly inseparable . All these arguments he strengthened and demonstrated by frequent references to a large book with a blue cover , and sundry quotations from the Middlesex magistrates ; and in the end , the corporation , who were posed with the figures , and sleepy with the speech , and sadly in want of dinner into the bargain , yielded the palm to Nicholas Tulrumble , and refused the music licence to the Jolly Boatmen .