eleven o'clock
This night he would sleep -- sleep as little children do in the all-enveloping , friendly , comforting dark . Scarcely could he wait till a proper bedtime hour came . He forgot that he had had no supper ; forgot in that delectable anticipation the disillusionizing experiences of the day . Mechanically he had , as dusk came on , turned on the lights throughout the house , and force of habit still operating , he left them all on when at eleven o'clock he quitted the brilliantly illuminated porch and went to his bedroom on the second floor . He undressed and he put on him his night wear , becoming a grotesque shrunken figure , what with his meager naked legs and his ashen eager face and thin dust-colored throat rising above the collarless neckband of the garment . He blew out the flame of the oil lamp which burned on a reading stand at the left side of his bed and extinguished the two candles which stood on a table at the right side . Then he got in the bed and stretched out his arms , one aloft , the other behind him , finding with the fingers of this hand the turncock of the gas burner which swung low from the ceiling at the end of a goosenecked iron pipe , finding with the fingers of that hand the wall switch which controlled the battery of electric lights roundabout , and with a long-drawn sigh of happy deliverance he turned off both gas and electricity simultaneously and sank his head toward the pillow .