Midnight
`` All right , '' said Waring , aloud . `` My compliments to the captain , and say I 'll be with him . '' But even with this injunction he failed to appear . Midnight came without a word from Waring , and the morning dawned and found him absent still . It was one of Sam Waring 's oddities that , like the hero of `` Happy Thoughts , '' other people 's belongings seemed to suit him so much better than his own . The most immaculately dressed man in the regiment , he was never satisfied with the result of the efforts of the New York artists whom he favored with his custom and his criticism . He would wear three or four times a new coat just received from that metropolis , and spend not a little time , when not on duty or in uniform , in studying critically its cut and fit in the various mirrors that hung about his bachelor den , gayly humming some operatic air as he conducted the survey , and generally winding up with a wholesale denunciation of the cutter and an order to Ananias to go over and get some other fellow 's coat , that he might try the effect of that .