eight o'clock in
the morning
He was never so happy as when in debt , and when by accident , or the interference of friends , he got out of it , he was uneasy and wretched , apparently , until he got in again . The normal condition of the man was debt ; so when he asked me for a loan , I could not help laughing ; and I told him that he had undoubtedly found one of the greatest privations of his gorilla life to be the difficulty of contracting new debts . `` That 's a fact , '' said Jack . `` The menagerie opens at eight o'clock in the morning ; it takes me a good hour to get myself up for the day ; and we do n't shut up until ten o'clock at night ; so you see my professional duties are very confining , and a real , live African gorilla is not supposed to have first-rate credit with the people who poke stale sandwiches and peanuts through his cage-bars by day . '' I promised Jack that if old Seanecks , of the _ Interoceanic Monthly _ , accepted my article on the Origin of the Human Species , I would divide the proceeds with him . Jack and I had shared and shared alike with our little gains too often in years gone by , for me to remember which owed the other now . Besides , I told him that I had studied his habits as a gorilla , and he had some claim upon the profits of an article in which his personal peculiarities figured so largely .