noon
It is necessary for you to know this , that you may understand what manner of man young Albert Gordon was . Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years . He had left Yale when his last living relative died , and had taken the morning train for New York , where they had promised him reportorial work on one of the innumerable Greatest New York Dailies . He arrived at the office at noon , and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come , to Spuyten Duyvil , where a train had been wrecked and everybody of consequence to suburban New York killed . One of the old reporters hurried him to the office again with his `` copy , '' and after he had delivered that , he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in Murderers ' Row , who could not talk anything else , but who had shown some international skill in the use of a jimmy . And at eight , he covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden ; and at eleven was sent over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at the losses to the insurance companies . He went to bed at one , and dreamed of shattered locomotives , human beings lying still with blankets over them , rows of cells , and banks of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass band in the gallery .