midnight
To refute this charge Mr. Bell had insisted that both he and Watson carefully write out whatever they heard that the two records might afterward be compared and verified . ' _ That is _ , ' Mr. Bell had added with the flicker of a smile , ' _ if we succeed in talking at all _ ! ' Well , they did succeed , as you have heard . At first they held only a stilted dialogue and conscientiously jotted it down ; but afterward their exuberance got the better of them and in sheer joy they chattered away like magpies until long past midnight . Then , loath to destroy the connection , Watson detached his telephone , replaced the Company 's wires , and set out for Boston . In the meantime Mr. Bell , who had previously made an arrangement with the _ Boston Advertiser _ to publish on the following morning an account of the experiment , together with the recorded conversations , had gone to the newspaper office to carry his material to the press . Hence he was not at the Exeter Place rooms when the jubilant Watson arrived .