midnight
Seen again , as he viewed it now , the town would look raw and provincial despite patriotic throes of self-deception . On moonlit nights the New Babylon Electric Light and Power Company hoarded its energies , and an inky pall accordingly lay over the muddy streets which the pale melon rind in the clouded zenith did nothing to dissipate . The contrast between this niggardliness and the midnight brilliance of up-town Broadway was inevitable , and the jolting Tuscarora House free ` bus came readily into unflattering comparison with a certain rubber-tired hansom cab . Naturally midnight , a jaded body , and the Tuscarora House free ` bus might well jaundice any scene ; but the returning native recognized these as accidents merely in the phenomenon of his changed vision . The hotel bar-room was boisterous with the usual Saturday night gathering of the set which in its innocence supposed itself fast , and the maturer poker crowd , Shelby 's own cronies , was in protracted session elsewhere in the building ; but he managed to evade them all and lock himself in his ugly room . For some sophisticated weeks he had suspected the household gods here assembled to have feet of clay . Now he knew it ; but with the feeling that the place was a temporary husk at best , he avoided a too particular inventory of the pseudo-marble clock , the vases of pampas grass , the album , and the garish pictures against their background of pink roses blushing in a terra-cotta field , and ran drowsily over the little pile of accumulated mail .