about twelve o'clock
at night
` Mr. Chairman , gentlemen , and dear brothers , I do not rise upon this very unpleasant occasion -- unpleasant to me it is , but not on my account -- for the purpose of giving vent to the coarse effusions of an unlettered mind , that shapes its vulgar outpourings in bad language and worse feeling . No , I am incapable of the bad feeling , in the first place , and , thanks to my education , of illiterate language , in the second . It has pleased my friend Mr. Yellowboy -- if he will still allow me to call him so -- for I appeal to you all whether it becomes those who sit under this hallowed roof to disagree -- it has pleased him , I say , to bring charges against me , to some of which I certainly must plead guilty -- if guilt there be in it . It has pleased him to charge me with the unbrotherly crime , the unchristian crime , the un-orange crime ' -- here he smiled more blandly at every term , and then brought his smiling eye to bear on his antagonist -- ` of lifting him out of the channel about twelve o'clock at night , where he lay -- I may say so among ourselves -- in state of most comfortable , but un-orange-like intoxication . ' `` The audience now being mostly drunk , were tickled with this compliment to their sobriety , and cheered and shouted for more than a minute . ` Go on Cantwell ! By Japers , you 're no blockhead ! '