about midnight
His conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being a jot the wiser . If his desire was to baffle me , he was successful . I was defeated , after a close struggle , by a meagre majority of seven votes in some seventeen hundred ; and the night after the election was declared , he gave a ball in honor of the successful candidates , in which his house was filled to overflowing . I passed the dwelling about midnight . Music rang from the illuminated parlor . The merry dance proceeded . All was life , gayety , and rich profusion .