midnight
I remember after I had spent two hours putting my Polykon down on a concrete foundation so that I could recite John Stuart Mill by the ream , it seemed as if I could n't live half an hour longer without a certain kind of pie that was kept in captivity a mile away downtown at a lunch-counter . And , moreover , I could n't eat that pie alone . A college student does n't know how to masticate without an assistant or two . When I think of the hours and hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the doors of perfectly respectable houses , trying to drag some student out and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie , I am struck with awe . When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat around with my feet on a sofa cushion for three days . I 'll bet I 've walked twice as far hunting up some devoted friend to help me go downtown and eat a piece of pie . And that pie seemed three times as important as the easy lessons for beginners in running the earth that I had been absorbing all the evening .