midnight
Sometimes it would be held in the hold of an abandoned vessel left high and dry on a lonely beach , which , under the deft touches of the artists of the Club , would be transformed in a night to the cabin of a buccaneer filled with the loot of a treasure ship . Sometimes a canal boat , which the week before had been loaded with lime or potatoes , would be scoured out with a fire-hose , its deck roofed with awnings and hung with lanterns , its hatches lined with palms , and in the hold below a table spread of such surprising beauty , and in an interior so gorgeous in its appointments that each guest , as he descended the carpeted staircase leading from the deck above to the carpeted keelson below , would rub his eyes wondering whether he had not been asleep , and had suddenly awakened aboard Cleopatra 's barge . Again the club would hold a Roman feast in one of Solari 's upstairs rooms -- the successor to Riley 's of the old days -- each man speaking ancient Latin with Tenth Street terminals , the servants dressed in tunics and sandals , and the members in togas . Or they would make a descent at midnight on Fulton Market and have their tomcods scooped from the fish-boxes alive and broiled to their liking while they waited ; or they would take possession of Brown 's or Farrish 's for mugs of ale and English chops . But it was always one so different from any other function of its class that it formed the topic of the studios for weeks thereafter . To-night it was the humor of the club to reproduce as closely as possible , with the limited means at their disposal -- for none of the Stone Mugs were rolling in wealth , nor did these functions require it -- some one of the great banquets of former times , not to be historically or chronologically correct , but to express the artistic atmosphere of such an occasion . That there were certain unavoidable and easily detected shams under all this glamour of color and form did not lessen the charm of the present function .