five o'clock
They had received their copies ; but how ? In the form of hard-pressed cannon-balls , delivered by a single shot , and a mere tour de force , through the glass of bedroom-windows . They had received them full in the face , like a base ball , if they happened to be up and stirring ; they had received them in quarter-sheets , tucked in at separate windows ; they had found them in the chimney , pinned against the door , shot through attic-windows , delivered in long slips through convenient keyholes , stuffed into ventilators , and occupying the same can with the morning 's milk . One subscriber , who waited for some time at the office-door to have a personal interview with Wan Lee -LRB- then comfortably locked in my bedroom -RRB- , told me , with tears of rage in his eyes , that he had been awakened at five o'clock by a most hideous yelling below his windows ; that , on rising in great agitation , he was startled by the sudden appearance of `` The Northern Star , '' rolled hard , and bent into the form of a boomerang , or East-Indian club , that sailed into the window , described a number of fiendish circles in the room , knocked over the light , slapped the baby 's face , `` took '' him -LRB- the subscriber -RRB- `` in the jaw , '' and then returned out of the window , and dropped helplessly in the area . During the rest of the day , wads and strips of soiled paper , purporting to be copies of `` The Northern Star '' of that morning 's issue , were brought indignantly to the office . An admirable editorial on `` The Resources of Humboldt County , '' which I had constructed the evening before , and which , I had reason to believe , might have changed the whole balance of trade during the ensuing year , and left San Francisco bankrupt at her wharves , was in this way lost to the public . It was deemed advisable for the next three weeks to keep Wan Lee closely confined to the printing-office , and the purely mechanical part of the business .