two o'clock
In daily double-leaded editorial columns the chief preached a Holy War , and in the local pages we fought the foe tooth and nail , biting and gouging and clawing , and they gouged and clawed back at us like catamounts . That was where the hard work fell upon Devore . He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politics while the other half tried to cover the run of the news . If I live to be a thousand years old I am not going to forget the state convention that began at two o'clock that muggy September afternoon at Lyric Hall up on Washington Street in the old part of the town . Once upon a time , twenty or thirty years before , Lyric Hall had been the biggest theater in town . The stage was still there and the boxes , and at the back there were miles -- they seemed miles anyway -- of ancient , crumbling , dauby scenery stacked up and smelling of age and decay . Booth and Barrett had played there , and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence .