three in the morning
I am grown tired of books . It is a fact that protracted manual toil strikes a shrewd blow at one 's capacity for thought , and at times I turn from the fierce intellectual life with a weariness I never knew in the old days . How my friend would smile at such a confession . I , who have thumped the supper-table until three in the morning , until our eyelids were leaden with fatigue , growing weary of the strife ! Yet it is sometimes true . After all , though , my real study nowadays is on deck and below , where Shakespeare and the musical glasses are beyond the sky-line , and one can talk to men who have never in their lives speculated upon life , have never imagined that life could possibly be arraigned and called in question , or that morality could ever be anything but `` givin ' the girl her lines , like a man . '' My friend the Mate is a compendium of humanism , the Chief provides me with curious researches in natural history .