6 o'clock
`` The term is quite familiar to me , but I do n't think I was ever called upon to define the character before . It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen . I would say , offhand , that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know . At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him . He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners ; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw . He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you ca n't find a place in the city where they do n't cut their spaghetti with a knife . Your ` Man About Town ' has done that .