about midnight
It grated on every nerve . Alongside of it the ordinary poster of the present day would seem to be as accurate in drawing as a bicycle map , and in its coloring it simply shrieked with discord . If color had tones which struck the ear , instead of appealing to the eye , the thing would have deafened me . It was about midnight when the manifestation first took shape . My family had long before retired , and I had just finished smoking a cigar -- which was one of a thousand which my wife had bought for me at a Monday sale at one of the big department stores in New York . I do n't remember the brand , but that is just as well -- it was not a cigar to be advertised in a civilized piece of literature -- but I do remember that they came in bundles of fifty , tied about with blue ribbon . The one I had been smoking tasted and burned as if it had been rolled by a Cuban insurrectionist while fleeing from a Spanish regiment through a morass , gathering its component parts as he ran .