midnight of Saturday
His mail was now burdened with invitations to speak , but he made few speeches . `` The voter a speech will influence has made up his mind , '' he said to Bowers . `` The heart-to-heart talk is the trump card of the eleventh hour . '' To play this card required a prodigious amount of travelling about the district ; and between these activities and the speaking engagements he was in promise bound to fulfil , Shelby saw little or nothing of New Babylon till midnight of Saturday , which was the virtual end of the canvass . Seen again , as he viewed it now , the town would look raw and provincial despite patriotic throes of self-deception . On moonlit nights the New Babylon Electric Light and Power Company hoarded its energies , and an inky pall accordingly lay over the muddy streets which the pale melon rind in the clouded zenith did nothing to dissipate . The contrast between this niggardliness and the midnight brilliance of up-town Broadway was inevitable , and the jolting Tuscarora House free ` bus came readily into unflattering comparison with a certain rubber-tired hansom cab .