midnight
At the end of a dessert , served on decorated plates , we hear from the ball-room the call of the cornet -- ` Take places for the quadrille ! ' But already a rival crew , beaten that same morning , has monopolized the prettiest girls . A fight ! -- teeth broken , eyes blackened , ugly falls , and whacks below the belt ; in a word , a poem of physical enthusiasm , of noisy hilarity , of animal spirits , without speaking of the return at midnight , through crowded stations , with girls whom we lift into the cars , friends separated calling from one end of the train to the other , and fellows playing a horn upon the roof . '' And the evenings of my astonishing companion were not less full of adventure than his Sundays . Collar-and-elbow wrestling in a tent , under the red light of torches , between him -- simple amateur -- and Du Bois , the iron man , in person ; rat-chases near the mouths of sewers , with dogs as fierce as tigers ; sanguinary encounters at night , in the most dangerous quarters , with ruffians and nose-eaters , were the most insignificant episodes of his nightly career . Nor do I dare relate other adventures of a more intimate character , from which , as the writers of an earlier day would say in noble style , a pen the least timorous would recoil with horror .