midnight
And at eight , he covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden ; and at eleven was sent over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at the losses to the insurance companies . He went to bed at one , and dreamed of shattered locomotives , human beings lying still with blankets over them , rows of cells , and banks of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass band in the gallery . He decided when he awoke the next morning that he had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career , and as one day followed another , he became more and more convinced of it , and more and more devoted to it . He was twenty then , and he was now twenty-three , and in that time had become a great reporter , and had been to Presidential conventions in Chicago , revolutions in Hayti , Indian outbreaks on the Plains , and midnight meetings of moonlighters in Tennessee , and had seen what work earthquakes , floods , fire , and fever could do in great cities , and had contradicted the President , and borrowed matches from burglars . And now he thought he would like to rest and breathe a bit , and not to work again unless as a war correspondent . The only obstacle to his becoming a great war correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war , and a war correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a general without an army . He read the papers every morning on the elevated trains for war clouds ; but though there were many war clouds , they always drifted apart , and peace smiled again .