eleven
o’clock
After nine hours of the most ungrateful daily labor that could well have been inflicted on him , the sight of play-bills and other wayside advertisements of places of public recreation appealed to him on his way home , with irresistible fascination . Mr. Thorpe drew the line of demarcation between permissible and forbidden evening amusements at the lecture-rooms of the Royal and Polytechnic Institutions , and the oratorio performances in Exeter Hall . All gates opening on the outer side of the boundary thus laid down , were gates of Vice -- gates that no son of his should ever be allowed to pass . The domestic laws which obliged Zack to be home every night at eleven o'clock , and forbade the possession of a door-key , were directed especially to the purpose of closing up against him the forbidden entrances to theaters and public gardens -- places of resort which Mr. Thorpe characterized , in a strain of devout allegory , as `` Labyrinths of National Infamy . '' It was perfectly useless to suggest to the father -LRB- as some of Zack 's maternal relatives did suggest to him -RRB- , that the son was originally descended from Eve , and was consequently possessed of an hereditary tendency to pluck at forbidden fruit ; and that his disposition and age made it next to a certainty , that if he were restrained from enjoying openly the amusements most attractive to him , he would probably end in enjoying them by stealth . Mr. Thorpe met all arguments of this kind by registering his usual protest against `` compounding with vice ; '' and then drew the reins of discipline tighter than ever , by way of warning off all intrusive hands from attempting to relax them for the future . Before long , the evil results predicted by the opponents of the father 's plan for preventing the son from indulging in public amusements , actually occurred .