four o'clock in the morning
And that was the end of that poem . `` I made him read to me from his bark sheets until he was tired out . And the next day I was at him again early , and the next . Suppose you were living in a jumping-off place , bored to death , and blowing yourself every fifth or sixth day to a brand new crop of prickly heat ; and wanted to go away , and could n't because you had to sit around until a fat Dutchman made up his mind about a concession ; and suppose the only book in the place was on the uses of and manufacture and by-products of the royal palm , written in a beastly language called Tamil , which you only knew enough of to ask for tea and toast at four o'clock in the morning , and were usually understood to mean soda biscuits and a dish of buffalo milk . And suppose that then you came across the complete works of Shakespeare -- and that you had never read them -- or the Odyssey and that you had never read that -- or , better , suppose that there was a Steinway piano in your sitting-room , and that one day the boy who worked the punka for you dropped the rope and sat down at the piano and played Beethoven from beginning to end -- as Rubenstein would have played him -- and suppose you had never heard a note of Beethoven before . It was like that -- listening to the works of Jonathan Bull . '' Gardiner paused , as if considering very carefully what he should say .