midnight
`` Responsibility is n't such a joke , after all , is it , Baby ? '' CHAPTER II . The Pest Thackeray , as a lad , was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling . Bismarck failed to get a University degree , because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil . George Washington , in student days , could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling . The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with fish-pole or tattered book , when he should have been working . Now , these men were giants -- physically as well as mentally .