two in the afternoon
The play and music were the work of undergraduates , and the club itself was the most influential of institutions , over three hundred men competing for it every year . Amory , after an easy victory in the first sophomore Princetonian competition , stepped into a vacancy of the cast as Boiling Oil , a Pirate Lieutenant . Every night for the last week they had rehearsed `` Ha-Ha Hortense ! '' in the Casino , from two in the afternoon until eight in the morning , sustained by dark and powerful coffee , and sleeping in lectures through the interim . A rare scene , the Casino . A big , barnlike auditorium , dotted with boys as girls , boys as pirates , boys as babies ; the scenery in course of being violently set up ; the spotlight man rehearsing by throwing weird shafts into angry eyes ; over all the constant tuning of the orchestra or the cheerful tumpty-tump of a Triangle tune . The boy who writes the lyrics stands in the corner , biting a pencil , with twenty minutes to think of an encore ; the business manager argues with the secretary as to how much money can be spent on `` those damn milkmaid costumes '' ; the old graduate , president in ninety-eight , perches on a box and thinks how much simpler it was in his day .