eleven at night
Were the lamps of the squares extinguished , and the college left in total darkness , we were summoned before the dean ; was the vice-provost serenaded with a chorus of trombones and French horns , to our taste in music was the attention ascribed ; did a sudden alarm of fire disturb the congregation at morning chapel , Messrs. Webber and O'Malley were brought before the board , -- and I must do them the justice to say that the most trifling circumstantial evidence was ever sufficient to bring a conviction . Reading men avoided the building where we resided as they would have done the plague . Our doors , like those of a certain classic precinct commemorated by a Latin writer , lay open night and day , while mustached dragoons , knowingly dressed four-in-hand men , fox-hunters in pink , issuing forth to the Dubber or returning splashed from a run with the Kildare hounds , were everlastingly seen passing and repassing . Within , the noise and confusion resembled rather the mess-room of a regiment towards eleven at night than the chambers of a college student ; while , with the double object of affecting to be in ill-health , and to avoid the reflections that daylight occasionally inspires , the shutters were never opened , but lamps and candles kept always burning . Such was No. 2 , Old Square , in the goodly days I write of . All the terrors of fines and punishments fell scathless on the head of my worthy chum . In fact , like a well-known political character , whose pleasure and amusement it has been for some years past to drive through acts of Parliament and deride the powers of the law , so did Mr. Webber tread his way , serpenting through the statute-book , ever grazing , but rarely trespassing upon some forbidden ground which might involve the great punishment of expulsion .