one o'clock
`` Be wiser than other people if you can ; but do not tell them so . '' If Major White was not a man of quick comprehension , he was , at all events , honest in his density . He never said that he understood when he did not do so . When he received a telegram in barracks at Dover to come up to London the next day and meet Cornish at his club at one o'clock , the major merely said that he was in a state of condemnation , and fixing his glass very carefully into his more surprised eye , studied the thin pink paper as if it were a unique and interesting proof of the advance of the human race . In truth , Major White never sent telegrams , and rarely received them . He blew out his cheeks and said a second time that he was damned . Then he threw the telegram into a waste-paper basket , which was rarely put to so legitimate a use ; for the major never wrote letters if he could help it , and received so few that they hardly kept him supplied in pipe-lights .