midnight
Neville , surveying the vicinity , recognised people he never dreamed would have appeared in such a place -- here a celebrated architect and his pretty wife entertaining a jolly party , there a well-known lawyer and somebody else 's pretty wife ; and there were men well known at fashionable clubs and women known in fashionable sets , and men and women characteristic of quieter sets , plainly a little uncertain and surprised to find themselves there . And he recognised assorted lights of the `` profession , '' masculine and feminine ; and one or two beautiful meteors that were falling athwart the underworld , leaving fading trails of incandescence in their jewelled wake . The noise began to stun him ; he laughed and talked and sang with the others , distinguishing neither his own voice nor the replies . For the tumult grew as the hour advanced toward midnight , gathering steadily in strength , in license , in abandon . And now , as the minute hands on the big gilded clock twitched nearer and nearer to midnight , the racket became terrific , swelling , roaring into an infernal din as the raucous blast of horns increased in the streets outside and the whistles began to sound over the city from Westchester to the Bay , from Long Island to the Palisades . Sheer noise , stupefying , abominable , incredible , unending , greeted the birth of the New Year ; they were dancing in circles , singing , cheering amid the crash of glasses . Table-cloths , silken gowns , flowers were crushed and trampled under foot ; flushed faces looked into strange faces , laughing ; eyes strange to other eyes smiled ; strange hands exchanged clasps with hands unknown ; the whirl had become a madness .