About eight
o'clock
How comes it , then , that this day in May , of all others , should stand up like a wall , as I look back over my life , and seem to me the beginning of all things ? Perhaps this history may show -- or , perhaps , he who reads it may come to see that I was right when I said I could not explain it . It was a great day in London , within and without Temple Bar ; and for me , if for no other reason , it was famous , because on that day , for the first and last time , I saw the great Queen Elizabeth . About eight o'clock , while I stood , as was my wont , setting types in my master 's shop , I looked from the window -LRB- as was also my wont -RRB- , and spied two falconers in their green coats , with a trumpeter riding in the midst , ambling citywards . In a moment I dropped my stick -LRB- and with it , alack ! a pieful of my master 's types -RRB- , and was out , cap and club , in the Strand , shouting till I was hoarse , `` God save her Majesty ! '' On the instant , from every shop far and near , darted ` prentices and journeymen , shouting and waving caps -- some because they saw me do so , some because they guessed what was afoot , some because they saw , even now , the flutter of approaching pennons , and caught the winding of the royal huntsmen 's horns along the Strand .