eight o'clock
`` It is impossible but what I shall take it ; for if I do n't take it , there 's an end of the British fleet ; and as it is impossible that there should be an end of the British fleet , it is impossible that I should not take Cronstadt ! '' -- Q.E.D. CHAPTER XII . In which everything depends on Sir Isaac 's success in discovering the law of attraction . On the appointed evening , at eight o'clock , the great room of the Gatesboro ' Athenaeum was unusually well filled . Not only had the Mayor exerted himself to the utmost for that object , but the hand-bill itself promised a rare relief from the prosiness of abstract enlightenment and elevated knowledge . Moreover , the stranger himself had begun to excite speculation and curiosity . He was an amateur , not a cut-and-dry professor .