midnight
The third story contained a dance hall and a theater . The character of both would better be left to the imagination . Night after night during the season , this den ran at top-steam . By midnight , when the orgy was at its height , the windows brilliantly illuminated , the various bursts of music , laughing , cursing , singing , shouting , fighting , breaking in turn or all together from its open windows , it was , as Jackson Hines once expressed it to me , like hell let out for noon . The respectable elements of the towns were powerless . They could not control the elections . Their police would only have risked total annihilation by attempting a raid .