four o'clock
`` No , I 'm going home , '' I said . I was aware of his somewhat compassionate smile as I left him ... One November day nearly two years after my admission as junior member of the firm of Watling , Fowndes and Ripon seven gentlemen met at luncheon in the Boyne Club ; Mr. Barbour , President of the Railroad , Mr. Scherer , of the Boyne Iron Works and other corporations , Mr. Leonard Dickinson , of the Corn National Bank , Mr. Halsey , a prominent banker from the other great city of the state , Mr. Grunewald , Chairman of the Republican State Committee , and Mr. Frederick Grierson , who had become a very important man in our community . At four o'clock they emerged from the club : citizens in Boyne Street who saw them chatting amicably on the steps little suspected that in the last three hours these gentlemen had chosen and practically elected the man who was to succeed Mr. Wade as United States Senator in Washington . Those were the days in which great affairs were simply and efficiently handled . No democratic nonsense about leaving the choice to an electorate that did not know what it wanted . The man chosen to fill this high position was Theodore Watling .