a quarter past
eight
Losers never do . Any one might think that parties getting licked lost their powers of speech . Not so with the winners of fights ; not so at all ! At this very minute , while we sat there in that room at a quarter past eight , all over the wide world modest-seeming men were telling how they had licked the other man with one punch , or two or three at the most . It was being told in Kulanche County , Washington , and in Patagonia and Philadelphia and Africa and China , and them places ; in clubs and lumber camps and Pullman cars and ships and saloons -- in states that remained free of the hydrant-headed monster , Prohibition -- in tents and palaces ; in burning deserts and icy wastes . At that very second , in an ice hut up by the North Pole , a modest Eskimo was telling and showing his admiring wife and relatives just how he had put out another Eskimo that had come round and tried to start something . Which was another mystery , the man winning the fight being always put upon and invariably in the right .