The old clock in the hall—that had sat there since long before he, himself, could remember—struck ten, and then eleven, and then, to his disgust, even twelve.
At ten he had taken another toddy to put himself to sleep.
There is only one excuse for drunkenness, and that is sleeplessness. If there is a hell for the intellectual it is not of fire, as for commoner mortals, but of sleeplessness—the wild staring eyes of an eternity of sleeplessness following an eon of that midnight mental anguish which comes with the birth of thoughts.
But still he slept not, and so at ten he had taken another toddy—and still another, and as he felt its life and vigor to the ends of his fingers, he quaffed his fourth one; then he smiled and said: “And now I don't care if I never go to sleep!”
He arose and dressed. He tried to recite one of his favorite poems, and it angered him that his tongue seemed thick.
His head slightly reeled, but in it there galloped a thousand beautiful dreams and there were visions of Alice, and love, and the satisfaction of conquering and the glory of winning.
He could feel his heart-throbs at the ends of his fingers. He could see thoughts—beautiful, grand thoughts—long before they reached him,—stalking like armed men, helmeted and vizored, stalking forward into his mind.
He walked out and down the long hall.
The ticking of the clock sounded to him so loud that he stopped and cursed it.
Because, somehow, it ticked every time his heart beat; and he could count his heart-beats in his fingers' ends, and he didn't want to know every time his heart beat. It made him nervous.