nights

“Yes, to you, my friend, who read them for the first time; but not for me, who have grown pale over them by many nights’ study, and have reconstructed every phrase, completed every thought.”

I’m nearly as impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can’t sleep of nights because I bought in between ’em.”

So they set to work in one of the big yellow rooms of the castle and worked for three days and four nights, hammering and twisting and bending and soldering and polishing and pounding at the legs and body and head of the Tin Woodman, until at last he was straightened out into his old form, and his joints worked as well as ever.

The mere sight of his excellent appetite was an assurance of success; for I had very clear recollections of days and nights without a thought of food, when his baffled mind had chafed before some problem while his thin, eager features became more attenuated with the asceticism of complete mental concentration.