It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre "kick". Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.
Like a fiend in a cloud,
With howling woe,
After night I do crowd,
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increased;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.
Night is always darker before the dawn and life is the same, the hard times will pass, every thing will get better and sun will shine brighter then ever.
Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion.
We [me and friends] like to have surprising stories, but the dynamic and the friendship is the same. When you go out with your crew of friends and you get into trouble, at the end of the night when you come home, you're still the same crew of friends. It's just the story that you have to tell.
Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night, While the stars that oversprinkle All the Heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tingling of the bells.
Time is a very bankrupt and owes more than he's worth to
season.
Nay, he's a thief too: have you not heard men say,
That Time comes stealing on by night and day?