revels held by intestinal demons of which the
less we say the better, which should come off
without our knowing anything about them—
topsy-turvy moments, crises which the constitution
pulls through with difficulty, and which
seriously affect the mind and the spirits, if we
happen to be awake while they are going on.

From two till five A.M. are of a surety hours of
this sort. Small are they in the received meaning
of the word, but far from small in duration;
not small in their powers of oppression, not small
in their influence on the following day. Those are,
indeed, unhallowed hours, as all will surely admit
who have had much experience of them. Why,
to take their influence on furniture alone into
consideration, will anybody affirm for a moment
that the different articles of furniture in one's
sleeping apartment are the same in their
behaviour during those hours that they are at other
times? I have a quiet and unassuming wardrobe
in my bedroom, for instance. How does
it happen that that wardrobe, as soon as
two o'clock in the morning has fairly struck,
begins to make unearthly and explosive sounds?
I have known that wardrobe to go off like a
gun at three in the morning, whilst, to crack
and groan uneasily, is its constant practice
at that time. It may be that the theory which
I have ventured to put forth as to the changes
and crises which take place during the small
hours in the human frame may apply to
wardrobes also. They have insides. Perhaps those
insides are liable to indigestion and disorders
which make the sufferer squeak for dear life.
But even if this be so, how does it apply to your
cane-bottom chair? That has no inside: yet, at
three in the morning, it will crack, not so
heavily, but quite as sharply, and as startlingly
as the wardrobe itself. What dismal and death-
watch clickings, too, go on in the grate. What
is amiss there, I wonder?

I have known queer things to happen at such
times also with clothing. It is the practice of
some of the lords of the creation to deposit
their garments in an accumulate heap upon the
back of a chair, and it may be that, as the number
of them increases, it becomes a matter of
difficulty so to poise and balance them that some
of them shall not slip off upon the floor. I
have known an article of clothing, which shall
be nameless, to slip its moorings exactly at
three in the morning, and the whole pile of
garments to slide slowly and softly, with a ghost-
like rustle, on the carpet. Now, what I want
to ask is, why this did not happen as soon
as those unmentionables were placed in their
hazardous position? Why did they wait till
three A.M. to perform the exploit? Don't tell
me that they had been gradually slipping ever
since eleven, and took four hours to reach the
edge of the precipice. I don't believe a word
of it.

We have hitherto confined ourselves to the
noises in our bedrooms which the small hours
develop. Think of those which go on in the
main body of the house, the creakings of
staircases: mysterious sounds from the basement.
Has it ever happened to any worthy gentleman
who reads this page, to lie listening to some
queer tapping noise kept up at intervals for
half an hour and coming apparently from below,
till he has at last—it takes some time, especially
in cold weather—convinced himself that it is his
duty to get up, ignite a lucifer, and descend to
the lower regions? The tapping was entirely
an affair got up between the wind and the
outside blind, two desperate characters who
thoroughly understand each other; but still in
the interval, before you have discovered this,
there is plenty of time for your nerves to get
into a sadly discomforted condition. How queer
the rooms down stairs look when you revisit
them during the small hours! You feel as if
you were the spectre of yourself, haunting your
own house. What appalling shadows the
furniture casts upon the walls, what strange
things seem to be going on behind you! and,
if it is sweeping-up-day to-morrow, what
disastrous shapes appear before you, constructed
by the housemaid with chairs and tables which
show their more salient nobs through the great
white coverings thrown over them to keep the
dust off. Or, if you have been sitting up late,
and one of your rooms is still as you left it,
how ghastly it looks! What a dreadful appearance
the extinguished candles present. The
half-emptied glass of wine and water, the book
left open, how weary it looks, as if it wanted
rest and ought to have been put to bed in the
bookcase. If you have been taking a cigar,
what a sight is the stump of that deadly weed
reposing in its own ashes like a sceptical Phœnix
reluctant to expire. And the dirty hearth, and
the sofa-cushions indented with your shape, and
the two ghastly holes in the shutters which you
disclose when you look behind the curtains; for
it is of no use looking for burglars if you don't
look everywhere.

Then the kitchen regions: when you
descend to these, is it not a wonder that you
can ever think of eating again? What
revelations of cold potatoes, of amalgamated heaps
of bone and grease, and frozen-in carrot that
went to make up a succulent haricot. What
wealth of fossil crusts, and loaves with smears
of butter left where the last slice was cut off.
It is a wonder that you do not fairly turn and
fly too before the hosts of black-beetles which
have possession below. Would it not be better
to leave the housebreaker to do his worst, than
to face those hideous reptiles, which stand about
in meditative attitudes, slowly moving their
feelers backwards and forwards? You can hardly
step for these dreadful animals; the dresser,
the table, the cooking utensils, the walls are
covered with them and their great shadows,
which your single candle casts but too clearly.

Let us own that we are glad when that search
for burglars is over, when the flapping blind is
found out, and we can creep to bed again. There
are times and seasons when all our virtues are
in better working order than at others, and two
o'clock in the morning is not the exact moment
when the courage of the human subject is in its