morning, noon
` This man had a wife and one son , who , when I first came here , was about twelve years old . Of the acuteness of that woman 's sufferings , of the gentle and enduring manner in which she bore them , of the agony of solicitude with which she reared that boy , no one can form an adequate conception . Heaven forgive me the supposition , if it be an uncharitable one , but I do firmly and in my soul believe , that the man systematically tried for many years to break her heart ; but she bore it all for her child 's sake , and , however strange it may seem to many , for his father 's too ; for brute as he was , and cruelly as he had treated her , she had loved him once ; and the recollection of what he had been to her , awakened feelings of forbearance and meekness under suffering in her bosom , to which all God 's creatures , but women , are strangers . ` They were poor -- they could not be otherwise when the man pursued such courses ; but the woman 's unceasing and unwearied exertions , early and late , morning , noon , and night , kept them above actual want . These exertions were but ill repaid . People who passed the spot in the evening -- sometimes at a late hour of the night -- reported that they had heard the moans and sobs of a woman in distress , and the sound of blows ; and more than once , when it was past midnight , the boy knocked softly at the door of a neighbour 's house , whither he had been sent , to escape the drunken fury of his unnatural father . ` During the whole of this time , and when the poor creature often bore about her marks of ill-usage and violence which she could not wholly conceal , she was a constant attendant at our little church .