midnight
After a long morning of mental application this was poor refreshment ; the long afternoon which followed , again spent in rigorous study , could not but reduce a growing frame to ravenous hunger . Tea and buttered bread were the means of appeasing it , until another four hours ' work called for reward in the shape of bread and cheese . Even yet the day 's toil was not ended . Godwin sometimes read long after midnight , with the result that , when at length he tried to sleep , exhaustion of mind and body kept him for a long time feverishly wakeful . These hardships he concealed from the people at Twybridge . Complaint , it seemed to him , would be ungrateful , for sacrifices were already made on his behalf . His father , as he well remembered , was wont to relate , with a kind of angry satisfaction , the miseries through which he had fought his way to education and the income-tax .