four
o’clock
`` Come , Sam , tell us a story , '' said I , as Harry and I crept to his knees , in the glow of the bright evening firelight ; while Aunt Lois was busily rattling the tea-things , and grandmamma , at the other end of the fireplace , was quietly setting the heel of a blue-mixed yarn stocking . In those days we had no magazines and daily papers , each reeling off a serial story . Once a week , `` The Columbian Sentinel '' came from Boston with its slender stock of news and editorial ; but all the multiform devices -- pictorial , narrative , and poetical -- which keep the mind of the present generation ablaze with excitement , had not then even an existence . There was no theatre , no opera ; there were in Oldtown no parties or balls , except , perhaps , the annual election , or Thanksgiving festival ; and when winter came , and the sun went down at half-past four o'clock , and left the long , dark hours of evening to be provided for , the necessity of amusement became urgent . Hence , in those days , chimney-corner story-telling became an art and an accomplishment . Society then was full of traditions and narratives which had all the uncertain glow and shifting mystery of the firelit hearth upon them . They were told to sympathetic audiences , by the rising and falling light of the solemn embers , with the hearth-crickets filling up every pause .