midnight
-LSB- Better . But this is past , in a better age , and the prison exists no longer . -RSB- ` It may be my fancy , or it may be that I can not separate the place from the old recollections associated with it , but this part of London I can not bear . The street is broad , the shops are spacious , the noise of passing vehicles , the footsteps of a perpetual stream of people -- all the busy sounds of traffic , resound in it from morn to midnight ; but the streets around are mean and close ; poverty and debauchery lie festering in the crowded alleys ; want and misfortune are pent up in the narrow prison ; an air of gloom and dreariness seems , in my eyes at least , to hang about the scene , and to impart to it a squalid and sickly hue . ` Many eyes , that have long since been closed in the grave , have looked round upon that scene lightly enough , when entering the gate of the old Marshalsea Prison for the first time ; for despair seldom comes with the first severe shock of misfortune . A man has confidence in untried friends , he remembers the many offers of service so freely made by his boon companions when he wanted them not ; he has hope -- the hope of happy inexperience -- and however he may bend beneath the first shock , it springs up in his bosom , and flourishes there for a brief space , until it droops beneath the blight of disappointment and neglect . How soon have those same eyes , deeply sunken in the head , glared from faces wasted with famine , and sallow from confinement , in days when it was no figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in prison , with no hope of release , and no prospect of liberty !