seven in the evening
An wen that air court 's stopped , that air jail 's a comin open , or it 's a comin daown , one o ' the tew naow . '' We who live in these days , when press and telegraph may be said to have almost rendered the tongue a superfluous member , quite fail to appreciate the rapidity with which intelligence was formerly transmitted from mouth to mouth . Virgil 's description of hundred tongued Rumor appeared by no means so poetical an exaggeration to our ancestors as it does to us . Although the express , bearing the news of the Northampton uprising did not reach Stockbridge tavern a minute before half-past seven in the evening , there were very few families in the village or the outlying farmhouses , which had not heard it ere bedtime , an hour and a half later . And by the middle of the following forenoon there was in all Southern Berkshire , only here and there a family , off on a lonely hillside , or in a hidden valley , in which it was not the subject of debate . In Stockbridge , that morning , what few industries still supported a languishing existence in spite of the hard times , were wholly suspended . The farmer left his rowen to lie in the field and take the chances of the weather , the miller gave his mill-stream a holiday , the carpenter left the house half-shingled with rain threatening , and the painter his brush in the pot , to collect on the street corners with their neighbors and discuss the portentous aspect of affairs .