midnight
But while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness in him , too ; all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence . But not precisely so . For nothing was this man more remarkable , than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were ; impersonal , I say ; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things , that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world ; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes , still eternally holds its peace , and ignores you , though you dig foundations for cathedrals . Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him , involving , too , as it appeared , an all-ramifying heartlessness ; -- yet was it oddly dashed at times , with an old , crutch-like , antediluvian , wheezing humorousness , not unstreaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness ; such as might have served to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah 's ark . Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer , whose much rolling , to and fro , not only had gathered no moss ; but what is more , had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him ? He was a stript abstract ; an unfractioned integral ; uncompromised as a new-born babe ; living without premeditated reference to this world or the next . You might almost say , that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence ; for in his numerous trades , he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct , or simply because he had been tutored to it , or by any intermixture of all these , even or uneven ; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb , spontaneous literal process .