midnight
Twenty years ago , at the door of every cottage sate the good woman with her spinning-wheel : the children , if not more profitably employed than in gathering heath and sticks , at least laid in a stock of health and strength to sustain the labours of maturer years . Where is the spinning-wheel now , and every simple and insulated occupation of the industrious cottager ? Wherever this boasted machinery is established , the children of the poor are death-doomed from their cradles . Look for one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill , amidst the smell of oil , the smoke of lamps , the rattling of wheels , the dizzy and complicated motions of diabolical mechanism : contemplate the little human machines that keep play with the revolutions of the iron work , robbed at that hour of their natural rest , as of air and exercise by day : observe their pale and ghastly features , more ghastly in that baleful and malignant light , and tell me if you do not fancy yourself on the threshold of Virgil 's hell , where Continuo auditae voces , vagitus et ingens , _ Infantumque animae flentes _ , in limine primo , Quos _ dulcis vitae exsortes _ , et ab ubere raptos , _ Abstulit atra dies _ , et FUNERE MERSIT ACERBO ! As Mr Escot said this , a little rosy-cheeked girl , with a basket of heath on her head , came tripping down the side of one of the rocks on the left . The force of contrast struck even on the phlegmatic spirit of Mr Jenkison , and he almost inclined for a moment to the doctrine of deterioration . Mr Escot continued : _ Mr Escot .