midnight
To write currente calamo for the mere pastime of author and readers , without aiming to inculcate some regenerative principle , or to photograph some valuable phase of protean truth , was in her estimation ignoble ; for her high standard demanded that all books should be to a certain extent didactic , wandering like evangels among the people , and making some man , woman , or child happier , or wiser , or better -- more patient or more hopeful -- by their utterances . Believing that every earnest author 's mind should prove a mint , where all valuable ores are collected from the rich veins of a universe -- are cautiously coined , and thence munificently circulated -- she applied herself diligently to the task of gathering , from various sources the data required for her projected work : a vindication of the unity of mythologies . The vastness of the cosmic field she was now compelled to traverse , the innumerable ramifications of polytheistic and monotheistic creeds , necessitated unwearied research , as she rent asunder the superstitious veils which various nations and successive epochs had woven before the shining features of truth . To-day peering into the golden Gardens of the Sun at Cuzco ; to-morrow clambering over Thibet glaciers , to find the mystic lake of Yamuna ; now delighted to recognize in Teoyamiqui -LRB- the wife of the Aztec God of War -RRB- the unmistakable features of Scandinavian Valkyrias ; and now surprised to discover the Greek Fates sitting under the Norse tree Ygdrasil , deciding the destinies of mortals , and calling themselves Nornas ; she spent her days in pilgrimages to mouldering shrines , and midnight often found her groping in the classic dust of extinct systems . Having once grappled with her theme , she wrestled as obstinately as Jacob for the blessing of a successful solution , and in order to popularize a subject bristling with recondite archaisms and philologic problems , she cast it in the mould of fiction . The information and pleasure which she had derived from the perusal of Vaughan 's delightful Hours with the Mystics , suggested the idea of adopting a similar plan for her own book , and investing it with the additional interest of a complicated plot and more numerous characters . To avoid anachronisms , she endeavored to treat the religions of the world in their chronologic sequence , and resorted to the expedient of introducing pagan personages .