five o'clock in the morning
From our school-days I had freely admitted Edwin , in my own mind , to be far superior to myself ; and , though I was grievously wounded at heart , I felt the preference to be natural , and tried to forgive them both . It was under these circumstances that I resolved to go to America -- on my way to the Devil . Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin , but resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness , which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post when I myself should be bound for the New World , far beyond recall , -- I say , locking up my grief in my own breast , and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous , I quietly left all I held dear , and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned . The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever , at five o'clock in the morning . I had shaved by candle-light , of course , and was miserably cold , and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances . How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of the Temple ! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind , as if the very gas were contorted with cold ; the white-topped houses ; the bleak , star-lighted sky ; the market people and other early stragglers , trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood ; the hospitable light and warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such customers ; the hard , dry , frosty rime with which the air was charged -LRB- the wind had already beaten it into every crevice -RRB- , and which lashed my face like a steel whip .