midnight
The old barn had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse , the stage covering one end , elevated about three feet from the threshing floor . Curtains with daub pictures were strung across the stage , separated in the center and shifted backward and forward , as the varying scenes of the family play were presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience . The play consisted of three acts , showing the progress of courtship and marriage at the altar , country and town life with growing children , work , poverty , and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding wife , bruised in an alehouse , dead and followed to the graveyard by the Beadle , undertaker and a brindle dog . The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods , surrounded by ragged children , driving out into a midnight storm the husband of her bosom , while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience . The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a very hopeful view of married life , and while the haphazard working , drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he received , the modesty , benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our young souls . On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were gladdened by the thought , that although the rude , vulgar , criminal passions of mankind were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe , we could look up into the star-lit heavens and see those glittering lamps of night shining with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon , as it flowed in peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the sea . Nature soothed our young hearts , and soon , in the mysterious realms of sleep , we forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth , tripping away with angelic companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams .