eight o'clock
To be sure they swell somewhat in the retrospect , like the same peas put to soak ; and I am aware now of some June days of those which we first spent at Kittery Point this year , which were nearly twenty-four hours long . Even the days of declining years linger a little here , where there is nothing to hurry them , and where it is pleasant to loiter , and muse beside the sea and shore , which are so netted together at Kittery Point that they hardly know themselves apart . The days , whatever their length , are divided , not into hours , but into mails . They begin , without regard to the sun , at eight o'clock , when the first mail comes with a few letters and papers which had forgotten themselves the night before . At half-past eleven the great mid-day mail arrives ; at four o'clock there is another indifferent and scattering post , much like that at eight in the morning ; and at seven the last mail arrives with the Boston evening papers and the New York morning papers , to make you forget any letters you were looking for . The opening of the mid-day mail is that which most throngs with summer folks the little postoffice under the elms , opposite the weather-beaten mansion of Sir William Pepperrell ; but the evening mail attracts a large and mainly disinterested circle of natives . The day 's work on land and sea is then over , and the village leisure , perched upon fences and stayed against house walls , is of a picturesqueness which we should prize if we saw it abroad , and which I am not willing to slight on our own ground .