midnight
We can not be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the frailties of our poor human constitution . They have their place and their service , and so long as we continue to be what we are now , they will hang on to us , restlessly plucking at the garments which cover our nakedness , nor ever ceasing to twitch them and strain at them until they have stripped us for one of their horrible Walpurgis nights : when the laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days . But if in these festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the Comic Muse , she will not flatter them with her presence during the course of their insane and impious hilarities , whereof a description would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and Paddock too intimately our familiars . It shall suffice to say that from hour to hour of the midnight to the grey-eyed morn , assisted at intervals by the ladies Eleanor and Isabel , and by Mr. Dale awakened and re-awakened -- hearing the vehemence of his petitioning outcry to soften her obduracy -- Sir Willoughby pursued Laetitia with solicitations to espouse him , until the inveteracy of his wooing wore the aspect of the life-long love he raved of aroused to a state of mania . He appeared , he departed , he returned ; and all the while his imps were about him and upon him , riding him , prompting , driving , inspiring him with outrageous pathos , an eloquence to move any one but the dead , which its object seemed to be in her torpid attention . He heard them , he talked to them , caressed them ; he flung them off , and ran from them , and stood vanquished for them to mount him again and swarm on him . There are men thus imp-haunted .