midnight
Are not the ancients my food , my aliment , my solace in sorrow -- my sympathizers , my very benefactors , in joy ? Take them away from me , and you take away the very winds which purify and give motion to the obscure and silent current of my life . Besides , my Pelham , it can not have escaped your observation , that there is little in my present state which promises a long increase of days : the few that remain to me must glide away like their predecessors ; and whatever be the infirmities of my body , and the little harassments which , I am led to suspect , do occasionally molest the most fortunate , who link themselves unto the unstable and fluctuating part of creation , which we term women , more especially in an hymeneal capacity -- whatever these may be , I have my refuge and my comforter in the golden-souled and dreaming Plato , and the sententious wisdom of the less imaginative Seneca . Nor , when I am reminded of my approaching dissolution by the symptoms which do mostly at the midnight hour press themselves upon me , is there a small and inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may meet hereafter , in those islands of the blest which they dimly dreamt of , but which are opened unto my vision , without a cloud , or mist , or shadow of uncertainty and doubt , with those bright spirits which we do now converse with so imperfectly ; that I may catch from the very lips of Homer the unclouded gorgeousness of fiction , and from the accents of Archimedes , the unadulterated calculations of truth . '' Clutterbuck ceased , and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused itself over his sunken eye and consumptive cheek . The boy , who had sat apart , and silent , during our discourse , laid his head upon the table , and sobbed audibly ; and I rose , deeply affected , to offer to one for whom they were , indeed , unavailing , the wishes and blessing of an eager , but not hardened disciple of the world . We parted : on this earth we can never meet again .