midnight
O , no , they had rather count the fluttering pulses of their dear boy , cool his fevered brow , and administer the reviving cordial through the weary hours of the night , than to listen to sweetest strains of Orpheus ' harp , or thread the winding mazes of the giddy dance . And so with them the night wore away , the long dark night of suffering to the babe , and watchful anxiety to the parents . But the angel of death that had hovered so long over the darling babe , unfurled his sable pinions and flew away in search of another victim , and he is spared yet a little longer . Pursuing the way a little farther in another direction , you find another weary watcher by the midnight lamp . An aged woman , who has lived her three score years and ten , sits bolstered up in her chair , toiling for her little remaining sum of existence , which nature seems unwilling to relinquish , although subsisting now upon borrowed time . From an adjoining room comes a frequent hollow cough , and the sunken eye and emaciated frame of the poor girl betray the secret foe , lurking in the hidden springs of life . Death is no stranger beneath this roof .