midnight
The longer , darker , and colder nights are better adapted to the apparition of ghosts , and to all manner of signs and portents ; while they seem to present a wider field for the intervention of angels in behalf of orphans and outcasts . The dreams of elderly sleepers at this time are apt to be such as will effect a lasting change in them when they awake , turning them from the hard , cruel , and grasping habits of a lifetime , and reconciling them to their sons , daughters , and nephews , who have thwarted them in marriage ; or softening them to their meek , uncomplaining wives , whose hearts they have trampled upon in their reckless pursuit of wealth ; and generally disposing them to a distribution of hampers among the sick and poor , and to a friendly reception of gentlemen with charity subscription papers . Ships readily drive upon rocks in the early twilight , and offer exciting difficulties of salvage ; and the heavy snows gather quickly round the steps of wanderers who lie down to die in them , preparatory to their discovery and rescue by immediate relatives . The midnight weather is also very suitable for encounter with murderers and burglars ; and the contrast of its freezing gloom with the light and cheer in-doors promotes the gayeties which merge , at all well-regulated country-houses , in love and marriage . In the region of pure character no moment could be so available for flinging off the mask of frivolity , or imbecility , or savagery , which one has worn for ten or twenty long years , say , for the purpose of foiling some villain , and surprising the reader , and helping the author out with his plot . Persons abroad in the Alps , or Apennines , or Pyrenees , or anywhere seeking shelter in the huts of shepherds or the dens of smugglers , find no time like it for lying in a feigned slumber , and listening to the whispered machinations of their suspicious looking entertainers , and then suddenly starting up and fighting their way out ; or else springing from the real sleep into which they have sunk exhausted , and finding it broad day and the good peasants whom they had so unjustly doubted , waiting breakfast for them . We need not point out the superior advantages of the Christmas season for anything one has a mind to do with the French Revolution , of the Arctic explorations , or the Indian Mutiny , or the horrors of Siberian exile ; there is no time so good for the use of this material ; and ghosts on shipboard are notoriously fond of Christmas Eve .