ten o'clock
But how helpless we all are when we try to tell what goes on within us ! I found this in one of Lafcadio Hearn 's letters the other day -- I marked the passage for you Baudelaire has a touching poem about an albatross , which you would like -- describing the poet 's soul superb in its own free azure -- but helpless , insulted , ugly , clumsy when striving to walk on common earth -- or rather , on a deck , where sailors torment it with tobacco pipes , etc. . You can imagine what evenings I have here among my shelves , now the long dark nights are come ! Of course until ten o'clock , when I shut up shop , I am constantly interrupted -- as I have been during this letter , once to sell a copy of Helen 's Babies and once to sell The Ballad of Reading Gaol , so you can see how varied are my clients ' tastes ! But later on , after we have had our evening cocoa and Helen has gone to bed , I prowl about the place , dipping into this and that , fuddling myself with speculation . How clear and bright the stream of the mind flows in those late hours , after all the sediment and floating trash of the day has drained off ! Sometimes I seem to coast the very shore of Beauty or Truth , and hear the surf breaking on those shining sands .