MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 



the morning and the evening! The vertical flood of 

 light is merciless. It kills all illusion. It emphasizes 

 the hard reality. It strips the landscape of its glam- 

 our. Romance flees away; the shy spirits seek the 

 shade; the songbirds become silent; love-making of 

 both man and beast declines; the pitiless glare halts 

 even the turtles and the frogs. Have we not been told 

 of certain French authors who turn day into night 

 because their imaginations work better by lamp- 

 light than by sunlight? 



Our fears, our superstitions, our disquieting 

 thoughts are more active by night than by day. 

 Death seems nearer. Your own illness, or that of one 

 in your family, seems much more portentous in the 

 darkness. When the sun comes half your apprehen- 

 sions flee away. The terrors of a storm by night are 

 augmented fourfold. Scenes that at such times are 

 strange and exciting to the imagination are dull 

 and commonplace enough by daylight. Hobgoblins 

 never venture abroad except at night. Night is the 

 land of fable, of myth, of superstition, of evil 

 thoughts and deeds, of plotting and conspiracies. 

 If the night were cut out, how would crime diminish! 

 How much less startling and ominous the knocking 

 at the gate in "Macbeth" would seem at noon than 

 at midnight! 



The noonday glare does put the imagination out 

 of countenance; it puts all the evil spirits to flight, 

 and our direful apprehensions fade away. Romance 

 325 



