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The first night that I passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring thus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberated through my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of a vanished year!
And Marcia's co-workers in the nine-o'clock show, whither she had transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous pride in her husband's mental powers. Horace they knew only as a very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who waited every night to take her home.
Sometimes he came home very late for nine-o'clock dinner; sometimes he dined at Versailles and only got home at ten or eleven if the sitting was stormy. The Hotel des Reservoirs did a flourishing business as long as the Chambers sat at Versailles. When we were dining out it was very disagreeable, particularly the first winter when I didn't know many people.
Till one knows about this man, and the others who rise after him, it is very disconcerting; at first I thought I must have said something to reflect upon the royal family. But presently the lecturer gets to understand that it is only the nine-o'clock train and that all the audience know about it. Then it's all right.
Charles Reade had a real talent for hard work, not that occasional exclusive devotion to it during the throes of composition to which Balzac gave himself up night and day to an extent that utterly isolated him from the world for the time being, but steady, systematic, willing labor, a labor, I might say, of love, for he never begrudged it, which began every morning, when nothing special interfered with it, after a nine-o'clock breakfast and continued until late in the afternoon.
"Why would you believe it? that's old Ad Thropp's girl the one what was lost so long." In the Nimrim Nickeleum films were played twice of an evening. The seven-thirty audience was usually willing to go home and leave space for the nine-o'clock audience unless the night was cold.
In those times, people held to the singular opinion, that the night was made to sleep in; they inferred it from a general confidence they had in the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did not put out her lights and draw her bed-curtains and hush all noise in her great world-house without strongly intending that her children should go to sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole community very generally set their faces bedward, and the toll of the nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, sounding to the full.
Peterkin, "he has a dinner to eat!" They went to the carpenter's house, but found he had gone out of town for a day's job. But his wife told them that he always came back at night to ring the nine-o'clock bell. "We must wait till then," said Mr. Peterkin, with an effort at cheerfulness. At home he found Agamemnon reading his book, and all sat down to hear of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Before dawn, we fled to our staterooms, but by sunrise we were glad to dress and escape from their suffocating heat and go on deck again. Black coffee and hard-tack were sent up, and this sustained us until the nine-o'clock breakfast, which was elaborate, but not good.
The only break in the daily monotony was the nine-o'clock inspection of prisoners, which occurred each morning, as well as at night. Nancy spent most of her days standing near the window and gazing with wistful eyes at the other prisoners, who were allowed fresh-air exercise in the courtyard under the watchful eyes of the sentries.
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