In Less Sophisticated Days

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 the 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 tolling of the nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, announcing the end of all respectable proceedings in life for that day.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 11.