Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/73

66 of oil in lamps, ever since men caught large fish, or crushed seeds on a large scale. Cressets, lanterns, and oil-lamps have all given way before gas in the open air, and in large edifices, shops, and even private houses; yet has the old-fashioned candle remained—sometimes with an air of new-fashion about it—to this day. The candle, with all its barbarism, its grease, its snuff, its waste, its clumsiness, and its dangerousness, has kept its place with a pertinacity which future generations will wonder at.

Its approaching extinction has been foreshown by a long series of endeavours to improve it. In the same way, we strove to improve our street lamps, when old men like myself were boys. When a lamp of a certain sized wick did not give light enough, we added threads to the wick. We cleaned the glass oftener; and spoke sharply to the lamplighter; we found fault with the oil; and then we again added threads to the wick. Some people hinted at a new method altogether, and pointed to little boys getting a brilliant flame out of a coal in the fireplace through the bowl of a tobacco-pipe; but Sir Humphry Davy said, publicly, that that was all nonsense, and that when we could bring down the moon we might light the streets with gas, and not before. So most people settled their minds to their oil-lamps, and preached content. Yet lighting by gas followed. For many years we have, in like manner, been improving candles. The improvement is real; but not the less must the candle go out before a better flame.

The old candle-drawer of the housemaid is seldom to be seen now, happily. Most households have done with that abomination,—the greased sheet of brown paper, the scrapings of tallow, and shreds of snuff: the filthy glove, and grimed and greased snuffers and candlestick. But in too many kitchens, the cook still has to deal with tallow-candles; and the housemaid has only exchanged tallow for composition or wax. The improvement is great; but there is still more or less dirt; the substance, whether fat or waxy, still runs down when the wick flares; and there are droppings all over the house where any sort of candle is carried. Above all, the danger to life is scarcely at all lessened by any improvement in the quality of the candle. If an expiring mineral wick is less dangerous than the old cotton one, in one way, it is more so in another. In getting rid of the stench, we have lost a warning.

Everybody knows all this, I may be impatiently told; and that is the reason why we have had such a series of domestic lamps for many years. This is true; but the lamps have never superseded the candles, as the candle-makers can show. And no wonder; for the many varieties of oil lamps, up to the date of camphine and naphtha, had little advantage as to sweetness and cleanliness over the candle; and then the camphine and naphtha lamps were denounced as dangerous.

For centuries lives have been lost every year, every month, perhaps—including the whole world—every hour, from something flying against the candle, or sparks from the candle falling upon something. People reading in bed, or falling asleep over a light; men in nightcaps, women in large sleeves, children in pinafores, have all been victims by hundreds. Linen on a drying-horse, a muslin curtain in a window, rags or paper in a closet, waste cotton in a warehouse—anything to which a candle was brought near, might, and did sometimes, cause somebody’s death. Yet we have perhaps heard more outcry since camphine and naphtha-lamps came in than in all the old days of candles. This is not surprising, for accidents have been frequent and very terrible. I have observed in the American newspapers, in particular, a long and steady warfare against this invention, with an occasional publication of the number of deaths caused by it. The answer is twofold. The Americans use camphine and naphtha in small hand-lamps, which are easily upset. This is rash. But in regard to the use of camphine and naphtha in standard lamps, it is safe if the simple rules are observed,—to feed the lamp by daylight, and never to carry it lighted. If carried lighted, it may be dropped; and we know how a housemaid was burned to death in ten minutes, a few months since, by that particular accident. She dropped the lamp, trod on the burning fluid, with the notion of stamping it out, set fire to her under-clothing, and was lost. It is abundantly easy to trim the lamp in the morning; and, if left till after dark, the person who holds the candle while another pours in the fluid is regularly amazed, when an accident happens, at the distance at which it can catch fire.

With camphine we might get on very well in drawing-room or shop; and nobody could be burnt but by criminal rashness: but till recently there has been only the candle, or the unsavoury oil-lamp for the kitchen and bed-rooms, and for going about the house. Now, at last, we seem to have got hold of something which gives us all the good, and none of the bad, of former methods; and we see accordingly whole villages and towns leaving off candles and taking to photogene-lamps. In primitive country towns the tinmen cannot make lamps fast enough for the cottages and kitchens, and shops for miles round, and, cheap as photogene is, its price rises from the vehemence of the demand. I hope it is true, as we are told, that the fluid is harmless if spilt. It seems to have every other virtue, and it is really a pleasant thing to see the change in humble dwellings, as well as to note the increased safety in richer households.

We can now leave alight burning in a chamber without danger as without cost, by tu ruing down the photogene hand-lamp to a mere glimmer, and there are neither sparks nor droppings on the stairs. Instead of the flaring, wasting tallow candle on the kitchen-table, or in the windy cottage, one may see now the pretty tin lamp (only sometimes too gaily painted) suspended overhead, giving an abundant and equal light to all the room. With the ordinary care in cutting the wick there is no smell, there is no dirt, and it is the cheapest light yet known. Whether it will continue so when it has cleared off all the ranges of mountains of small coal round the mouths of our coal-pits, another generation will see. At present, its cheapness causes a saving of pounds in a year to many housekeepers, and affords to the humbler consumers a better light