The herald., 1898-11-13
A SLAVE OF THE LAMP

Strangely inconsistent is man, ever re-
versing the natural order OF things and
causing himself infinite pain to improve upon
what has already been pronounced very
good" For on the first day wise Provl-
dance divided the light from the darkness
and doubtless intended that it should re-
main 50 divided.
But with wanton extravaganza man wastes
in slumber whole hours of the good hgnt
gratmtously furnished him; and at the
wrong end of the day, when he should take
| patnre's cue of sleep, ne makes wiliful IL
Elimination for himself at enormous expense,
pretending that the day is not long enough
for his Importance. If, like wise animals,
man would rise at daybreak and would ad-
vance the fringed curtain of his eyes at sun
set, where would be the necessity for all
these torches, candles, lanterns, lamps, gas
jets and electric lights, which have burned
themselves out through all these thousands
of years!
And yet, welded as we are by habit and
hereditary affection to these same neon
sistences of ours, the artificial light which
gives us longer leave of day is a sine qua
non of our modern civilization. What would
our nineteenth century be without the blaze
OF lights, by right of which today robs to-
night of half her train of hours, and permits
her but brief interregnum between mid
night and broad day! And the twentieth cen
tury may have no night at all. But what will
the robin do then, poor thing!
1t is by the lights of the preceding cen
turies that we know them. The Dark Ages
loom black upon the background of the past.
unlighted from dewy eve to dawn, save for
convent candle here and there, burning,
however so dimly, upon the medieval altar.
There was time when even the streets Of
great cities gloomed black with terror to
the nocturnal wanderer, whose only light
was furnished by the torch his lackey bore
to guide his errant feet. love those dark,
unlighted streets of old-in the perspective
of four hundred years. What endless pos
siblities of adventure, intrigue, valorous
encounter and picturesque villainy did not
lurl under that somber domino which the
city wore at night, all undreamed OF in the
gorgeous realities of the wigged and be-
ruffled day? The blaze of jewel in the
darkness, the flash of saber in the moon
light, were glamour enough wherein to view
Robin Hood or Claude Duval, who would
lose all their picturesqueness in our modern
ligted streets, and become common foot
pads and garroters. By the light of their
own valor D'Artagnan and his three
doughty guardsmen would thread their way
about the crooked, venomous byways of
old Paris; and the moonlit glow of un-
reality and romance is over all their doings
Bold history shrinks away dark and un-
recognizable into the shadows, only ventur-
ing now and then to stab back-handed from
an unsupported coign of vantage. Yet
though the coward may smite, he never
slays that nimble hero of the best of all ro-
mances.
When the muddy lanes of London began
to wink with dim whale-oil lamps here and
there, the link-boy found his occupation
gone. But still the old horn lantern often
played moonshine to belated travellers re-
turning home from rout or ball, or plain, un-
vanished tavern. Faint, distorted shad-
ows of those unsteady forms are cast by the
oily gleam over the pages of Dickens, whose
dolorous, scrawny little maids in pattens
are forever, with thorn-bush and dog and
lantern, protecting their burly masters
home.
The prosaic tallow dip furnishes footlights
to homely winter evening scenes of ou.
great -grandmothers' day in old New Eng
i'HN' ~ Nhiiis Joul W IIl6 celIdI
for pitchers of foamy cider and apronfuls OF
red-cheeked apples; it brightens the dusty
gobin-haunted corners OF the garret, with
its herb-hung rafters and heaps of hickory
nuts waiting to be cracked.
But the aristocratic wax taper, with its
environment of brass sconce and candle
stick, tray and snutfer, evokes fair visions of
rice powder and lace rutfles, patches and
,1yl Ill I
beaux of old colonial times, of the Fompa-
dour, ruling the French by wave of her
pink and blue fan; OF Beatrx, twinkling her
red shoes into Henry Esmond's heart; of
Washington, with his best bow, leading fair
Martha Custis forward for their first
minuet.
Yet even then in his talow-chandler'
shop, Ben Franklin, like second Prone
theus. was pondering how he might steal a
fire from heaven which was to set the world
ablaze with a new light, and change all his
tory
1t is new lamps for old that we have re-
ceved in exchange from that cunning ma
gician, lime. He has cheated us into be-
lieving that we really need the steady, white
glare in place of the feeble light of past
years, which he was so glad to get back into
his own hands. Time saw the value of that
little lamp, in whose dim half glow lay the
secret of mystery and romance and all the
potential glory of Aladdin's palace. In the
blazing white light OF literal truth, which
searches every coner and reveals every scar
and wrinkle, he recognized the stern, un-
profitable realism of today. 1t is the gentle,
rosy CLEAN of yesterdays half-revealing
lamp which has the genius of poetry for its
slave, and which, by his aid, is unbounded
in its power to make the poor man a prince
Of riches
Electricity has signed the warrant for the
passing OF darkness and shadow and half
light But so long as good cheer and senti-
ment and love and beauty bloom best in a
softer and less inquisitive glare, the SEN
tence will be hard to execute. Imagine gen
tie Will Shakespeare and rare Ben Jonson
Gaping one another's verses over foaming
quart pots in a modern hostelry ablaze with
coldly critical electric bulbs.
Imagine Cleopatra betraying her forty-odd
wears to Antony at banquet illuminated
by chandeliers brighter than her own bright
eyes. colder than the deadly aspic, unsym-
pathetic as Octavia herself, unspsring as her
dearest friends. Ina gne Juliet pouring forth
her soft confession from balcony brilliant
in the glare of the electric light on the oppo-
site corner, under which stands Romeo, also
quite visible to the naked eye, leaning
against the iron post.
Nay, it is not 10 be imagined. This white
blaze is not the celestial light, the glory and