Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

A Plea for Gas Lamps. 2 89
fall back — we speak on the authority of old
prints — upon stable lanthorns, two stories in
height. Many holes, drilled in the conical
turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up
spouts of dazzlement into the bearer's eyes ;
and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness,
carrying his own sun by a ring about his finger,
day and night swung to and fro and up and
down about his footsteps. Blackness haunted
his path ; he was beleaguered by goblins as he
went ; and, curfew being struck, he found no
light but that he travelled in throughout the
township.
Closely following on this epoch of migratory
lanthorns in a world of extinction, came the era
of oil-lights, hard to kindle, easy to extinguish,
pale and wavering in the hour of their endur-
ance. Rudely puffed the winds of heaven ;
roguishly clomb up the all-destructive urchin ;
and, lo ! in a moment night re-established her
void empire, and the cit groped along the wall,