Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS
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 endurance. 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, suppered but bedless, occult from
guidance, and sorrily wading in the kennels. As if
gamesome winds and gamesome youths were not
sufficient, it was the habit to sling these feeble
luminaries from house to house above the fairway.
There, on invisible cordage, let them swing ! And
suppose some crane-necked general to go speeding
by on a tall charger, spurring the destiny of nations,
red-hot in expedition, there would indubitably be
some effusion of mihtary blood, and oaths, and a
certain crash of glass ; and while the chieftain rode
forward with a purple coxcomb, the street would be
left to original darkness, unpiloted, unvoyageable, a
province of the desert night.
The conservative, looking before and after, draws
from each contemplation the matter for content.
Out of the age of gas lamps he glances back slight-
ingly at the mirk and ghmmer in which his ancestors
wandered ; his heart waxes jocund at the contrast ;
nor do his lips refrain from a stave, in the highest
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