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

A PLEA FOR GAS LAMPS
style of poetry, lauding progress and the golden
mean. When gas first spread along a city, mapping
it forth about evenfall for the eye of observant birds,
a new age had begun for sociality and corporate
pleasure-seeking, and begun with proper circum-
stance, becoming its own birthright. The work of
Prometheus had advanced by another stride. Man-
kind and its supper-parties were no longer at the
mercy of a few miles of sea-fog ; sundown no
longer emptied the promenade ; and the day was
lengthened out to every man's fancy. The city-
folk had stars of their own ; biddable, domesticated
stars.
It is true that these were not so steady, nor yet
so clear, as their originals ; nor indeed was their
lustre so elegant as that of the best wax candles.
But then the gas stars, being nearer at hand, were
more practically efficacious than Jupiter himself. It
is true, again, that they did not unfold their rays
with the appropriate spontaneity of the planets,
coming out along the firmament one after another,
as the need arises. But the lamplighters took to
their heels every evening, and ran with a good
heart. It was pretty to see man thus emulating
the punctuality of heaven's orbs ; and though per-
fection was not absolutely reached, and now and
then an individual may have been knocked on the
head by the ladder of the flying functionary, yet
people commended his zeal in a proverb, and taught
their children to say, ' God bless the lamplighter I '
And since his passage was a piece of the day's pro-
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