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As the shadows deepen and darkness falls upon the plain, our visitor joins the groups which are now fast leaving the meadow, and re-passes the great embrasure just as the rushlights begin to twinkle in the windows and a swinging oil-lamp to cast a dim light here and there in the streets.

We had our choice between the candle wood, as the pitch pine is called, or rushlights, which last are made by stripping the outer bark from common rushes, thus leaving the pith bare; then dipping these in tallow, or grease, and allowing them to harden.

The ecstasy of self-worship in which the whole process issued was but the fruition of that childish habit which had wrought with childish things for the same end with a couple of rushlights, an old sheet and primroses from the brook. Her black abundant hair was still curled about her head. Well, she could pull it down in the studio now for a wrap and then no noise!

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

Flax seems to have been widely grown, and rushlights were then a luxury. The subject of trees and plants does not so readily lend itself to fables as some other parts of natural history, but we refer the reader to the accounts of aloes, pepper, and mandragora as a specimen of the tales told, as our author says, "to make things dear, and of great price."

Eglett has driven down to the City. There 's a doctor in a square there's got a reputation for treating weak children, and he has taken down your grand-nephew Bobby to be inspected. Poor boy comes of a poor stock on the father's side. Mr. Eglett would have that marriage. Now he sees wealth isn't everything. Those Benlews are rushlights.

To get the tallow or grease with which to make these rushlights, we saved the fat of the deer, or the bear, or even a portion of the grease from turkeys, and, having gathered sufficient for the candle making, mixed them all in one pot for melting.

Against the brilliant rushlights of contemporary cleverness shine the stars of the ages. 'T is the immemorial mistake of iconoclasts even granted they are taller than their fellow-men to be ever conscious of the extra inches, instead of the common feet.

You dream there, under the boughs all gold, and blue, and crimson. Little things which obscured the eternal landscape, pass away, and the great stars, above the world, come out and flood the mind with a far other light than that which flowed from earthly tapers and rushlights.

"The apostles will be mere rushlights when you get your Christian Science well a-going," said Charley, seriously. Then he rose to leave, having no heart to await the return of the children. "Of course," said Uncle Martin, "the world is undergoing a change, Charley. A great change. Selfishness and disease shall vanish away, and the truth of science and Christianity prevail."