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Updated: May 15, 2025
Pursuing the sunset we steadily rumbled westward through the immensity of unbroken space. The brakeman came in, lighting the coal-oil lamps. Outside, the twilight had deepened into dusk.
"It's all right, uncle," said Jacky, "we've unhitched 'em. Bill's taken 'em right away to the stables." The whole party passed into Joe Norton's sitting-room, where the old farmer at once set about kindling, with the aid of some coal-oil, a fire in the great box-stove. While his host was busy John took the lantern and went to "Lord" Bill's assistance in the stables.
It was the time of early dusk; not yet were the coal-oil lamps lighted; shadows were lengthening and merging out in the rolling fields. Packard's eyes, withdrawn from the outdoors, wandered along his tall and seldom-used book-shelves, fell to the one worn volume on the table beside him, went hastily to the door. Down the hall came the sound of quick boot-heels.
The only light in the room came from the stove, a great iron cylinder made from a coal-oil tank that lay on a rectangular bed of sand held inside of four timbers, with a door in one end to take whole lengths of cord-wood, and which, being open, lit the space in front, throwing the sides and corners of the place into blacker mystery.
A small ripple of amusement broke over the still, smoky surface of the the veranda. The Woman was always bringing home startling news and this was only one of many wild rumours. "I knew somethin' dreadful would happen if you went to town again to-day," muttered Trooper from his sanctuary behind the coal-oil barrel. "No wonder there's a war."
Chairs with an odd assortment of calico-covered cushions were scattered over the room. Crude, old-fashioned tables were set here and there, each with a coal-oil lamp. By the light from the brightly polished chimneys some read newspapers more than a week old, others looked hungrily through the mail-order catalogs which always piled up in country post offices.
This is the deadest town I ever Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions and roofs fallin' in 'most always somethin' lively to afford a coroner a chance. But here!
"How are the rooms?" "Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oil-cloth to step on in the morning when you get out of the sand-quarry." "As to lights?" "Coal-oil lamp." "A good one?" "No. It's the kind that sheds a gloom." "I like a lamp that burns all night." "This one won't. You must blow it out early." "That is bad. One might want it again in the night. Can't find it in the dark."
One interesting circumstance was the consignment to me of the first shipments of two novelties that afterward became very common. The discovery of coal-oil and the utilization of kerosene for lighting date back to about 1859. The first coal-oil lamps that came to Humboldt were sent to me for display and introduction.
The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia ages ago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescript furniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city's stores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their coiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and "ornamental" electric fixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps.
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