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She stood close beside him while he took a match from his waistcoat pocket and gave it to her. "I won't have you leavin' matches layin' all about the house," he commanded; "mice'll get at 'em, and set us afire. You can make up some lamplighters out of old letters and things; there's a lot o' stuff that might be used up. Seems to me lamplighters is gone out o' fashion; they come in very handy."
This early example of the rigid enforcement of city ordinances has never been forgotten in Mexico, where, considering its limited means, for its revenue does not exceed $400,000, including its landed rents, its government is well sustained, and its laws better enforced than in many of our own cities. Its police consists of a military patrol, who, oddly enough, perform the duties of lamplighters.
Every morning he set out furnished with a brand-new trades-union book, and went from workshop to workshop. Times were bad for his branch of trade; many of his old fellow-workmen had been forced to take up other occupations he met them again as conductors, lamplighters, etc.; machinery had made them unnecessary, they said.
You see, therefore, he had very little to try his courage in the Town House, and there was seldom or never any fuss about his fears till the move to the Sea Castle took place; and then there were no more lamps and lamplighters, and no more comfortable glimmerings from his bright pets the lamps after he went to bed; and he used to get silly directly, and declare that he saw bears whenever he shut his eyes; and he seemed to expect to find lions and tigers under the sofas, by the fuss he made when he was asked to go into the rooms.
'Hear, hear, hear! cried the lamplighters generally. 'Tom Grig, gentlemen, said the chairman, 'was one of us; and it happened to him, as it don't often happen to a public character in our line, that he had his what-you-may-call-it cast. 'His head? said the vice. 'No, replied the chairman, 'not his head. 'His face, perhaps? said the vice.
"But Braulard is an epicure," said Lousteau; "his dinners are famous in dramatic literature, and they are what you might expect from his cash-box." "I have good wine," Braulard replied modestly. "Ah! here are my lamplighters," he added, as a sound of hoarse voices and strange footsteps came up from the staircase. Lucien on his way down saw a march past of claqueurs and retailers of tickets.
But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped out at my feet than he had untied the other end. "Like lamplighters, Bunny!" And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs.
A sullen sunset colored the western sky. The drive was filled with motor-cars, and groups of riders galloped on the muddy bridle-path. It was just dusk. Suddenly, as the lamplighters went their rounds, all the park bloomed with milky disks of light. "You see," Sammy went on presently, "I've thought this all out. Anthony's a good man, and he loves me, and I well, I've promised.
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.
Instead of that, I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and flung it far into the air like blood money. The night was falling; through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the lamplighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and looked on moodily.
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