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Wax-tapers, to throw their soft, luxurious light on my lady's delicate face, as she lies like a beautiful piece of marble-work on her dreamy couch; shaded lamps for the grave merchant, the virtual king of the present, as he sits in his still office, ruling nations by bale and bond, and guiding the tide of events by invoices and ship's papers; Palmer's candles, under green pent-houses, for students and authors, whose eyes must withstand a double strain; the mild house-light, with a dash of economy in the selection, whether of oil, sperm, long-fours, or short-sixes, for the family group; the white camphene flame for the artist: strange mechanisms for the curious; the flaunting brilliancy of the coloured chandeliers and cut-glass shades for our English Bedouins in the gin-palace; the flaring jet of the open butchers' shops; the paper-lantern of the street-stalls; the consumptive dip of the slop-worker; the glimmering rush-light for the sick-room; the resin torch for the midnight funeral: these, and countless other inventions not to mention the universal gas assert man's disinclination to transact his life in the dark, or to bound his powers by the simple arrangements of nature.
Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines.
In the meantime Mr Pecksniff, having received from a sharp angle in the bottom step but one, that sort of knock on the head which lights up, for the patient's entertainment, an imaginary general illumination of very bright short-sixes, lay placidly staring at his own street door.
Tom Slink, who used to smoke short-sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure, the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of themselves. But Chalmerson hasn't done much.
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