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Updated: July 28, 2025
Various lighting pastes were used, until the improvements which resulted in the "safety" matches. The dangerous sulphur and white phosphorus have given place in modern match-making to sesqui-sulphate mixtures; and wax vestas and other "strikers" have superseded the curious objects the collector meets with. The Fireplace.
I had never been fond of the dark in my earliest days, and now it seemed as if the strange, wild fancies of my childhood were forcing themselves upon me, and I felt that, if only for an instant, I must have light of some sort; so, standing still, I took from my pocket a box of vestas, and struck one. Holding the little match carefully, cherishing it with my hand, I gazed about me.
A man might not be able to buy anything from a tin-tack to a sheet anchor on demand, but Marmot was quite prepared to furnish him with tin ware and lamp-glasses, saddlery or axe heads and handles, wool bales, sacking, pipes and tobacco, wax vestas and dress materials, flannel, hardware and soft goods, canned provisions and patent medicines, cotton for tents, boots, hats, flour, galvanized iron for roofs and water-tanks, barbed wire, kerosene oil, "reach-me-downers" or ready-made tweed suits, moleskins and Crimean shirts, sheath knives, cartridges and firearms, fire and life assurance proposals, postal notes, postage stamps, and money orders, as well as a few other minor details which might from time to time be called for.
Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the cloak was a thick woolen one. Was she dead, I wondered? That cry that single word of reproach sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words. I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
Now, as Arthur and everybody else knows, "M.R." may mean Midland Railway, but the Midland Railway is not six feet two inches, and does not carry wax vestas about him, or drop them on the floor of the boot- box. Arthur gaped at those initials for fully three minutes, and then hurriedly hid the sack away in the cupboard. He had still one more point to clear up.
Duncan produced some vestas, and no sooner had they lighted their candle, than several of the dormitory doors began to be thrown open, and one after another all requested a light, which Duncan and Eric conveyed to them in a sort of emulous lampadephoria, so that a length all the twelve dormitories had their sconces lit, and the boys began all sorts of amusement, some in their night-shirts and others with their trousers slipped on.
That is to say, he understood the cause of the disturbance as little as did any one else; it would have required a divine inspiration to guess that a box of wax vestas was at the bottom of the affair; but he knew enough, quite enough, more than enough, for the purpose at hand. He knew, to begin with, that Apostles were involved in the brawl.
I had a little silver box of wax vestas in my pocket, and struck one to help him in his search for the keyhole which he found to have been covered by the escutcheon. Before I threw the match away I held it up and glanced back across the garden. The shadows leaped and stiffened to attention, and I flung the match away, but it did not go out.
What a scene then commenced; nothing but scribes and writing-desks met the view, and nought was heard but the scratching of pens, and energetic demands for foreign letter-paper, vestas, or sealing-wax; then came a rush on deck, to witness the important packet delivered to the care of the first mate, and watch the progress of the little bark that was to bear among so many homes the glad tidings of our safety.
The faint illumination of the big wax vestas often failed to touch the roof. The way was sometimes over ankle deep in a thick mud, and sometimes strewn with fragments of rock which had fallen from the roof; but we went on gaily until we came to a great slippery boulder, which blocked the passage for some three feet in height.
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