When gas first spread
along a city, mapping it forth about evenfall for the eye of observant birds, a new age
had begun for sociality and corporate pleasure-seeking . . . Mankind and its
supper-parties were no longer at the mercy of a few miles of sea-fog; sundown no longer
emptied the promenade, and the day was lengthened out to every man's fancy. The city folk
had stars of their own: biddable domesticated stars.
It is true that these were not so steady, nor yet so clear, as their originals; nor indeed
was their lustre so elegant as that of the best wax candles. But then the gas stars, being
near 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 the other, as the need arises. But the
lamplighters took to their heels every evening, and ran with a good heart. It was pretty
to see man thus emulating the punctuality of heaven's orbs; and though perfection was not
absolutely reached, and now and then an individual may have been knocked on the head by
the ladder of the flying functionary, yet people commended his zeal in a proverb, and
taught their children to say, "God bless the lamplighter!" And since his passage
was a piece of the day's programme, the children were well pleased to repeat the
benediction, not of course, in so many words, which would have been improper, but in some
chaste circumlocution, suitable for infant lips.
God bless him, indeed! For the term of his twilight diligence is near at hand; and for not
much longer shall we watch him speeding up the street and, at measured intervals, knocking
another luminous hole into the dusk. The Greeks would have made a noble myth of such a
one; how he distributed starlight, and, as soon as the need was over, re-collected it; and
the little bull's-eye, which was his instrument, and held enough fire to kindle a whole
parish, would have been fitly commemorated in the legend. Now, like all heroic tasks, his
labours draw towards apotheosis, and in the light of victory himself shall disappear. For
another advance has been effected. Our tame stars are to come out in future, not one by
one, but all in a body and at once. A sedate electrician somewhere in a back office
touches a spring---and behold! from one end to another of the city, from east to west,
from the Alexandra to the Crystal Palace, there is light! |
