The Lamplighter | Page 4

went on thus:
'Tom Grig, gentlemen, was, as I have said, one of us; and I may go further, and say he
was an ornament to us, and such a one as only the good old times of oil and cotton could
have produced. Tom's family, gentlemen, were all lamplighters.'
'Not the ladies, I hope?' asked the vice.
'They had talent enough for it, Sir,' rejoined the chairman, 'and would have been, but for
the prejudices of society. Let women have their rights, Sir, and the females of Tom's
family would have been every one of 'em in office. But that emancipation hasn't come yet,
and hadn't then, and consequently they confined themselves to the bosoms of their
families, cooked the dinners, mended the clothes, minded the children, comforted their
husbands, and attended to the house-keeping generally. It's a hard thing upon the women,
gentlemen, that they are limited to such a sphere of action as this; very hard.
'I happen to know all about Tom, gentlemen, from the circumstance of his uncle by his
mother's side, having been my particular friend. His (that's Tom's uncle's) fate was a
melancholy one. Gas was the death of him. When it was first talked of, he laughed. He
wasn't angry; he laughed at the credulity of human nature. "They might as well talk," he
says, "of laying on an everlasting succession of glow-worms;" and then he laughed again,
partly at his joke, and partly at poor humanity.
'In course of time, however, the thing got ground, the experiment was made, and they
lighted up Pall Mall. Tom's uncle went to see it. I've heard that he fell off his ladder
fourteen times that night, from weakness, and that he would certainly have gone on
falling till he killed himself, if his last tumble hadn't been into a wheelbarrow which was
going his way, and humanely took him home. "I foresee in this," says Tom's uncle faintly,
and taking to his bed as he spoke - "I foresee in this," he says, "the breaking up of our
profession. There's no more going the rounds to trim by daylight, no more dribbling
down of the oil on the hats and bonnets of ladies and gentlemen when one feels in spirits.
Any low fellow can light a gas-lamp. And it's all up." In this state of mind, he petitioned
the government for - I want a word again, gentlemen - what do you call that which they
give to people when it's found out, at last, that they've never been of any use, and have
been paid too much for doing nothing?'
'Compensation?' suggested the vice.

'That's it,' said the chairman. 'Compensation. They didn't give it him, though, and then he
got very fond of his country all at once, and went about saying that gas was a death-blow
to his native land, and that it was a plot of the radicals to ruin the country and destroy the
oil and cotton trade for ever, and that the whales would go and kill themselves privately,
out of sheer spite and vexation at not being caught. At last he got right-down cracked;
called his tobacco-pipe a gas-pipe; thought his tears were lamp- oil; and went on with all
manner of nonsense of that sort, till one night he hung himself on a lamp-iron in Saint
Martin's Lane, and there was an end of HIM.
'Tom loved him, gentlemen, but he survived it. He shed a tear over his grave, got very
drunk, spoke a funeral oration that night in the watch-house, and was fined five shillings
for it, in the morning. Some men are none the worse for this sort of thing. Tom was one
of 'em. He went that very afternoon on a new beat: as clear in his head, and as free from
fever as Father Mathew himself.
'Tom's new beat, gentlemen, was - I can't exactly say where, for that he'd never tell; but I
know it was in a quiet part of town, where there were some queer old houses. I have
always had it in my head that it must have been somewhere near Canonbury Tower in
Islington, but that's a matter of opinion. Wherever it was, he went upon it, with a
bran-new ladder, a white hat, a brown holland jacket and trousers, a blue neck-kerchief,
and a sprig of full- blown double wall-flower in his button-hole. Tom was always genteel
in his appearance, and I have heard from the best judges, that if he had left his ladder at
home that afternoon, you might have took him for a lord.
'He was always merry, was Tom, and such a singer, that if there was any encouragement
for native talent, he'd have been at the opera. He was on his ladder,