Paraffin, and almost all patent candles, fill the air with burnt smoke, and this, to many people, is insufferable.
Sperm candles are preferable to any others for general use at the piano and for bed-rooms. And candles need not be an expensive item when a house is well fitted with gas, as much music practising may be done by daylight and gaslight; while in bed-rooms we ought not to require much length of candlelight.
There is no need of more than one candle to be carried about, and that is for the person who turns off the gas to go upstairs with.
An Italian lucerna is a picturesque object for this purpose; oil is burnt in it—colza will do, though they burn olive oil in Italy, and it gives double the light of colza. On no account use petroleum, or any of the mineral oils. Besides their horrible smell and associations, all the kinds are more or less explosive, and for the little use for which we should require lamps, the difference in cost is trifling.
One occasionally sees curious and quaint old iron or bronze candlesticks, and it is well to seize the opportunity of purchasing such treasures; but if not fortunate enough to get a better thing, it is easy to procure one of those funny little brass candlesticks, in the shape of a frying-pan, so commonly used in the Belgian hotels.
As there are no servants in our model establishment, tallow candles need never be bought, and no candlebox will be required, nor any kitchen candlesticks, to be stuck periodically in a row in the fender to melt their grease and solder, and lose their extinguishers and snuffers.
So we see, even in this small instance, how a young couple beginning to furnish will want few of these superfluities, and, not being compelled to buy common things for servants, may afford things of choice quality for themselves, and to these they may add others as time goes on.
Take, for another example, the breakfast-cups; they may at first buy two very pretty cups and saucers for their own use, and a third equally pretty for their lady friend, or help, as they may like to call her; and either title is honourable, only one seems kinder than the other.
And so they need not purchase what is called a whole set, or, more shopmanly, a "suite," comprising a dozen of almost everything, whose chief merit is in its completeness, of which we tire; and this merit is destroyed when on breaking one of the two bread-and-butter plates we find it is a last year's pattern, and cannot be matched at the shop without its being specially made for us.
How much more we should be attached to a pretty thing if we could say of it: "Don't you remember we bought that cup when So-and-So came to stay with us?" Such associations endow everyday objects with life.