“Awful, only it might have been so much worse. There sit down, doctor. You know I used to have a canal boat—monkey boat we called ’em, because they are so long and thin.”
“Yes, I know it,” I said.
“Ah, and I’ve had a load of powder scores o’ times both in monkey boats and lighters on the Thames. You ain’t in a hurry to-day, doctor?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“That’s good,” said the old fellow. “Asthma’s better. Look here, doctor, I might have been blown up just as those poor chaps was at any time, and I nearly was once.”
“What, blown up by powder!”
“To be sure I was. Look here, I take my long clay pipe off the table—so; I pulls the lead tobacco box towards me—so; I fills my pipe-bowl—so; and then I pulls open this neat little box, made like somebody’s first idea of a chest of drawers, takes out one of these little splints of wood, rubs it on the table, no good—on the floor, no good—on the sole of my boot, no good; but when I gives it a snap on the side of a box—fizz, there’s a bright little light, the wood burns, and I am holding it to the bowl of my pipe, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out again, looking at you pleasantly through the thin blue cloud, and—how are you?
“Times is altered since I was a lad, I can tell you. Why, as you know, that there match wouldn’t light not nowhere but on the box, so as to be safe and keep children from playing with ’em and burning themselves, or people treading on ’em and setting fire to places; and what I’ve got to say is this, that it’s a precious great convenience—so long as you’ve got the box with you—and a strange sight different to what it was when I was a boy.
“Now I’ll just tell you how it was then, whether you know or whether you don’t know. Lor’ bless you, I’ve seen my old aunt do it lots o’ times. There used to be a round, flat tin box, not quite so big as the top of your hat; and the lid on it used to be made into a candlestick, with a socket to hold a dip. Then into this box they used to stuff a lot of old cotton rag, and set light to it—burn it till it was all black, and the little sparkles was all a-running about in it, same as you’ve seen ’em chasing one another in a bit o’ burnt paper. Down upon it would come a piece o’ flat tin and smother all the sparkles out, ’cos no air could get to ’em; and then they’d put on the lid, and there was your tinder-box full o’ tinder.
“Next, you know, you used to have a piece o’ soft iron, curled round at each end, so as you took hold on it, and held it like a knuckle-duster; and also you had a bit o’ common flint, such as you might pick up in any road as wasn’t paved with granite; and, lastly, you had a bundle—not a box, mind, but a bundle—of matches, and them was thin splints o’ wood, like pipe lights, pointed at the ends same’s wood palings, and dipped in brimstone. Them’s what the poor people used to sell about the streets, you know—a dozen of ’em spread out and tied like a lady’s fan—in them days, and made ’em theirselves, they did. A piece o’ even splitting wood and a penn’orth o’ brimstone was a stock in trade then, on which many a poor creetur lived—helped by a bit o’ begging.