“You’re in fun, are you not?” she asked. “My stitches are much smaller than your strokes, and I’m sure I saw quite well.”
“Well, dear,” he continued, “I’ll proceed to point out to you that, on the grounds of psychology and mental science, it isn’t that it matters a bit whether a person who is writing and thinking sees a little more or less distinctly or not, it’s the snuffers and the snuff that he can’t get out of his head, and they get behind his spiritual legs, trip up his ideas, and stop him, just as a log does a horse hobbled to it. For even when you’ve only just snuffed the candle, and I’m in the full enjoyment of the light, I begin to look out for the instant when you’ll do it next. Now, this watching being in itself neither visible nor audible, can be nothing but a thought, or idea; and as every thought has the property of occupying the mind to the exclusion of all others, it follows that all an author’s other and more valuable ideas are sent at once to the dogs. But this is by no means the worst of the affair. I, of course, ought not to have had to occupy my head with the idea of candle-snuffing any more than with that of snuff-taking; but when the ardently longed-for snuffing never comes off at all, the black smut on the ripe ear of light keeps growing longer—the darkness deepening—a regular funereal torch feebly casting its ray upon a half-dead writer, who can’t drive from his head the thought of the conjugal hand which could snap all the fetters asunder with one single snip;—then, my dearest Lenette, it’s not easy for the said writer to help writing like an ass, and stamping like a dromedary. At least, I express my own opinion and experience on the subject!”
On this, she assured him that, if he were really serious, she would take great care to do it properly next evening.
And, in truth, this story must give her credit for keeping her word, for she not only snuffed much oftener than the night before, but, the fact is, she hardly ever left off snuffing, particularly after he had nodded his head once or twice by way of thanks.
“Don’t snuff too often, darling,” he said, at length, but very, very kindly. “If you attempt too fine sub-sub-subdivisions (fractions of fractions of fractions of fractions) of the wick, it’ll be almost as bad as ever—a candle snuffed too short gives as little light as one with an overgrown wick which you may apply to the lights of the world and of the Church, that’s to say if you can. It’s only for a short while before and after the snuffing, entre chien et loup as it were, that that delicious middle-age of the soul prevails when it can see to perfection; when it is truly a life for the gods, a just proportion of black and white, both in the candle and on the book.”
I and others really do not see any great reason to congratulate ourselves upon this new turn of events. The poor’s advocate has evidently laid upon himself the additional burden, that all the time he is writing he has to keep watching and calculating,—superficially perhaps, but still, watching and calculating—the mean term, or middle-distance, between the long wick and the short. And what time has he left for his work?
Some minutes after, when the snuffing came a little too soon, he asked, though somewhat doubtfully, “Dirty clothes for the wash already?” Next time, as she let it be almost too long before she snuffed, he looked at her interrogatively, and said, “Well? well?”
“In one instant,” said she. By-and-by, he having got rather more deeply absorbed than usual in his writing, and she in her work, he found, when he suddenly came to himself and looked, one of the longest spears in the candle that had yet appeared, and with two or three thieves round it to the bargain.
“Oh, good Lord! ’Pon my soul, this is really the life of a dog!” cried he; and, seizing the snuffers in a fury, he snuffed the candle—out.
This holiday pause of darkness afforded a capital opportunity for jumping up, flying into a passion, and pointing out to Lenette more in detail how it was that she plagued and tormented him, however admirably he might have arranged things; and, like all women, had neither rhyme nor reason in her ways of doing things, always snuffing either too close or not close enough. She, however, lighted the candle without saying a word, and he got into a greater rage than before, and demanded to be informed whether he had ever as yet asked anything of her but the merest trifles possible to conceive, and if anybody but his own wedded wife would have hesitated for a moment to attend to them. “Just answer me,” he said.