The municipality had better take the cue, less light, more crime, more light, less crime. There are still dark spots to be found at night within the city limits where a few powerful arcs would wield an immediate influence. It is easy to see that arc-lights are cheaper than police officers and a brightly lit city the greatest imaginable offset to criminality in any stage or form. (Text.)—Electricity.
(1831)
An English writer has this to say about the phosphorescent light cast by the sea-fish called the smelt:
Anybody desirous of seeing the sort of light which it emits may do so very easily by purchasing an unwashed smelt from the fishmonger, and allowing it to dry with its natural slime upon it, then looking at it in the dark. A sole or almost any other fish will answer the purpose, but I name the smelt from having found it the most reliable in the course of my own experiments. It emits a dull, ghostly light, with very little penetrating power, which shows the shape of the fish, but casts no perceptible light on objects around.
Here the light is so dim that it gives no illumination beyond outlining the fish. Many men are like that. They have a little light, but it never shines beyond themselves. It merely outlines their own lives and sometimes scarcely that. (Text.)
(1832)
It has been a long stride forward from producing light and heat by means of flint to producing it by matches. What would civilization do without matches? Few realize the immense labor, capital and material used to produce this tiny article of commerce. As a matter of fact, thousands of men are employed, millions of dollars invested and vast forests cut down to meet the demand in America of 700,000,000,000 a year. One plant alone on the Pacific coast covers 240 acres and uses 200,000 feet of sugar-pine and yellow-pine logs in a day. The odds and ends will not do. A constant search is in progress for large forests of perfect trees to meet the future need.
If such labor and pains are necessary to keep at hand the means of lighting that which at best is only a temporary flame, what should measure our diligence to keep our spiritual light burning? (Text.)