Or when, as winds and waters keep
A hush more dead than any sleep,
Still morns to stiller evenings creep,
And Day, and Night, and Day go by
Here the stillness is most deep.
And the ruins, lapsed again
Into Nature's wide domain,
Sow themselves with seed and grain,
As Day, and Night, and Day go by,
And hoard June's sun and April's rain.
Here fresh funeral tears were shed;
And now the graves are also dead:
And suckers from the ash-tree spread,
As Day, and Night, and Day go by
And stars move calmly overhead.
[From Household Words.]
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
the lucifer match.
Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the friction of two dry sticks.
The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In the bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the infant at its mother's side too often awoke, like Milton's nightingale, "darkling"—but that "nocturnal note" was something different from "harmonious numbers." The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child, familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its office—the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are all damp. The toil-worn father "swears a prayer or two," the baby is inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the watchman.
In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its production.