enced his duties, four
and twenty years ago. He looked upon it almost as his own child. He had
no children, so the lamp was given to him.

There lay the lamp in the great armchair near the warm stove. It seemed
almost to have grown larger, for it appeared quite to fill the chair.
The old people sat at their supper, casting friendly glances at it, and
would willingly have admitted it to a place at the table. It is quite
true that they dwelt in a cellar two yards below ground, and had to
cross a stone passage to get to their room. But within, it was warm and
comfortable, and strips of list had been nailed round the door. The bed
and the little window had curtains, and everything looked clean and
neat. On the window seat stood two curious flowerpots, which a sailor
named Christian had brought from the East or West Indies. They were of
clay, and in the form of two elephants with open backs; they were filled
with earth, and through the open space flowers bloomed. In one grew some
very fine chives or leeks; this was the kitchen garden. The other, which
contained a beautiful geranium, they called their flower garden. On the
wall hung a large colored print, representing the Congress of Vienna and
all the kings and emperors. A clock with heavy weights hung on the wall
and went "tick, tick," steadily enough; yet it was always rather too
fast, which, however, the old people said was better than being too
slow. They were now eating their supper, while the old street lamp, as
we have heard, lay in the grandfather's armchair near the stove.

It seemed to the lamp as if the whole world had turned round. But after
a while the old watchman looked at the lamp and spoke of what they had
both gone through together--in rain and in fog, during the short, bright
nights of summer or in the long winter nights, through the drifting
snowstorms when he longed to be at home in the cellar. Then the lamp
felt that all was well again. It saw everything that had happened quite
clearly, as if the events were passing before it. Surely the wind had
given it an excellent gift!

The old people were very active and industrious; they were never idle
for even a single hour. On Sunday afternoons they would bring out some
books, generally a book of travels which they greatly liked. The old man
would read aloud about Africa, with its great forests and the wild
elephants, while his wife would listen attentively, stealing a glance
now and then at the clay elephan