father!" cries Asmodeus, Jr. "What does that
mean?"--Why, my dear boy, that is the saw which was tearing the poor
woman's heart. The words mean, in plain English, "The play is not worth
the candle." In ancient days folks did not have big glass chandeliers,
all sparkling with gas. The Asmodei of old did not turn up, or down, or
out, the luminaries which bathed them in midnight brilliancy. They
snuffed them. When the old French kings danced minuets with their most
virtuous and respected maids of honor on private stages, they were
enlivened by tallow flames. They had no quarterly bills for so many feet
of light; for they bought it by the pound. When Monsieur Deuse-Ace
rattled the dice or shuffled the cards with Signor Double-Six, he looked
for luck, not at a patent safety-burner, but at the stranger in the
flickering candle-flame. Now sometimes M. Deuse-Ace came out of that
rattling and shuffling with an empty purse, and, when called on to pay
for the tallow, he swore, like a bad man as he was, that the play was
not worth the candle. So I think that famous old saw must have been made
by some unhappy Murad who was unlucky in turning up small numbers or
having dealt to him cards considerably below kings,--though knaves were
his constant companions. But this elegant English, _figlio mio_, may be
more idiomatically rendered, perhaps, in the language of the day,
thus:--It doesn't pay! Paying is the touchstone nowadays to which
everything is brought, from the stock of the great Beaugous Bootjack
Company to the great Rebellion of 1861.

Well, there sat the poor woman,--you see, Mrs. Grundy, that she was no
Godiva, nor I a peeping Tom. My eyesight is good yet,--and I could see
that old saw deep in her sad, trembling bosom. No! that _jeu_ was a bad
one. She had lost her youth, her happiness, her all, on the _tapis
vert_ of human life. It had turned up _noir_ when it should have come
_rouge_, and the candle was to pay for. Do you know what strain of music
came sadly on my ear, and how I felt when I saw that the horrible old
saw was keeping time to it? It was a little song of Hood's. You know it.
Many know it. She knew it, ah, too well! She knew it by heart.

Now candles are stuck in all sorts of sticks: golden branches, silver
arms, brass stands, tin cups, bottles, wooden blocks, potatoes, and
turnips. We all have seen candles and candelabras; and if we don't
employ them as corks for our empty bottles, why, John puts them into the