g, and
stay awake through a needless time in the evening, can probably only be
attributed to total depravity. It is certainly a most stupid, expensive,
and harmful habit. In no one thing has man shown greater fertility of
invention than in lighting; to nothing does he cling more tenaciously
than to his devices for furnishing light. Electricity to-day reigns
supreme in the field of illumination, but every other kind of artificial
light that has ever been known is still in use somewhere. Toward its
light-bringers the race has assumed an attitude of veneration, though it
has forgotten, if it ever heard, the names of those who first brightened
its gloom and dissipated its darkness. If the tallow candle, hitherto
unknown, were now invented, its creator would be hailed as one of the
greatest benefactors of the present age.

Up to the close of the eighteenth century, the means of house and street
illumination were of two generic kinds--grease and oil; but then came
a swift and revolutionary change in the adoption of gas. The ideas and
methods of Murdoch and Lebon soon took definite shape, and "coal smoke"
was piped from its place of origin to distant points of consumption.
As early as 1804, the first company ever organized for gas lighting was
formed in London, one side of Pall Mall being lit up by the enthusiastic
pioneer, Winsor, in 1807. Equal activity was shown in America, and
Baltimore began the practice of gas lighting in 1816. It is true that
there were explosions, and distinguished men like Davy and Watt opined
that the illuminant was too dangerous; but the "spirit of coal" had
demonstrated its usefulness convincingly, and a commercial development
began, which, for extent and rapidity, was not inferior to that marking
the concurrent adoption of steam in industry and transportation.

Meantime the wax candle and the Argand oil lamp held their own bravely.
The whaling fleets, long after gas came into use, were one of the
greatest sources of our national wealth. To New Bedford, Massachusetts,
alone, some three or four hundred ships brought their whale and sperm
oil, spermaceti, and whalebone; and at one time that port was accounted
the richest city in the United States in proportion to its population.
The ship-owners and refiners of that whaling metropolis were slow to
believe that their monopoly could ever be threatened by newer sources of
illumination; but gas had become available in the cities, and coal-oil
and petrole