candles in them,
garnished and adorned with clippit paper; an equipage which he prophesied
would soon wear out of fashion when lamps were once introduced, and the
which prediction I have lived to see verified; for certainly, now-a-days,
except when some elderly widow lady, or maiden gentlewoman, wanting the
help and protection of man, happens to be out at her tea and supper, a
tight and snod serving lassie, with a three-cornered glass lantern, is
never seen on the causey. But, to return from this digression; saving
and excepting the remarks of Mr Dribbles and Mr Dippings, and neither of
them could be considered as made in a sincere frame of mind, I had no
foretaste of any opposition. I was, therefore, but ill prepared for the
worrying argument with which Mr Hickery seized upon the scheme, asserting
and maintaining, among other apparatus-like reasoning, that in such a
northern climate as that of Scotland, and where the twilight was of such
long duration, it would be a profligate waste of the public money to
employ it on any thing so little required as lamps were in our streets.

He had come home from America in the summer time, and I reminded him,
that it certainly could never be the intention of the magistrates to
light the lamps all the year round; but that in the winter there was a
great need of them; for in our northern climate the days were then very
short, as he would soon experience, and might probably recollect. But
never, surely, was such an endless man created. For, upon this, he
immediately rejoined, that the streets would be much more effectually
lighted, than by all the lamps I proposed to put up, were the inhabitants
ordered to sit with their window-shutters open. I really did not know
what answer to make to such a proposal, but I saw it would never do to
argue with him; so I held my tongue quietly, and as soon as possible, on
a pretence of private business, left the meeting, not a little mortified
to find such a contrary spirit had got in among us.

After that meeting of the council, I went cannily round to all the other
members, and represented to them, one by one, how proper it was that the
lamps should be set up, both for a credit to the town, and as a
conformity to the fashion of the age in every other place. And I took
occasion to descant, at some length, on the untractable nature of Mr
Hickery, and how it would be proper before the next meeting to agree to
say nothing when the matter was again