CHAPTER III

THE LIGHTS OF FORMER DAYS

Rushlights and holders--Candles, moulds, and boxes--Snuffers,
trays, and extinguishers--Oil lamps--Lanterns.

Household lighting has been one continuous effort to render the hours of
darkness bright, and to provide by artificial means a luminosity which
would, if not actually rivalling the sun, enable men to carry on their
usual avocations with the same ease, convenience, and comfort after
daylight had disappeared as during the earlier portion of the day. Every
stage which has been advanced in artificial lighting has been welcomed
in the home just as much as in the factory and in the workshop, for
there are many daily duties as well as pleasures and amusements which
are carried out much more satisfactorily when a good light is available
than when there are shadows and dark corners only dimly lighted.

To realize what artificial lighting was in the days now happily long
past, it would be necessary to visit some old-world village, if one
could be found, where there had been no attempt at street lighting, and
in which not even oil had penetrated. The candles of very early times
did not give more than a dim glimmer, and the darkness of mediaeval
England can be imagined from the primitive lighting appliances which are
preserved. Fortunately the entire story of lighting as science came to
the aid of trader and householder is revealed in the lights of former
days, which as time went on became more varied and numerous, found in
collections of well-authenticated specimens. The suggested caution
implied is not unnecessary, for the periods overlap, and there is but
little to show when such things as lamps and lanterns were actually
made.

Rushlights and Holders.

In tracing the development of lighting from quite homely beginnings,
rushlights, prepared by the cottager and the farm hand for the winter
supply, seem to come first on the list. Rushlights, however, were used
in this country by many until comparatively recent times side by side
with lights much more advanced. But centuries earlier than we have any
record of artificial lighting in this country, and equally as long
before any of the earliest British curios of lighting were used,
lighting engineers, if we may so call them, in Greece, Rome, Egypt, and
still earlier in other Eastern countries, were far advanced. None of the
lighting schemes of the Ancients, however, produced much more than the
dim light of the