urer's family. I was bred and brought up
mostly by _rush-light_, and I do not find that I see less clearly than
other people. Candles certainly were not much used in English labourers'
dwellings in the days when they had meat dinners and Sunday coats.
Potatoes and taxed candles seem to have grown into fashion together; and,
perhaps, for this reason: that when the pot ceased to afford _grease_ for
the rushes, the potatoe-gorger was compelled to go to the chandler's shop
for light to swallow the potatoes by, else he might have devoured peeling
and all!

194. My grandmother, who lived to be pretty nearly ninety, never, I
believe, burnt a candle in her house in her life. I know that I never saw
one there, and she, in a great measure, brought me up. She used to get the
meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop-shoots to the poles with. She cut
them when they had attained their full substance, but were still _green_.
The rush at this age, consists of a body of _pith_ with a green _skin_ on
it. You cut off both ends of the rush, and leave the prime part, which, on
an average, may be about a foot and a half long. Then you take off all the
green skin, except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith. Thus
it is a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the
way up, which, observe, is necessary to hold the pith together all the way
along.

195. The rushes being thus prepared, the _grease_ is melted, and put in a
melted state into something that is as _long_ as the rushes are. The
rushes are put into the grease; soaked in it sufficiently; then taken out
and laid in a bit of bark taken from a young tree, so as not to be too
large. This bark is fixed up against the wall by a couple of straps put
round it; and there it hangs for the purpose of holding the rushes.

196. The rushes are carried about _in the hand_; but to sit by, to work
by, or to go to bed by, they are fixed in _stands_ made for the purpose,
some of which are high to stand on the ground, and some low, to stand on a
table. These stands have an iron port something like a pair of _pliers_ to
hold the rush in, and the rush is shifted forward from time to time, as it
burns down to the thing that holds it.

197. Now these rushes give a _better light_ than a common small
dip-candle; and they cost next to nothing, though the labourer may with
them have as much light as he pleases, and though, without them he must
sit the far greater part of the wint