Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446: Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852Various
Science
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446: Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852
Various
Periodicals
Most people know what a Child's night-light is, and most people have
heard of Belmont Wax, and Price's Patent Candles, though few would be
able to explain exactly what the warrant guards. But who ever pretends
to understand patents? The 'Belmont' every one knows; it is a mere
ordinary wax-candle, which perhaps does not 'gutter' so much as
others, and with wick more innocent of 'thieves' than most, but with
nothing more wonderful in appearance than an ordinary candle. A
Child's night-light, too, has nothing mysterious in its look. It
greatly resembles the thick stumpy end of a magnificent mould, done up
in a coloured card-jacket, and with a small thin wick, that gives just
a point of flame, and no more, by which to light another candle, if
necessary--of admirable service for this and all other purposes of a
common-place bedroom. Eccentric sleepers, who write Greek hexameters,
and fasten on poetic thoughts while the rest of the world are in
rational slumber, might object to the feebleness of this point of
light; but eccentricities need provisions of their own, and comets
have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all
ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for
the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange
figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But
nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace,
and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world;
the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form.
It is generally presumed that candles, in the abstract, come from some
unknown place in 'the City;' but how they are made, or who is employed
in their making, or how the workmen live in the grease-laden steam of
the factory, not one in a thousand would know if he could certainly
none would give himself any trouble to find out. Neither should we
ourselves have known, had not a little pamphlet, bearing the heading,
_Special Report by the Directors to the Proprietors of Price's Patent
Candle Company_, fallen into our hands. Holding the Report open on the
desk before us, we will now give to our readers the net result of the
moral doings of the factory.
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