WHEN THE LIGHT FAILED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHEN THE LIGHT FAILED.

Tlie electric light had failed! People ran about with matches and little torches and~did things to the main switch, but for none of these energies did the electric light care: it went on sleeping, entirely oblivious of them all and. unconcerned, for quite a long time.

The big house seemed dreadfully dark, more so than a small one would have seemed, because there was more dark in it. People made noises like fog-signals so that they would not have collisions, and they all had little extra heartaches for the blind.

Then, at the bottom of a big drawer in the store cupboard, the housekeeper discovered, with the help of matches being struck all the time while she hunted, some candles. She even went so far as to find on a high shelf some candlesticks. These were a strange mixture: one or two old brass ones with snuffers, and one or two old china ones with bits out of them.

All these, much to the astonishment of the candlesticks, she dusted, for they had forgotten what a dusting was like; and presently the great hall and the drawing room had here and there little pointed flames growing up like pale crocuses.

And then, of course, just as all these uruangements had been completed, the electric light took it into its head, or into its switches, to blink in its sleep, to blink again, and finally to open its eyes.

Just dozing it had been, just taking forty winks, yet evidently, while it had not been looking, something had happened; the room had changed a little. Here and there, as bold as you please, were ridiculous-looking little flickering caricatures of electric lamps, unstable and shadeless. Usurpers! Merely because one took just a few minutes' rest from duty must upstarts come, thinking they could take one's place?

Tlic candlelight began to pale in the brilliancy of the greater light, but at the moment no one was in the room, and the flames continued to en joy their small flutterings. unmolested by human interference. The candles were being a little subdued by the electric light's thoughts, which were being spoken aloud, yet they waited a little and allowed the boaster to ramble 011. Then suddenly they spoke, and their voices were like the sound of wild crocuses growing in a field, for wc are told that all movement lias sound, all sound lias form, that even white has colour, and that all things have spirit, so that nothing is unlikely.

Listen, Great Light! they whispered, though you have become so all-important, it is from us yon sprang. We are your ancestors come back this night like ghosts from the past." Long ago, before you were thought of, we lighted the houses, of men. We lit the humblest cottage and blazed in the courts of kings and the palaces of popes. We shone about the walls of ballrooms and halls of festivity; we burned before the shrines of early saints, and lighted little children to bed. The old nursery-rhyme makers have often used our uamc, and the greatest poet, of all time has likened us to good deeds, but you we have not heard of in poetry.

The men who made the vessels in which we stand were as important as those who supplied nie.„t and bread for tlie world. The butcher, the baker, tlie candlestick-maker —the candles went 011 in their talking. Wuo would sing in these days of the butcher, the baker, and the electric light fittings maker?

O, great descendants of ours, do not despise small beginnings, for without us candles you would not be there to-day, like suns or moons sending out your still and radiant light even to the shadowed corners.

Now the little candles were getting i|iiite excited. A window was open and the grease poured down their sides, spluttering over 011 to (lie soft mist-blue carpet. The door opened, the grease dropped more quickly still, and the butler came in, blowing out tlie crocus-like flames.

"Thank goodness the world moves and the days of candles are over," he said to himself.

The one remaining flame dripped a final bit of grease on to its broken china saucer, like a falling tear, and the next moment its light had failed ghost-like into the past. Then it seemed that the electric light behind its beautiful shades shone out with greater radiance.

"Well, we certainly do come from an old family!" he said, with pride.