Candlepower

“ As Great Hedge was in the country, though not many miles outside the city of Tarrington, there were country things in the attic, such as a spinning wheel, two of them, in fact, candlesticks, candle-moulds and so on. You all know that a candlestick is something in which to stick a candle so one may carry it around. In the olden days, before we had electric lights, gas or even kerosene lamps, the people used to read and work by means of candles.
A candle is a stick of tallow, wax or something like that, with a string, or wick, in the middle, just as rock candy has a string in the middle. ”

“ The candle is not a flame, but a luminous mass, lightish blue in colour, which dances as though borne by an invisible agency, and sometimes it rolls over and over. If you go up to the light it is nothing, for it is a spirit. ”

“ PREFACE From the primitive pine-torch to the paraffin candle, how wide an interval! between them how vast a contrast! The means adopted by man to illuminate his home at night, stamp at once his position in the scale of civilisation. The fluid bitumen of the far East, blazing in rude vessels of baked earth; the Etruscan lamp, exquisite in form, yet ill adapted to its office; the whale, seal, or bear fat, filling the hut of the Esquimaux or Lap with odour rather than light; the huge wax candle on the glittering altar, the range of gas lamps in our streets,—all have their stories to tell. ”

“ And it struck me as very strange to see a fine-looking, full-grown man coming in at noonday into a church, bringing a little wax candle, walking up to a shrine over which is a picture of the Virgin, kneeling before it, bowing his head to the floor, crossing himself again and again, lighting his candle and sticking it into a hole prepared for the purpose, and once more prostrating himself to kiss the pavement, and then retire! This lighting of candles is an emblem of life, and is designed to keep the spiritual nature of man continually in view. ”

“ Behold him—a happy young man. Look how brightly the candle burns! The icy wind of the limitless sky cannot disturb, or in the slightest deflect the movement of the flame. Radiantly and brightly burns the candle. ”

“ The candle itself is now made to light up the dark places of nature; the blowpipe and the prism are adding to our knowledge of the earth’s crust; but the torch must come first.
Among the readers of this book some few may devote themselves to increasing the stores of knowledge: the Lamp of Science must burn. ”

“ Oh, you think the wick of the candle may be damp, do you? All right, I'll light the beastly thing in the fire. That won't go out, at all events. Yes, it sputters a bit, but it will keep lighted now. It burns just like any other candle, doesn't it? The fact is, candles are not very good about here. I don't know where they come from, but they have a way of burning low occasionally, with a greenish flame that spits tiny sparks, and I'm often annoyed by their going out of themselves. It cannot be helped, for it will be long before we have electricity in our village. ”

“ To carry a lighted candle about without any guard against the flame is assuredly not dangerous, but useful and necessary. But if you were to light a fire close to a heap of dry hay, or to take a lighted candle into a room where there had been an escape of gas, What a catastrophe might be the result! ”

“ Men looking through bars saw a bit of lit candle wick catch the flame, saw the outlines of a hand as the candle fire waxed stronger. Slowly the moth-like flame was lifted until it revealed the body of a man. ”

“ A long and pointed tongue of fire extended itself from the flame of the candle. Monsieur Roger placed close to this tongue of fire the tapering and open end of the tube in which the water had finished boiling. The air, forced out of the blowpipe and thrust upon the flame of the candle, bore to this flame a considerable quantity of oxygen, which increased the combustion and produced a temperature high enough to soften and melt the open extremity of the tube, and so seal it hermetically. ”

“ If a candle made of the fat of a malefactor who had also died on the gallows was lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory as in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead.​ [521] Sometimes the dead man’s hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers being set on fire; but should any member of the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. ”

“ So the star-like candle for me. No other light follows so intimately an author's most ghostly suggestion. We sit, the candle and I, in the midst of the shades we are conquering, and sometimes look up from the lucent page to contemplate the dark hosts of the enemy with a smile before they overwhelm us; as they will, of course. Like me, the candle is mortal ”

“ Thus fate, playing strange havoc with the affairs of mice and men, held him back a moment when his very presence might have turned the scale, when the flame of that candle in the wind which has been likened unto the life of a man might have been shielded a little longer in the hollow of his hand. ”

“ It concerns us much to know about the condition which the matter of the candle finally assumes at the top of the wick—where you have such beauty and brightness as nothing but combustion or flame can produce. ”

“ It will be my place, when next we meet, having pointed out these anomalous actions, to shew you that none of these extra and strange effects are met with by us—that none of these strange and injurious actions take place when we are burning, not merely a candle, but gas in our streets, or fuel in our fireplaces, so long as we confine ourselves within the laws that Nature has made for our guidance. ”

“ You see now why you would have had such a bad result if you were to burn these beautiful candles that I have shewn you, which are irregular, intermittent in their shape, and cannot therefore have that nicely-formed edge to the cup which is the great beauty in a candle. I hope you will now see that the perfection of a process— that is, its utility—is the better point of beauty about it. It is not the best looking thing, but the best acting thing, which is the most advantageous to us. This good-looking candle is a bad burning one. ”

“ The candle gives forth its manifestation to all the neighbourhood which is illuminated by it. The candle is glorified by the fire, and the two bear witness that they are made for one another by the way in which they fulfil each other’s life. That fulfilment comes by the way in which the inferior substance renders obedience to the superior. The wax acknowledges the subtle flame as its master and yields to its power, and so, like every faithful servant of a noble master, it gives itself most unreservedly up, and its own substance is clothed with a glory that does not belong to itself. ”

“ The candle in its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows over everything, and making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. ”

“ In old days the wicks were not twisted much, if at all, and so, as the candle melted from them,—they stuck up into the dull, smoky, non-burning part of the flame, and stayed there until they hung over or fell off. ”

“ The light in the alcove flaring in a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless flighty dance. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had seen in the corridor, and, with a slight effort, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, I walked out into the moonlight, and presently returned with as many as ten. ”

“ Shall a candle wink at flaming Jupiter as an equal? By what persuasion is one's own tiny wick, shielded in the fingers from misadventure, the greatest light?
Who is there who has read more than a single chapter in the book of life? Most of us have faltered through scarcely a dozen paragraphs, yet we scribble our sure opinion in the margin. We hear a trifling pebble fall in a muddy pool, and we think that we have listened to the pounding of the sea. We hold up our little candle and we consider that its light dispels the general night. ”

“ The heat of the burning vapor keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame, and turned into vapor, and burnt, and so on till the was is all used up, and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see, is the last of the candle, and the candle seems to go through the flame into nothing—although it doesn't, but goes into several things, and isn't it curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so splendid and glorious in going away? ”

“ The light which they afford is superior and more steady than the light of common candles; and lastly, candles made in this manner, whether of wax, spermaceti, or tallow, do not require to be snuffed as often. Besides all this, they flame much less, and are consequently better for writing, reading, working and drawing, than candles made by the common method. ”

“ Death said, “are the candles of all the people in the world. When a man’s candle burns out, then it is time for me to go for him.”
“Godmother,” Martin said, pointing to a candle that was burning low, “whose may that be?” ”

“ The only use the candle is to me, in the circumstances, is that it serves as an Epictetus lamp, enabling me to get some practice in stoicism. It had often as much as twelve inches of eclipse, like a sun, and I wished in vain, darling, for an invisible eclipse—such as frequently occurs in the heavens. The cursed slag of our candle hatches just these obscure ideas and gloomy night thoughts, which authors (too) often have. ”

“ Although lamps and gas have generally supplanted candles, in the country where candles are still used, the spark on the wick is considered to denote the coming of a letter, and the melted tallow or composition forming a winding sheet denotes a death. ”

“ We know, of course, what the candle is made of and we also know why it burns and in a way how it gives off light and heat because we have examined it closely, but if we could get no nearer a candle flame than a quarter of a mile it is very doubtful if we could ever be able to learn anything about the real source of the flame—that is its greasy wick. ”

“ The former class were as candles, made of ordinary wax, and placed in inconspicuous candle-sticks, which had been ignited by the fire of God through the Holy Spirit; and the latter were like exquisitely prepared candlesticks, the candles in which had never been kindled by the fire of God. There are hundreds of professing Christians, and some may read these pages, who have never really been kindled; who have never been touched by the Son of God; who do not know what it is to shine with his light and to burn with his fire. ”

“ Now bring in a plain white candle and say: "After all, this white candle shines forth as brightly as any one of them. It makes no noise, says nothing about itself, but just goes on and shines. It is not the clothes which make the light of life shine the brighter." ”

“ For if you of the present generation of boys who live in the days of gas, electric lights, spirit lamps, and candles ingeniously made after the analytical experiments of chemists on a material very different from the old-fashioned Russian tallow—if you, I say, were to try and snuff an old candle, the chances are that you would either cut the cotton wick too much or too little, if you did not snuff the light out. ”

“ As the candle goes on burning, that keeps its place and forms a little pillar sticking up by the side, because, as it rises higher above the rest of the wax or fuel, the air gets better round it, and it is more cooled and better able to resist the action of the heat at a little distance. Now, the greatest mistakes and faults with regard to candles, as in many other things, often bring with them instruction which we should not receive if they had not occurred. We come here to be philosophers ”

“ From the time that a candle is snuffed till it wants snuffing again, its strength of light scarcely continues the same for a single minute. And that variation which frequently takes place in the height of the flame, is a matter of still more serious consequence. ”

“ That is the way to shine forever. Burn out here, and you will shine forever in God's kingdom. So we learn that we are not only letting our light shine as a business, but in so doing we light the dark corner lights around the world. This candle I now hold in my hand can light a thousand other candles, and they in turn another thousand, and so on until it could light shining candles girdling the round world. Light is contagious. It easily passes from one candle to another.
One courageous enthusiastic person can fire many others to shine in their dark corners also. ”

“ There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all—sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. ”

“ Trial by means of candles was more comfortable than trial by fire and water. Two candles of exactly the same kind of wax, of the same weight, and with wicks containing the same number of threads, were lit and placed on suitable stands. The man whose candle burnt away first was the loser. ”

“ Why, there’s tallow enough in that candle on the table to last a fen cottager three weeks.”
“I don’t see why a candle shouldn’t burn out as fast in England as here.”
“They would make that candle into ever so many rush-lights.”
“What’s a rush-light?”
“They take a bulrush, and take the skin off from each side down to the white pith, leaving a little strip of skin on the edge to stiffen it, and make it stand up,—that is for a wick; then they dip it a few times in melted tallow, and make a light of it; but it’s a little, miserable light.” ”