'His nativity. That's what Tom had
cast, gentlemen.'
'In plaster?' asked the vice.
'I don't rightly know how it's done,' returned the chairman. 'But
I suppose it was.'
And there he stopped as if that were all he had to say; whereupon
there arose a murmur among the company, which at length resolved
itself into a request, conveyed through the vice, that he would go
on. This being exactly what the chairman wanted, he mused for a
little time, performed that agreeable ceremony which is popularly
termed wetting one's whistle, and went on thus:
'Tom Grig, gentlemen, was, as I have said, one of us; and I may go
further, and say he was an ornament to us, and such a one as only
the good old times of oil and cotton could have produced. Tom's
family, gentlemen, were all lamplighters.'
'Not the ladies, I hope?' asked the vice.
'They had talent enough for it, Sir,' rejoined the chairman, 'and
would have been, but for the prejudices of society. Let women have
their rights, Sir, and the females of Tom's family would have been
every one of 'em in office. But that emancipation hasn't come yet,
and hadn't then, and consequently they confined themselves to the
bosoms of their families, cooked the dinners, mended the clothes,
minded the children, comforted their husbands, and attended to the
house-keeping generally. It's a hard thing upon the women,
gentlemen, that they are limited to such a sphere of action as
this; very hard.
'I happen to know all about Tom, gentlemen, from the circumstance
of his uncle by his mother's side, having been my particular
friend. His (that's Tom's uncle's) fate was a melancholy one. Gas
was the death of him. When it was first talked of, he laughed. He
wasn't angry; he laughed at the credulity of human nature. "They
might as well talk," he says, "of laying on an everlasting
succession of glow-worms;" and then he laughed again, partly at his
joke, and partly at poor humanity.
'In course of time, however, the thing got ground, the experiment
was made, and they lighted up Pall Mall. Tom's uncle went to see
it. I've heard that he fell off his ladder fourteen times that
night, from weakness, and that he would certainly have gone on
falling till he killed himself, if his last tumble hadn't been into
a wheelbarrow which was going his way, and humanely took him home.
"I foresee in this," says Tom's uncle faintly, and taking to his
bed as he spoke - "I foresee in this," he says, "the breaking up of
our profession. There's no more going the rounds to trim by
daylight, no more dribbling down of the oil on the hats and bonnets
of ladies and gentlemen when one feels in spirits. Any low fellow
can light a gas-lamp. And it's all up." In this state of mind, he
petitioned the government for - I want a word again, gentlemen -
what do you call that which they give to people when it's found
out, at last, that they've never been of any use, and have been
paid too much for doing nothing?'
'Compensation?' suggested the vice.
'That's it,' said the chairman. 'Compensation.
