Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman & Hall edition (TheWorks of Charles Dickens, volume 28) , email
The Lamplighter
By CHARLES DICKENS
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
‘If you talk of Murphy andFrancis Moore, gentlemen,’ said the lamplighter who was inthe chair, ‘I mean to say that neither of ’em everhad any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had.’
‘And what had he to do with ’em?’asked the lamplighter who officiated as vice.
‘Nothing at all,’ replied the other; ‘justexactly nothing at all.’
‘Do you mean to say you don’t believe in Murphy,then?’ demanded the lamplighter who had opened thediscussion.
‘I mean to say I believe in Tom Grig,’ replied thechairman. ‘Whether I believe in Murphy, or not, is amatter between me and my conscience; and whether Murphy believesin himself, or not, is a matter between him and hisconscience. Gentlemen, I drink your healths.’
The lamplighter who did the company this honour, was seated inthe chimney-corner of a certain tavern, which has been, time outof mind, the Lamplighters’ House of Call. He sat inthe midst of a circle of lamplighters, and was the cacique, orchief of the tribe.
If any of our readers have had the good fortune to behold alamplighter’s funeral, they will not be surprised to learnthat lamplighters are a strange and primitive people; that theyrigidly adhere to old ceremonies and customs which have beenhanded down among them from father to son since the first publiclamp was lighted out of doors; that they intermarry, and betroththeir children in infancy; that they enter into no plots orconspiracies (for who ever heard of a traitorous lamplighter?);that they commit no crimes against the laws of their country(there being no instance of a murderous or burglariouslamplighter); that they are, in short, notwithstanding theirapparently volatile and restless character, a highly moral andreflective people: having among themselves as many traditionalobservances as the Jews, and being, as a body, if not as old asthe hills, at least as old as the streets. It is an articleof their creed that the first faint glimmering of truecivilisation shone in the first street-light maintained at thepublic expense. They trace their existence and highposition in the public esteem, in a direct line to the heathenmythology; and hold that the history of Prometheus himself is buta pleasant fable, whereof the true hero is a lamplighter.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the lamplighter in the chair,‘I drink your healths.’
‘And perhaps, Sir,’ said the vice, holding up hisglass, and rising a little way off his seat and sitting downagain, in token that he recognised and returned the compliment,‘perhaps you will add to that condescension by telling uswho Tom Grig was, and how he came to be connected in your mindwith Francis Moore, Physician.’
‘Hear, hear, hear!’ cried the lamplightersgenerally.
‘Tom Grig, gentlemen,’ said the chairman,‘was one of us; and it happened to him, as it don’toften happen to a public character in our line, that he had hiswhat-you-may-call-it cast.’
‘His head?’ said the vice.
‘No,’ replied the chairman, ‘not hishead.’
‘His face, perhaps?’ said the vice. ‘No, not his face.’ ‘Hislegs?’ ‘No, not