VIL] CANDLES AND RUSHES. 115 



be glad to see the thing tried. They are pretty crea- 

 tures, domestic as a dog, will stand and watch, as a 

 dog does, for a crumb of bread, as you are eating ; 

 give you no trouble in the milking ; and I cannot help 

 being of opinion, that it might be of great use to in- 

 troduce them amongst our labourers. 



CANDLES AND RUSHES. 



193. WE are not permitted to make candles our- 

 selves, and if we were, they ought seldom to be used 

 in a labourer's family. I was bred and brought up 

 mostly by rush-light, and I do not find that I see less 

 clearly than other people. Candles certainly were 

 not much used in English labourers' dwellings in the 

 days when they had meat dinners and Sunday coats. 

 Potatoes and taxed candles seem to have grown into 

 fashion together ; and, perhaps, for this reason : that 

 when the pot ceased to afford grease for the rushes, 

 the potatoe-gorger was compelled to go to the chand- 

 ler's shop for light to swallow the potatoes by, else 

 he might have devoured peeling and all ! 



194. My grandmother, who lived to be pretty nearly 

 ninety, never, I believe, burnt a candle in her house 

 in her life. I know that I never saw one there, and 

 she, in a great measure, brought me up. She used 

 to get the meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop- 

 shoots to the poles with. She cut them when they 

 had attained their full substance, but were still green. 

 The rush at this age, consists of a body of pith with 

 a green skin on it. You cut off both ends of the 

 rush, and leave the prime part, which, on an average, 

 may be about a foot and a half long. Then you take 

 off all the green skin, except for about a fifth part 

 of the way round the pith. Thus it is a piece of pith 

 all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up, 

 which, observe, is necessary to hold the pith together 

 all the way along. 



195. The rushes being thus prepared, the grease 

 is melted, and put in a melted state into something 

 that is as long as the rushes are. The rushes are 



