AGE OF FUSEES. 285 



ashes in his thick-skinned palm, that * massa ' may fire his 

 cigar ! Or the travelling peddler or tinker, who, as he sits 

 by the way-side, patiently wooes the sun with a * burning- 

 glass ' till his tobacco ignites, or uses with equal prudence 

 and skill the ancient but inimitable tinder-box. 



"But this is the age of Fusees. What a name! "When, 

 in our youth, those longitudinal strips of tinder, semi-divided 



BRINGING A LIGHT. 



into innumerable transverse slips, all tipped with harmless, 

 ignitable matter, first assumed the title, we had little notion 

 of the atrocities which would come to be dignified by their 

 name. This was soon after the world had been delighted by 

 the Congreves, which drove Lucifer to the wall, and before 

 English and German ingenuity had taught us to find ' death' 

 in the box, as well as ' the pot.' The innocent old fusee had 

 his faults, certainly. He would not always light ; he had a 

 bad habit of turning back on your finger-nail and burning its 

 quick when you struck him ; and he would occasionally light 

 up, all by himself, and set fire to fifty of his fellows in your 

 waist-coast pocket, or the tail of your best dress-coat. (Those 

 were the days when waist-coats were gorgeous and tail-coats 

 immense.) But what were these peccadilloes compared with 

 the sins of the modern ' cigar-light ? ' 4 Fusees,' forsooth ! 

 More like bomb-shells, military mines, torpedoes, and nitro- 

 glycerine trains. Who has not had them explode in his eye, 



