286 : ' FLAMERS. 
on his cheek, down his neck, scarring his skin, burning holes 
in his coats and trousers, frightening passers-by, and doing 
all manner of deep-dyed devilment? Nor is this the worst. 
Those who will trust their skins, and their eyes, and their 
clothes to ‘ Vesuvians,’ ‘ Flamers,’ and the like, are not to be 
pitied; for they are more cruel to their tobacco than the 
fusees are tothem. Our grievance is that so many engines 
of destructiveness and offensiveness should be so largely 
patronized by smokers, to their own discomfort, the ruination 
of their tobacco, the scandalization of gentle and simple, and 
the encouragement of vicious manufactures. Now, we are 
not going to particularize too closely, for fear of conse- 
quences. In these days, when a man may bring an action 
for libel because it has been said of him that he sells bad 
soup at a railway station, prudence is the better part of valor. 
But, just examine this heterogeneous pile of ‘cigar-lights,’ 
which rears its audacious head upon the table. Here are 
Palmers, Barbers, Farmers, Lord Lornes, Tichbornes, Bry- 
ants and Moys, Bells and Blacks, Alexandres, Bismarcks, 
King Williams, Napoleons, and scores of other varieties. 
Some light ‘only on the box,’ some light anywhere, some 
everywhere, and some nowhere. Some are on wood, some 
on porcelain, some on glass, some on dire deeds intent. 
There are vestas, safety-matches, patent flint-and-steel con- 
trivances, with silver tubes and marvellous screws wherewith 
to put them out when they have served your turn. Some 
are excellent, many passable, still more intolerable. One of. 
these times it may be worth while to speak of the good ones, 
but at present we care only to treat of those that are bad, 
and that briefly. 
“Here’s a ‘Flamer’—we name no names—everybod 
seems to make flamers; and this one deserves his title. We 
want to light a peaceful pipe, and he bursts out in a fury 
like unto nothing on earth so much as Etna in convulsion, 
or the Tuilleries in petroleum blaze. But, if you have any 
respect for your tobacco, your lips, your nostrils, or your 
lungs, you will let him get rid of his flames before you apply 
him to your cigar; and, when you do venture so far, he 
drops off the stick and burns a hole in the carpet. Or, if 
pu be daring enough to take a light from the flamer while 
e flames, you spoil your tobacco, foul your mouth, and get 
a taste of sulphur-suffocation such as Asmodeus might have 
were he to take a whiff of a smoke-and-fire belching chimney 
in the Black Country as he flies across that district by night. 
