\'If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen,\' said the
lamplighter who was in the chair, \'I mean to say that neither of \'em ever
had 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; \'just exactly nothing at all.\'
\'Do you mean to say you don\'t believe in Murphy, then?\' demanded the
lamplighter who had opened the discussion.
\'I mean to say I believe in Tom Grig,\' replied the chairman. \'Whether I
believe in Murphy, or not, is a matter between me and my conscience; and
whether Murphy believes in himself, or not, is a matter between him and
his conscience. Gentlemen, I drink your healths.\'
The lamplighter who did the company this honour, was seated in the
chimney-corner of a certain tavern, which has been, time out of mind, the
Lamplighters\' House of Call. He sat in the midst of a circle of
lamplighters, and was the cacique, or chief of the tribe.
If any of our readers have had the good fortune to behold a
lamplighter\'s funeral, they will not be surprised to learn that lamplighters
are a strange and primitive people; that they rigidly adhere to old
ceremonies and customs which have been handed down among them from
father to son since the first public lamp was lighted out of doors; that they
intermarry, and betroth their children in infancy; that they enter into no
plots or conspiracies (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 burglarious lamplighter); that they are, in short,
notwithstanding their apparently volatile and restless character, a highly
moral and reflective people: having among themselves as many
traditional observances as the Jews, and being, as a body, if not as old as
the hills, at least as old as the streets. It is an article of their creed that the
first faint glimmering of true civilisation shone in the first street-light
maintained at the public expense. They trace their existence and high
position in the public esteem, in a direct line to the heathen mythology;
and hold that the history of Prometheus himself is but a pleasant fable,
whereof the true hero is a lamplighter.