st dropped in.

"If I lose I shall lay it to your advice."

"You did well to buy--if you sell at once," said the traveller, who was
interested in the electric light to some unknown extent: "gas stock will
finally have to go down."

"When the sun shines in the night, not before," asserted a young
accountant from the gas-works who had been holding a private talk with
the daughter of the house at the other corner of the room.

"Gas companies can manufacture at less cost than formerly," said the
chemist.

"But yet gas has gone up again lately. You may thank the electric-light
boom for the temporary respite you have had from poor gas at high
prices."

"Yes; some of the companies put gas down lower than they could
manufacture it, in order to hold their customers at a time when people
almost believed that Edison's light would prove a success."

"But it _was_ a success. It proved an excellent light, displayed a neat
lamp, and gave no ill effects upon either the atmosphere or the eyes;
and the perfect carbons showed a surprising endurance. The only
difficulty is that the invention is not yet perfected so as to go
immediately into use."

"But the lower part of the glasses becomes dark with deposited carbon,"
returned the chemist. "If carbons could be made to last long enough to
render the lamps cheap, this smoking of the globes would set a limit at
which the lamps would cease to be presentable; and the cleaning, and the
exhausting of air again, are difficult and expensive."

"That remains to be proved. But coal is sure to grow dearer."

"That isn't likely within a century. Besides, by the fault of the
consumer gas-light costs now one-third more than it should for the same
light. The best English authorities state this to be the case in Great
Britain, and I have no question that such is the fact here."

"How would you remedy the evil of waste?"

"By the use of economical burners and of governors to regulate the flow
of gas."

"That is very easily said. What is the name of your economical burner?"

"I am not an advocate of any special burner, but of all that are
constructed on right principles."

"There are many kinds of burners. Do you not have some classification
for them?" inquired the young lady, who was fresh from Wellesley.

"The usual forms of the burner," replied the chemist "--or, more
properly, the forms of the tip--are the fishtail, the batwing and the
argand. In the first the gas issues through two h