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.

[Illustration: Bringing a light.]

"But this is the age of Fusees. What a name! When, in our
youth, those longitudinal strips of tinder, semi-divided
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?' 'Fusees,' forsooth! More like bomb-shells,
military mines, torpedoes, and nitroglycerine trains. Who
has not had them explode in his eye, 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
to them. 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
consequences. In these days, when a man may bring an action
for libel because it has been sai