Sir Lyon Playfair told one very singular story. He has
ascertained, in the course of some inquiries into the manufacture of lucifers,—of which it appears every English person consumes eight a day,—that there are still a few families who adhere to the tinder-box, and for whom tinder-boxes are manufactured and sold. One wonders who they can be. Are they genuine old Conserva- tives, using tinder on the principle that it was good enough for their fathers P Or do they object to lucifers as obviously impious, just as the Evangelicals objected to Leviathan ' as a name for the Great Eastern '? Or are they only possessed with that fear of fire which with many persons is as positive a disease as the timor mortis is with others ? We imagine the latter is the true ex- planation, though adherence to habits as obsolete as the use of the tinder-box out of sheer obstinacy is not uncommon. We believe snuffers are still made.
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