Full text: Tales and fairy stories

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THE OLD STREET-LAMP. 299 
Vienna. And here they had all the kings and er- 
perors in ome picture. A house-clock, with heavy 
leaden weights, kept saying: “Tick! tack!” and 
always advancing, which the old folks maintained was 
far better than going too slow. They were eating 
their supper, while the street-lamp lay, as beforesaid, 
in the arm-chair near the stove. It seemed to the 
lamp as if the whole world had been turned topsy- 
urvy. But when the old watchman looked at her and 
spoke of all they two had lived to see through rain and 
fog, through the clear, short, summer nights, or through 
the long winter nights in snow-storms, that made him 
long for the passage leading to his cellar—the old 
lamp felt all right again. She saw everything as 
plainly as if it were then happening—in truth, the 
wind had enlightened her in good earnest. 
The old folks were very active and industrious, and 
lid not spend a single hour in idleness. On Sunday 
afternoons, a book of some kind was sure to be brought 
out, generally relating to travels, which was their 
favourite reading. And the old man read aloud about 
Africa and its vast forests, with elephants running 
about wild ; while the old wife pricked up her ears, 
and listened with all her might, casting a stealthy look 
ever and anon towards the clay elephants that served 
as flower-pots. 
“1 can almost imagine I were seeing it all!” ob- 
served she. 
And the lamp wished so ardently that she could 
have had a taper burning inside her; for then the old 
woman would have seen even the minutest details as 
plainly as the lamp saw them—the high trees with 
their thickly entwined branches, the naked negroes on 
horseback, “and whole herds of elephants trampling 
down bamboos and bushes beneath their broad, heavy 
eet. 
“ What is the use of all my capacities, if I cannot 
have a wax light 2” sighed the lamp. “ They burn 
only oil and tallow, and that will not suffice.”
	        
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