Once, in the later years, he came with his new lighter - a splendid
brass affair, with smooth wood handle, holding a wax taper that
flickered fitfully down the street and marked old Jimmy's pathway
through the dusk. Although he could reach up and turn on the gas with
the key-slot at the end of the scepter and light it with the taper, all
at one time, he ever carried the ladder - for none could tell when or
where a burner might need fixing, or there would be other need to climb
the post as in the days of the lamp and sulphur-match.

Short of stature, firm of build, was old Jimmy. The night storms of
innumerable years had bronzed his skin and furrowed his face.
Innumerable years, yes - for so faithful a servant as old Jimmy the
Lamplighter was not to be cast away by every caprice of the public mind
which changed the political aspect of the town council. So Jimmy stayed
on through the years and changing administrations -in the sultry heat of
the summer nights, or breasting his way through winter's huge
snow-drifts, fronting the wind-driven sleet, or dripping through the
spring-time rain, his taper hugged tight beneath his thick rubber coat,
his matches safe in the depths of an inside pocket.

And tonight, as the Boy still watches, in memory, old Jimmy on his
rounds, they are a bit odd, these queer old street lamps that just seem
to belong to the night, after the garish blaze of electric signs and the
great arc-lights in the shop windows. Yet it shines through the years,
this simple lamp of the Long Ago, as it shone through the night of old -
a friendly beacon only, the modest servant of an humble race. . . . .

Jimmy's boy Ted, who carried his father's ladder and taper when the good
old man laid them down, now nods in his chimney-corner o' nights. But