might as well talk," he says, "of laying on an everlasting
succession of glow-worms;" and then he laughed again, partly at his
joke, and partly at poor humanity.

'In course of time, however, the thing got ground, the experiment
was made, and they lighted up Pall Mall. Tom's uncle went to see
it. I've heard that he fell off his ladder fourteen times that
night, from weakness, and that he would certainly have gone on
falling till he killed himself, if his last tumble hadn't been into
a wheelbarrow which was going his way, and humanely took him home.
"I foresee in this," says Tom's uncle faintly, and taking to his
bed as he spoke - "I foresee in this," he says, "the breaking up of
our profession. There's no more going the rounds to trim by
daylight, no more dribbling down of the oil on the hats and bonnets
of ladies and gentlemen when one feels in spirits. Any low fellow
can light a gas-lamp. And it's all up." In this state of mind, he
petitioned the government for - I want a word again, gentlemen -
what do you call that which they give to people when it's found
out, at last, that they've never been of any use, and have been
paid too much for doing nothing?'

'Compensation?' suggested the vice.

'That's it,' said the chairman. 'Compensation. They didn't give
it him, though, and then he got very fond of his country all at
once, and went about saying that gas was a death-blow to his native
land, and that it was a plot of the radicals to ruin the country
and destroy the oil and cotton trade for ever, and that the whales
would go and kill themselves privately, out of sheer spite and
vexation at not being caught. At last he got right-down cracked;