THE FADING CANDLE

Progress in scientific discoveries is doubtless useful and salutary, but it is also fearfully unromantic. This week at Menlo Park, which is Mr. Edison's euphemistic name for his principal factory, the snuffing out of the candle as a source of illumination is to be celebrated by a bloze of (Edison) mazda lamps. It is always melancholy to witness the eclipse of the traditional, and consequently rather sentimental appurtenances of a passing age by the inventions of a more modern, more brilliantly practical era.

It is in literature that the loss of the candle will be most keenly felt. Shakespeare will have to be revised, and Portia made to say: "How far that glawing mazda throws its beams." Since the coming generation will never have seen a candle except as a painful substitute for electricity, ancient authors will have to be brought up to date, or the favorite similies of candles and oil will not be understood. Such parables as that of the foolish virgins, who used up too soon all the oil for their lamps will lose all their significance. "But Mother," the modern precocity will say, "why didn't they get new batteries for their flashlights at the drug store?"

As if to case the smart of the passing, electric light companies have rated their bulbs as so many candle power each, but even that does not prevent them from chanting in unison the words of Macbeth: "Out, out, brief candle!"