There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
delicate parts of the lamp.
"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
become clogged I cannot conceive."
Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
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