Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1892 — A FAIRY LAMPLIGHTER. [ARTICLE]

A FAIRY LAMPLIGHTER.

A Beautiful Story of tbe but Hours of Keats. Philadelphia Record. Affection often inspires ingenuity. In a recent life of Joseph Severn a narrative of the artist’s care of the poet Keats in his last illness includes a new and graceful incident. Severn, worn out with watching and tireless service, would sometimes drop asleep and allow the candle to go out, thus leaving the sick man in darkness, which he dreaded. Realizing that this was liable to ocour, Severn hit upon a happy device to keep the light still burning. One evening he fastened a thread from the bottom of the candle already lighted to the wick at the top of another unlighted one set ready near by. Not being sure that the experiment would ceed, he had not mentioned it, and when, later on, he fell napping as the first candle was burning low the invalid was too considerate to awake him, but lay patiently awaiting the extinction of the flickering flame. Suddenly, just as he expected gloom aud blackness, the connecting thread, too fine and distant for him to see it, caught fire and a tiny spark began to run along it. Then he waked up the sleeping nurse with an exclamation of joyful suprise. “Severn! Severn!” he cried, “Here a little fairy lamplighter actually lit up the other candler But it was only the good fairy of many sick rooms, loving forethought, that had lighted the candle. s "f