Snuffers. Here, as in many of the other pictures in this book, a tea-cup
and saucer are placed near the drawing of the object to be described.
This is added to give a correct idea of the relative size of the objects
represented. In each case the object to be described and the tea-cup are
drawn to the same scale; and, as you know about how large a tea-cup is,
you get a clear idea of the size of the object by which it stands.
Snuffers were used to snip off the end of a candle wick. As the tallow
or wax melted and burned, the top of the wick, although it was burned to
a mere black bit of coal, held fast to the part of the wick which still
continued to draw up the melted tallow into the flame. If this black end
was not now and then picked off with the snuffers, or some other
instrument, or with the fingers, it dropped over and perhaps hit the top
of the candle and kept it from burning bright and clear.
The snuffers are like a pair of scissors, with a box on one blade and a
cover for the box on the other. When used they were handled like a pair
of scissors and the black end of the wick was snipped into the box out
of sight and harm. The pointed end of one blade was used to prick up the
wick if it did not stand straight or was too tightly twisted. The three
legs kept the snuffers, which were sooty on the under side from being
stuck into the candle flame, away from the table or the tray where they
were usually kept.
The candles of to-day do not often need to be snuffed, because as their
wicks, which are carefully twisted, are burned free of the tallow, wax
or paraffin, they bend a little in the effort to untwist. This bending
thrusts the used-up end sidewise into the hot, outer flame and there it
is quite burned up. In old days the wicks were not twisted much, if at
all, and so, as the candle melted from them,--they stuck up into the
dull, smoky, non-burning part of the flame, and stayed there until they
hung over or fell off.