Lighting a Christmas Tree

I found this little snip-it rather intriguing and a bit horrifying. I just had to share. It comes from the December 1867 edition of the American Agriculturalist. “We housekeepers know that this is really the busiest season of the year, but the work is so agreeable and is interspersed with so much that is delightfully mysterious, we never think of it being work at all, and only regret we have not each two pairs of hands, that we might accomplish more. Christmas is so near, and then – well – Charlie is coming home from Chicago, and Willie from New York. They will come so late, we must have a tree all trimmed, the presents hung, and the candles ready to be lighted before they arrive. What a pity we cannot have gas out here in the country, and so have a Christmas tree drop-light, like the one cousin Tom has in Liverpool! The most vivid imagination could scarcely convert our little candles and lamps (I beg their pardon for mentioning it. May their shadows never be less, ) into the fifty bright jets which illuminated their tree; or transform Jennie’s doll, which will hover with out-stretched arms over our tree, suspended from the ceiling by a string around her waist – a contrivance of Ralph’s – into the silver Christ-child nestling in the upper branches, “all radiant with light as with a flood of glory,” as Tom described it in his letter to Ralph. Father says if the Petroleum Oil Gas Co. gets to work, and does as well as he thinks it will, we shall have our house lighted with gas before another Christmas. I don’t suppose father would get us a drop with fifty lights, but one with six or eight, as in figures 1 and 2, would be very nice among our candles and lamps. Yes, eight, opened to the best advantage, as shown in figure 1, would quite set off a tree.”