I daresay you have read a little chemistry, or heard lectures thereon.

Many of you may have been bitten by the desire to try a little yourselves, as I was, and tried making hydrogen and oxygen gases, burning phosphorus, watch-spring and sulphur in the latter; and even tried to turn the salts of metals back into the metals themselves.
But that by the way.

Let us return to the candle--such a one as Vince had left burning, smoking and smelling unpleasantly, in the flat brass candlestick upon the little hall table, for it was time he was off to bed.

Now, the chemists took the candle, and pulled it to pieces, just as the candle-makers took the loose, fluffy cotton wick metaphorically to pieces, and constructed another by plaiting the cotton strands together and making a thin, light wick, which, as it burned, had a tendency to curl over to the side of the conical flame where the point of the wick touched the air and burned more freely--so freely, in fact, from getting more oxygen from the air than the other part, as to burn all away, and never need snuffing.

That is the kind of wick you use in your candles to-day; and the snuffers have gone into curiosity cases in museums along with the clumsy tinder-boxes of the past.
But that is to do with the wick, though I daresay some chemist or student of combustion gave the first hint to the maker about how to contrive the burning away of the unpleasant snuff.
Let us go back to the candle itself, or rather to the tallow of which it was made.
Now, your analytical chemist is about the most inquisitive person under the sun.