"Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours;  she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;  and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to 'keep blind-man's holiday'."

"String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new;  one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.
Small pieces of butter grieve others.  They cannot attend to conversation, because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariable taking more butter than they want.  Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article?  They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own mouths, and swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused, suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at all) and eats up his butter.  They think that is not waste."

~ Mrs. Gaskell (1810 - 1865) in Cranford,  CHATTO & WINDUS PUBLISHERS 1907

[Photo: lamp The Blacksmith's Garden, lbw]