Buy the Wick

In Tallowmarket a wax chandler named Osk Denholm chalked a new saying on his stall board that morning: Buy the wick, not the flame. He had watched a boy spend a day’s wages on a sealed jar of false light, then come back the next morning for a plain wick, and he thought the lesson worth a board. By dusk the tallow-men had copied it onto their own boards, and a passage-token seller was already selling it back to travellers as wisdom.