ELECTRIC LIGHT FAILURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 9 July 1907, Page 4

ELECTRIC LIGHT FAILURE.

A few minutes after eight o'clock on May Bth, in Berlin, as Frederieh and Leipzig Btreets were filled with a jostling crowd, making purchases to carry it over the Feast of Ascension, which Is observed as a general holiday in Germany, those two thoroughfares were suddenly and without warning plunged in inky darkness. All the shops, restaurants were thronged with people ai the time, and in more than one place something like a panic prevailed. Customers and servers faced one another invisibly across the counters, scurrying waiters were brought up short in full career, with their loaded trays of coffee cups and beer glasses, dining epicures experienced for the first time how indispensible an ally the serine of light is to that of taste. The only spots where the midnight of the forest did not prevail were the large stores and hotels who kept their own dynamos, and these not only obtained a splendid advertisement, and did a roaring business, hut prevented the extinction of the street lamps from being felt In their immediate vicinity. The recovery from the first shock was followed by a mad rush to the chandlers' shops which were positively taken by storm and stripped of their supplies as by plun dering invaders. Only the first to com* could be supplied, and business was con tinned by the light of candles stuck intr bottles or imbedded in a,foundation ol their own grease, melted on to table! and counters. Most of the tradesinei 1 were obliged to put up their shutter* and go home. Several nf the ehiel theatres were caught just as the per formanees were beginning, i