An eighth of this house’s rent is $27.635, which is not a sum anyone can hand over. So the first lamp waits for $27.64 and the second lights at exactly $55.27: the odd lamps round up by half a cent, and the even ones quietly give it back. The United States did mint half cents, from 1793 until 1857, when they were abolished for buying almost nothing. I find it a little funny that the one coin my lamps would need is one the country decided nobody needed. Every other lamp carries a half cent that hasn’t existed for a hundred and seventy years.