Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 | Page 5

statue and Nelson's Pillar, where, if he sweep the whole, he can't collect, and if he collect, he can't sweep, and he breaks his heart and his back too in a fruitless vocation. He picks up experience in time; but he is pretty sure to find a better trade before he has learned to cultivate that of a crossing-sweeper to perfection.--Many of these occasional hands are Hindoos, Lascars, or Orientals of some sort, whose dark skins, contrasted with their white and scarlet drapery, render them conspicuous objects in a crowd; and from this cause they probably derive an extra profit, as they can scarcely be passed by without notice. The sudden promotion of one of this class, who was hailed by the Nepaulese ambassador as he stood, broom in hand, in St Paul's Churchyard, and engaged as dragoman to the embassy, will be in the recollection of the reader. It would be impossible to embrace in our category even a tithe of the various characters who figure in London as occasional sweepers. A broom is the last resort of neglected and unemployed industry, as well as of sudden and unfriended ill-fortune--the sanctuary to which a thousand victims fly from the fiends of want and starvation. The broken-down tradesman, the artisan out of work, the decayed gentleman, the ruined gambler, the starving scholar--each and all we have indubitably seen brooming the muddy ways for the chance of a half-penny or a penny. It is not very long since we were addressed in Water Street, Blackfriars, by a middle-aged man in a garb of seedy black, who handled his broom like one who played upon a strange instrument, and who, wearing the words pauper et pedester written on a card stuck in his hat-band, told us, in good colloquial Latin, a tale of such horrifying misery and destitution, that we shrink from recording it here. We must pass on to the next on our list, who is--
No. 4, the Lucus-a-non, or a sweeper who never sweeps.--This fellow is a vagabond of the first-water, or of the first-mud rather. His stock in trade is an old worn-out broom-stump, which he has shouldered for these seven years past, and with which he has never displaced a pound of soil in the whole period. He abominates work with such a crowning intensity, that the very pretence of it is a torture to him. He is a beggar without a beggar's humbleness; and a thief, moreover, without a thief's hardihood. He crawls lazily about the public ways, and begs under the banner of his broom, which constitutes his protection against the police. He will collect alms at a crossing which he would not cleanse to save himself from starvation; or he will take up a position at one which a morning sweeper has deserted for the day, and glean the sorry remnants of another man's harvest. He is as insensible to shame as to the assaults of the weather; he will watch you picking your way through the mire over which he stands sentinel, and then impudently demand payment for the performance of a function which he never dreams of exercising; or he will stand in your path in the middle of the splashy channel, and pester you with whining supplications, while he kicks the mire over your garments, and bars your passage to the pavement. He is worth nothing, not even the short notice we have taken of him, or the trouble of a whipping, which he ought to get, instead of the coins that he contrives to extract from the heedless generosity of the public.
No. 5 is the Sunday Sweeper.--This neat, dapper, and cleanly variety of the genus besom, is usually a young fellow, who, pursuing some humble and ill-paid occupation during the week, ekes out his modest salary by labouring with the broom on the Sunday. He has his regular 'place of worship,' one entrance of which he monopolises every Sabbath morning. Long before the church-going bell rings out the general invitation, he is on the spot, sweeping a series of paths all radiating from the church or chapel door to the different points of the compass. The business he has cut out for himself is no sinecure; he does his work so effectually, that you marvel at the achievement, and doubt if the floor of your dwelling be cleaner. Then he is himself as clean as a new pin, and wears a flower in his button-hole, and a smile on his face, and thanks you so becomingly, and bows so gracefully, that you cannot help wishing him a better office; and of course, to prove the sincerity of your wish, you pay him at a better rate. When the congregation are all met, and the service is commenced, he is religious enough,