“I smoke, sir; I will have tobacco, if I can’t get grub. My old woman takes cares that I have tobacco.
“I have been a sailor, and the first ship as ever I was in was the Old Colossus, 74, but we was only cruising about the Channel then, and took two prizes. I went aboard the Old Remewa guardship—we were turned over to her—and from her I was drafted over to the Escramander frigate. We went out chasing Boney, but he gived himself up to the Old Impregnable. I was at the taking of Algiers, in 1816, in the Superb. I was in the Rochfort, 74, up the Mediterranean (they call it up the Mediterranean, but it was the Malta station) three years, ten months, and twenty days, until the ship was paid off.
“Then I went to work at the Dockyard. I had a misfortune soon after that. I fell out of a garret window, three stories high, and that kept me from going to the Docks again. I lost all my top teeth by that fall. I’ve got a scar here, one on my chin; but I warn’t in the hospital more than two weeks.
“I was afeard of being taken up solicitin’ charity, and I knew that sweeping was a safe game; they couldn’t take me up for sweeping a crossing.
“Sometimes I get insulted, only in words; sometimes I get chaffed by sober people. Drunken men I don’t care for; I never listen to ’em, unless they handle me, and then, although I am sixty-three this very day, sir, I think I could show them something. I do carry my age well; and if you could ha’ seen how I have lived this last winter through, sometimes one pound of bread between two of us, you’d say I was a strong man to be as I am.
“Those who think that sweepin’ a crossing is idle work, make a great mistake. In wet weather, the traffic that makes it gets sloppy as soon as it’s cleaned. Cabs, and ’busses, and carriages continually going over the crossing must scatter the mud on it, and you must look precious sharp to keep it clean; but when I once get in the road, I never jump out of it. I keeps my eye both ways, and if I gets in too close quarters, I slips round the wheels. I’ve had them almost touch me.
“No, sir, I never got knocked down. In foggy weather, of course, it’s no use sweeping at all.
“Parcels! it’s very few parcels I get to carry now; I don’t think I get a parcel to carry once in a month: there’s ’busses and railways so cheap. A man would charge as much for a distance as a cab would take them.
“I don’t come to the same crossing on Sundays; I go to the corner of Finch-lane. As to regular customers, I’ve none—to say regular; some give me sixpence now and then. All those who used to give me regular are dead.
“I was a-bed when the Exchange was burnt down.