“I have had this beard five years. I grew it to sit to artists when I got the chance; but it don’t pay expenses—for I have to walk four or five miles, and only get a shilling an hour: besides, I’m often kept nearly two hours, and I get nothing for going and nothing for coming, but just for the time I am there.
“Afore I wore it, I had a pair of large whiskers. I went to a gentleman then, an artist, and he did pay me well. He advised me to grow mustarshers and the beard, but he hasn’t employed me since.
“They call me ‘Old Jack’ on the crossing, that’s all they call me. I get more chaff from the boys than any one else. They only say, ‘Why don’t you get shaved?’ but I take no notice on ’em.
“Old Bill, in Lombard Street! I knows him; he used to make a good thing of it, but I don’t think he makes much now.
“My wife—I am married, sir—doesn’t do anything. I live in a lodging-house, and I pay three shillings a-week.
“I tell you what we has, now, when I go home. We has a pound of bread, a quarter of an ounce of tea, and perhaps a red herring.
“I’ve had a weakness in my legs for two year; the veins comes down, but I keep a bandage in my pocket, and when I feels ’em coming down, I puts the bandage on ’till the veins goes up again—it’s through being on my legs so long (because I had very strong legs when young) and want of good food. When you only have a bit of bread and a cup of tea—no meat, no vegetables—you find it out; but I’m as upright as a dart, and as lissom as ever I was.
“I gives threepence for my brooms. I wears out three in a week in the wet weather. I always lean very hard on my broom, ’specially when the mud is sticky—as it is after the roads is watered. I am very particular about my brooms; I gives ’em away to be burned when many another would use them.”
The Sweeper in Portman Square, who got Permission from the Police.
A wild-looking man, with long straggling grey hair, which stood out from his head as if he brushed it the wrong way; and whiskers so thick and curling that they reminded one of the wool round a sheep’s face, gave me the accompanying history.