“Some days I goes to my crossing, and earns nothink at all: other days it’s sometimes fourpence, sometimes sixpence. I earned fourpence to-day, and I had a bit of snuff out of it. Why, I believe I did yearn fivepence yesterday—I won’t tell no story. I got ninepence on Sunday—that was a good day; but, God knows, that didn’t go far. I yearned so much I couldn’t bring it home on Saturday—it almost makes me laugh,—I yearned sixpence.
“I goes every morning, winter or summer, frost or snow; and at the same hour (five o’clock); people certainly don’t think of giving so much in fine weather. Nobody ever mislested me, and I never mislested nobody. If they gives me a penny, I thanks ’em; and if they gives me nothing, I thanks ’em all the same.
“If I was to go into the House, I shouldn’t live three days. It’s not that I eat much—a very little is enough for me; but it’s the air I should miss: to be shut up like a thief, I couldn’t live long, I know.”
The Old Woman Crossing-Sweeper who had a Pensioner.
This old dame is remarkable from the fact of being the chief support of a poor deaf cripple, who is as much poorer than the crossing-sweeper as she is poorer than Mrs. ——, in —— street, who allows the sweeper sixpence a-week. The crossing-sweeper is a rather stout old woman, with a carneying tone, and constant curtsey. She complains, in common with most of her class, of the present hard times, and reverts longingly to the good old days when people were more liberal than they are now, and had more to give. She says:—
“I was on my crossing before the police was made, for I am not able to work, and only get helped by the people who knows me. Mr. ——, in the square, gives me a shilling a-week; Mrs. ——, in —— street, gives me sixpence; (she has gone in the country now, but she has left it at the oil-shop for me); that’s what I depinds upon, darlin’, to help pay my rent, which is half-a-crown. My rent was three shillings, till the landlord didn’t wish me to go, ’cause I was so punctual with my money. I give a corner of my room to a poor cretur, who’s deaf as a beadle; she works at the soldiers’ coats, and is a very good hand at it, and would earn a good deal of money if she had constant work. She owed as good as twelve shillings and sixpence for rent, poor thing, where she was last, and the landlord took all her goods except her bed; she’s got that, so I give her a corner of my room for charity’s sake. We must look to one another: she’s as poor as a church mouse. I thought she would be company for me, still a deaf person is but poor company to one. She had that heavy sickness they call the cholera about five years ago, and it fell in her side and in the side of her head too—that made her deaf. Oh! she’s a poor object. She has been with me since the month of February. I’ve lent her money out of my own pocket. I give her a cup of tea or a slice of bread when I see she hasn’t got any. Then the people up-stairs are kind to her, and give her a bite and a sup.
“My husband was a soldier; he fought at the battle of Waterloo. His pension was ninepence a-day. All my family are dead, except my grandson, what’s in New Orleans. I expect him back this very month that now we have: he gave me four pounds before he went, to carry me over the last winter.
“If the Almighty God pleases to send him back, he’ll be a great help to me. He’s all I’ve got left. I never had but two children in all my life.
“I worked in noblemen’s houses before I was married to my husband, who is dead; but he came to be poor, and I had to leave my houses where I used to work.
“I took twopence-halfpenny yesterday, and threepence to-day; the day before yesterday I didn’t take a penny. I never come out on Sunday; I goes to Rosomon-street Chapel. Last Saturday I made one shilling and sixpence; on Friday, sixpence. I dare say I make three shillings and sixpence a-week, besides the one shilling and sixpence I gets allowed me. I am forced to make a do of it somehow, but I’ve no more strength left in me than this ould broom.”