“Oh, yes, of Christmas it’s better, it is—four or five shillings on a Christmas-day.
“On the Monday fortnight, before last Christmas twelvemonth, I had two ribs broke, and one fractured, and my grine (groin) bone injured. Oh! the pains that I feel even now, sir. I lived then in Phillip’s-gardens, up there in the New-road. The policeman took me to the hospital. It was eighteen days I niver got off my bid. I came out in the morunning of the Christmas-eve. I hild on by the railings as I wint along, and I thought I niver should git home. How I was knocked down was by a cart; I had my eye bad thin, the lift one, and had a cloth over it. I was just comin’ out of the archway of the courrut (close by the beer-shop) away from Mr. ——’s house, when crossing to the green-grocer’s to git two pound of praties for my supper, I didn’t see the cart comin’. I was knocked down by the shaft. They called, and they called, and he wouldn’t stop, and it wint over me, it did. It was loaded with cloth; I don’t know if it wasn’t a Shoolbred’s cart, but the boy said to the hospital-doctor and to the policeman it was heavily loaded. The boy gave me a shilling, and that was all the money I received. For a twelvemonth I couldn’t hardly walk.
“On that Christmas-day I took four-and-tinpence, but I owed it all for rint and things; and I’m sure it’s a good man that let me run it the score.
“Is it a shillin’ I iver git? Well, thin, sir, there’s one gintleman, but he’s out of town—Sir George Hewitt—niver passes without givin’ me a shillin’.
“I have taken one-and-ninepence on a Sunday, and I’ve taken two shillin’s. Upon my sowl, I’ve often gone home with three ha’pence and tuppence. For this month past, put ivery day together, I haven’t taken three shilling a-week.
“I wear two brooms out in a week in bad wither, and thin p’rhaps I take four to five shillin’, Sunday included; but for the three year since here I’ve been on this crossin’, I niver took tin shillin’, sir, niver.
“Yes, there was a man here before me: he had bad eyes, and he was obligated to lave and go into the worrukhouse; he lost the sight of one of his eyes when he came back again. I knew him sweepin’ here a long time. When he come back, I said, ‘Father,’ says I, ‘I wint on your crossin’.’ ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘you’ve got a bad crossin’, poor woman; I wouldn’t go on it again, I wouldn’t;’ and I niver seen him since. I don’t know whether he is living or not.
“A wit day makes fourpence or fippence difference sometimes.
“Indeed, I have heard of crossin’-sweepers makin’ so much and so much. I hear people talkin’ about it, but, for my parrut, I wouldn’t give heed to what they say. In Oxford-street, towards the Parruks, there was a man, years ago, they say, by all accounts left a dale of money.
“I am niver annoyed by boys. I don’t spake to none of them. I was in sarvice till I got married, thin I used to sill fruit through Kentish Town, Highgate, and Hampstead; but I niver sould in the streets, sir, and had my rigular customers like any greengrocer. I had a good connixion, I had; but, by gitting old and feeble, and sick, and not being able to go about, I was forrussed to give it up, I was. I couldn’t carry twelve pound upon my hid—no, not if I was to get a sov’rin a-day for it, now.