“After twelve at night we goes to the Regent’s Circus, and we tumbles there to the gentlemen and ladies. The most I ever got was sixpence at a time. The French ladies never give us nothink, but they all says, ‘Chit, chit, chit,’ like hissing at us, for they can’t understand us, and we’re as bad off with them.
“If it’s a wet night we leaves off work about twelve o’clock, and don’t bother with the Haymarket.
“The first as gets to the crossing does the sweeping away of the mud. Then they has in return all the halfpence they can take. When it’s been wet every day, a broom gets down to stump in about four days. We either burns the old brooms, or, if we can, we sells ’em for a ha’penny to some other boy, if he’s flat enough to buy ’em.”
Gander—The “Captain” of the Boy Crossing-Sweepers.
Gander, the captain of the gang of boy crossing-sweepers, was a big lad of sixteen, with a face devoid of all expression, until he laughed, when the cheeks, mouth, and forehead instantly became crumpled up with a wonderful quantity of lines and dimples. His hair was cut short, and stood up in all directions, like the bristles of a hearth-broom, and was a light dust tint, matching with the hue of his complexion, which also, from an absence of washing, had turned to a decided drab, or what house-painters term a stone-colour.
He spoke with a lisp, occasioned by the loss of two of his large front teeth, which allowed the tongue as he talked to appear through the opening in a round nob like a raspberry.
The boy’s clothing was in a shocking condition. He had no coat, and his blue-striped shirt was as dirty as a French-polisher’s rags, and so tattered, that the shoulder was completely bare, while the sleeve hung down over the hand like a big bag.
From the fish-scales on the sleeves of his coat, it had evidently once belonged to some coster in the herring line. The nap was all worn off, so that the lines of the web were showing like a coarse carpet; and instead of buttons, string had been passed through holes pierced at the side.
Of course he had no shoes on, and his black trousers, which, with the grease on them, were gradually assuming a tarpaulin look, were fastened over one shoulder by means of a brace and bits of string.
During his statement, he illustrated his account of the tumbling backwards—the “caten-wheeling”—with different specimens of the art, throwing himself about on the floor with an ease and almost grace, and taking up so small a space of the ground for the performance, that his limbs seemed to bend as though his bones were flexible like cane.