“When I see anybody coming, I says, ‘Please, sir, give me a halfpenny,’ and touches my hair, and then I throws a caten-wheel, and has a look at ’em, and if I sees they are laughing, then I goes on and throws more of ’em. Perhaps one in ten will give a chap something. Some of ’em will give you a threepenny-bit or p’rhaps sixpence, and others only give you a kick. Well, sir, I should say they likes tumbling over head and heels; if you can keep it up twenty times then they begins laughing, but if you only does it once, some of ’em will say, ‘Oh, I could do that myself,’ and then they don’t give nothink.
“I know they calls me the King of Tumblers, and I think I can tumble the best of them; none of them is so good as me, only the Goose at tumbling backards.
“We don’t crab one another when we are sweeping; if we was to crab one another, we’d get to fighting and giving slaps of the jaw to one another. So when we sees anybody coming, we cries, ‘My gentleman and lady coming here;’ ‘My lady;’ ‘My two gentlemens;’ and if any other chap gets the money, then we says, ‘I named them, now I’ll have halves.’ And if he won’t give it, then we’ll smug his broom or his cap. I’m the littlest chap among our lot, but if a fellow like the Goose was to take my naming then I’d smug somethink. I shouldn’t mind his licking me, I’d smug his money and get his halfpence or somethink. If a chap as can’t tumble sees a sporting gent coming and names him, he says to one of us tumblers, ‘Now, then, who’ll give us halves?’ and then we goes and tumbles and shares. The sporting gentlemens likes tumbling; they kicks up more row laughing than a dozen others.
“Sometimes at night we goes down to Covent Garden, to where Hevans’s is, but not till all the plays is over, cause Hevans’s don’t shut afore two or three. When the people comes out we gets tumbling afore them. Some of the drunken gentlemens is shocking spiteful, and runs after a chap and gives us a cut with the cane; some of the others will give us money, and some will buy our broom off us for sixpence. Me and Jemmy sold the two of our brooms for a shilling to two drunken gentlemens, and they began kicking up a row, and going before other gentlemens and pretending to sweep, and taking off their hats begging, like a mocking of us. They danced about with the brooms, flourishing ’em in the air, and knocking off people’s hats; and at last they got into a cab, and chucked the brooms away. The drunken gentlemens is always either jolly or spiteful.
“But I goes only to the Haymarket, and about Pall Mall, now. I used to be going up to Hevans’s every night, but I can’t take my money up there now. I stands at the top of the Haymarket by Windmill-street, and when I sees a lady and gentleman coming out of the Argyle, then I begs of them as they comes across. I says—‘Can’t you give me a ha’penny, sir, poor little Jack? I’ll stand on my nose for a penny;’—and then they laughs at that.
“Goose can stand on his nose as well as me; we puts the face flat down on the ground, instead of standing on our heads. There’s Duckey Dunnovan, and the Stuttering Baboon, too, and two others as well, as can do it; but the Stuttering Baboon’s getting too big and fat to do it well; he’s a very awkward tumbler. It don’t hurt, only at larning; cos you bears more on your hands than your nose.
“Sometimes they says—‘Well, let us see you do it,’ and then p’raps they’ll search in their pockets, and say—‘O, I haven’t got any coppers:’ so then we’ll force ’em, and p’raps they’ll pull out their purse and gives us a little bit of silver.
“Ah, we works hard for what we gets, and then there’s the policemen birching us. Some of ’em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt what they uses round the waist to keep their coat tight, and’ll hit us with the buckle; but we generally gives ’em the lucky dodge and gets out of their way.
“One night, two gentlemen, officers they was, was standing in the Haymarket, and a drunken man passed by. There was snow on the ground, and we’d been begging of ’em, and says one of them—‘I’ll give you a shilling if you’ll knock that drunken man over.’ We was three of us; so we set on him, and soon had him down. After he got up he went and told the policemen, but we all cut round different ways and got off, and then met again. We didn’t get the shilling, though, cos a boy crabbed us. He went up to the gentleman, and says he—‘Give it me, sir, I’m the boy;’ and then we says—‘No, sir, it’s us.’ So, says the officer—‘I sharn’t give it to none of you,’ and puts it back again in his pockets. We broke a broom over the boy as crabbed us, and then we cut down Waterloo-place, and afterwards we come up to the Haymarket again, and there we met the officers again. I did a caten-wheel, and then says I—‘Then won’t you give me un now?’ and they says—‘Go and sweep some mud on that woman.’ So I went and did it, and then they takes me in a pastry-shop at the corner, and they tells me to tumble on the tables in the shop. I nearly broke one of ’em, they were so delicate. They gived me a fourpenny meat-pie and two penny sponge-cakes, which I puts in my pocket, cos there was another sharing with me. The lady of the shop kept on screaming—‘Go and fetch me a police—take the dirty boy out,’ cos I was standing on the tables in my muddy feet, and the officers was a bursting their sides with laughing; and says they, ‘No, he sharn’t stir.’
“I was frightened, cos if the police had come they’d been safe and sure to have took me. They made me tumble from the door to the end of the shop, and back again, and then I turned ’em a caten-wheel, and was near knocking down all the things as was on the counter.