[THE LONDON DUST-MAN]
BY ALEXANDER WAINWRIGHT.
There he goes! A dusky gloom hangs over the roofs of great London City; a similar gloom fills my room and seems to have touched all the furniture with smoky age, and as I look down from the window into the gloomy street, I see him coming along slowly, and crying in a voice like a plea for help in affliction: "Dust-oh!—dust-oh!—dust-oh!—dust-oh!"
"DUST-OH!"
Not one of the many citizens who are passing notices him, or finds anything strange in that plaintive cry. The people who live in the city see him day after day, and remember how, in their childhood, they had terrifying notions of his weakness for kidnapping and other mysterious wickednesses. They know better now, and hurry past him with scarcely a glance; but to the American visitor he is something of a curiosity.
When the London fog is gray we cannot see him very far off, for he, too, is gray from head to foot with ash-dust, and as he approaches us he comes out of the mist like a phantom, though in reality he is a substantial, square-built, deep-chested fellow, shod with enormous Blücher shoes (the soles of which are bright with nails), and clad in a loose blouse and trousers, that are tied up about the knees. The blouse is open at the chest, and is lifted to the waist by his big, brown hands, which are tucked in his trouser pockets, and his head is covered by the kind of hat that sailors call a sou'wester. His only ornament is a pair of ear-rings; and with his head thrown back he saunters along the street by the side of his cart, repeating in measured tones his cry, "Dust-oh-oh! dust-oh!"