d thrown back he saunters along
the street by the side of his cart, repeating in measured tones his
cry, "Dust-oh-oh! dust-oh!"

Now and then he stops at a house, and his mate--he has a mate, who is
as much like him as pea is like pea--descends into the cellar, bringing
forth the ashes and refuse that have accumulated in twenty-four hours,
and when the cart, which is a square, box-like affair, is filled he
starts for home with his load.

What a queer home it is! It is on the outskirts of the city, far away
from the finer streets and buildings. A large space of ground is as
gray and dusty as an African or Western desert, and is broken by mounds
of ashes, some of which are only a few feet high, while others are
almost as high as houses,--quite as high, in fact, as the dismal little
shanties on the edge of the reservation in which the dust-man and his
fellows live. Other carts and other dust-men are constantly coming and
going, dumping one load and then returning to the city for another, and
as soon as a load is dumped it is attacked by a crowd of men, women and
children, who with shovels, rakes and hooks, turn it over and over, and
raise stifling clouds of dust.

The reader may think that the collections made by the dust-man are
valueless, but such is not the case.

There are more than 300,000 inhabited houses in London, consuming more
than 3,500,000 tons of coal a year, and besides the ashes from this
great quantity of fuel, the dust-man gathers the other refuse of the
houses. He is employed by a contractor, who agrees with the corporation
to remove the ashes, etc., out of the city, and the contractor divides
every load into six parts, as follows: Soil, or fine dust, which is
sold to brick-makers for making bricks and to farmers for manure;
brieze, or cinders, sold to brick-makers for burning brick; rags, bones
and old metals, sold to marine-store dealers; old tin and iron vessels,
sold to trunk-makers for clamps; bricks, oyster and other shells, sold
for foundations and road-building; and old boots and shoes, sold to the
manufacturers of Prussian blue.

Sometimes, much more valuable things than these are found, and the
reader may remember the romance that Charles Dickens made out of a
London dust-man--"Our Mutual Friend."

It is in sifting the different parts of a load that the men, women and
children, are employed; they are as busy as ants; mere babies and
wrinkled old dames take a part in the labor, and all of