o a deluded public, that the May-day dancers are _not_
sweeps. The size of them, alone, is sufficient to repudiate the idea.
It is a notorious fact that the widely-spread taste for register-stoves
has materially increased the demand for small boys; whereas the men, who,
under a fictitious character, dance about the streets on the first of May
nowadays, would be a tight fit in a kitchen flue, to say nothing of the
parlour. This is strong presumptive evidence, but we have positive
proof--the evidence of our own senses. And here is our testimony.

Upon the morning of the second of the merry month of May, in the year of
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, we went out for a
stroll, with a kind of forlorn hope of seeing something or other which
might induce us to believe that it was really spring, and not Christmas.
After wandering as far as Copenhagen House, without meeting anything
calculated to dispel our impression that there was a mistake in the
almanacks, we turned back down Maidenlane, with the intention of passing
through the extensive colony lying between it and Battle-bridge, which is
inhabited by proprietors of donkey-carts, boilers of horse-flesh, makers
of tiles, and sifters of cinders; through which colony we should have
passed, without stoppage or interruption, if a little crowd gathered
round a shed had not attracted our attention, and induced us to pause.

When we say a 'shed,' we do not mean the conservatory sort of building,
which, according to the old song, Love tenanted when he was a young man,
but a wooden house with windows stuffed with rags and paper, and a small
yard at the side, with one dust-cart, two baskets, a few shovels, and
little heaps of cinders, and fragments of china and tiles, scattered
about it. Before this inviting spot we paused; and the longer we looked,
the more we wondered what exciting circumstance it could be, that induced
the foremost members of the crowd to flatten their noses against the
parlour window, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of what was going
on inside. After staring vacantly about us for some minutes, we
appealed, touching the cause of this assemblage, to a gentleman in a suit
of tarpaulin, who was smoking his pipe on our right hand; but as the only
answer we obtained was a playful inquiry whether our mother had disposed
of her mangle, we determined to await the issue in silence.

Judge of our virtuous indignation, when the street-door of t