ine _besom_, made of birch stems,
cut out in the country, and brought into town tied up in bundles like
fagots; suitable enough for those stalwart men who drag them along so
leisurely, but burdensome for the hands of the wretched little waifs,
who, tattered and unkempt, make a pretence of keeping the crossings
clean; who first sweep, and then hold out a small palm for the penny,
dodging the horses' hoofs, and just escaping by a hair's breadth the
wheels of truck or omnibus in their attempts to secure the coin, if some
pitiful passer-by stops at the piping call:

"Please ma'am, a penny!"

That is the almost tragic prose of brooms.

[Illustration: THE TRAGEDY OF BROOMS--THE CROSSING SWEEPER.]

But there is a bit of poetic history that ought not to be forgotten, for
it was a sprig of the lovely broom bush--call it by the daintier name of
heath if you will--such as in some of its varieties grows wild in nearly
every country in Europe, a tough little flowering evergreen, symbol of
humility, which was once embroidered on the robes, worn in the helmet,
and sculptured on the effigies of a royal house of England. Which of the
stories of its origin is true, perhaps no one at this distant day can
determine; but whether a penitent pilgrim of the family was scourged by
twigs of it--the _plantagenesta_--or a gallant hunter plucked a spray of
it and put in his helmet, it is certain that the humble plant gave the
stately name of "Plantagenet" to twelve sovereigns of that kingdom; and
their battle-cry--which meant to them conquest and dominion, but has a
very practical sound to us, and a specially prosaic meaning to one like
the blind broom-maker of this simple story--was this:

"_Plant the broom! Plant the broom!_"

TALKING BY SIGNALS.

When boys live some distance apart, it is pleasant to be able to
communicate with each other by means of signals. Many and ingenious have
been the methods devised by enthusiastic boys for this purpose. But it
can be brought much nearer perfection than has yet been done, by means of
a very simple system.

At the age of fourteen I had an intimate friend who lived more than a
mile away, but whose home was in plain sight from mine. As we could not
always be together when we wished, we invented a system of signalling
requiring a number of different colored flags; but we were not quite
satisfied with it, for we could send but few communications by its use.
Then, when we came