Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437
Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date: July 23, 2006 [EBook #18898]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 437. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

LONDON CROSSING-SWEEPERS.

There is no occupation in life, be it ever so humble, which is justly
worthy of contempt, if by it a man is enabled to administer to his
necessities without becoming a burden to others, or a plague to them
by the parade of shoeless feet, fluttering rags, and a famished face.
In the multitudinous drama of life, which on the wide theatre of the
metropolis is ever enacting with so much intense earnestness, there
is, and from the very nature of things there always must be, a
numerous class of supernumeraries, who from time to time, by the force
of varying circumstances, are pushed and hustled off the stage, and
shuffled into the side-scenes, the drear and dusky background of the
world's proscenium. Of the thousands and tens of thousands thus rudely
dealt with, he is surely not the worst who, wanting a better weapon,
shoulders a birch-broom, and goes forth to make his own way in the
world, by removing the moist impediments of filth and refuse from the
way of his more fortunate fellows. Indeed, look upon him in what light
you may, he is in some sort a practical moralist. Though far remote
from the ivy chaplet on Wisdom's glorious brow, yet his stump of
withered birch inculcates a lesson of virtue, by reminding us, that we
should take heed to our steps in our journeyings through the
wilderness of life; and, so far as in him lies, he helps us to do so,
and by the e