riment, we paused between
the blank walls of the alley that I might practise the sweep's call
in comparative privacy. The sound of my own voice, reverberated
there, covered me with shame, though it could scarcely have been
louder than the cheeping of the birds on the Citadel ramparts above.
"Hark to that fellow, now!" said my master, as the notes of a bugle
sang out clear and brave in the dawn. "He's no bigger than you, I
warrant, and has no more call to be proud of his business." In time
I grew bold enough and used to begin my "Sweep, Swee--eep!" at the
mouth of the alley to warn Mrs. Trapp of our return.

My first chimney daunted me, though it was a wide one, belonging to a
cottage, well fitted with climbing brackets, and so straight that
from the flat hearth-stone you could see a patch of blue sky with the
gulls sailing across it. Mr. Trapp instructed me well and I
listened, setting my small jaws to choke down the terror: but, once
started, with his voice guiding me from below and growing hollower as
I ascended, I found that all came easily enough. "Bravo!" he shouted
up from the far side of the street, whither he had run out to see me
wave my brush from the summit. In a day or two he began to boast of
me, and I had to do my young best to live up to a reputation; for the
fame of my feat on Emmanuel Church spire had spread all over the
Barbican. Being reckoned a bold fellow, I had to justify myself in
fighting with the urchins of my age there; in which, and in
wrestling, I contrived to hold my own. My shame was that I had never
learnt to swim. All my rivals could swim, and even in the winter
weather seemed to pass half their time in the filthy water of Sutton
Pool, or in running races, stark naked, along the quay's edge.

Our trade, steady and leisurable until the last week of March, then
went up with a rush and continued at high pressure through April and
May, so that, dog-tired in every limb, I had much ado to drag myself
to bed up the garret stairs after Mrs. Trapp had rubbed my ankles
with goose-fat where the climbing-irons galled them. While this was
doing, Mr. Trapp would smoke his pipe and watch and assure me that
mine were the "growing-pains" natural to sweeps, and Mrs. Trapp
(without meaning it in the least) lamented the fate which had tied
her for life to one. "It being well known that my birthday is the
15th of the month and its rightful motto in Proverbs thirty-one,
'She riseth also while it i