nd run into the play-room in such
haste? And why is little Ned, the baby, sitting up in the bed, as though
he wanted to come too?

It is plain enough that the children use that room for a play-room; for
you can see playthings on the mantle-piece. But why are they all
flocking about the fireplace? And why is mamma coming upstairs with a
dust-brush in her hand? And why is that cloth hung over the fireplace?
And whose are those bare feet peeping from under it?

"Oh!" perhaps you will say, "it is Santa Claus; and the children are
trying to catch him." Oh, no! Santa Claus never allows himself to be
caught in that way. You never see even his feet. He never leaves his
shoes on the floor, nor dirty old brushes, nor shovels. It is not Santa
Claus--it is only a chimney-sweeper.

"But what is a chimney-sweeper?" I think I hear you ask. Well, we do not
have such chimney-sweepers now-a-days, at least not in this part of the
world. But ask your grandfathers and grandmothers to tell you about the
chimney-sweepers that were to be seen in Boston forty or fifty years
ago, and I warrant that many of them will remember just such a scene as
you see in the picture.

In those days, before hard coal fires had come in use, chimney-sweepers
were often employed. They were small boys, working under the orders of a
master in the business, who was very often a hard master. Generally they
were negroes; but, whether so or not, they soon became so black with
soot, that you could not tell them from negroes.

The chimney-sweepers always came early in the morning, before the fires
were lighted; and their coming was a great event to the children of a
household. "When a child," says a famous English writer, speaking of the
chimney-sweepers of London, "what a mysterious pleasure it was to
witness their operation!--to see a chit no bigger than one's self enter
into that dark hole--to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding
on through so many stifling caverns--to shudder with the idea, that 'now
surely he must be lost forever!'--to revive at hearing his feeble shout
of discovered daylight,--and then (oh, fulness of delight!) running out
of doors, to come just in time to see him emerge in safety!"

There are chimney-sweepers even now; but none of the old-fashioned kind.
In many places it is forbidden by law to send boys up the chimneys. So
the modern chimney-sweeper puts his brush on the end of a pole, which is
made in joints, like a fishing-rod, a