"Soot" or "Sweep, ho!" The sweep, accompanied by two or three thinly-clad, half-starved, and generally badly-treated apprentices, who ascended the chimneys and acted as human brushes, turned out in old times long before daylight. It was owing to the exertions of the philanthropist, Mr. Jonas Hanway, and before the invention of the jointed chimney sweeping machine, that an Act was passed at the beginning of [Illustration: BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT _J. W. EVANS_ SHORT'S GARDENS--DRURY LANE _Famleys owning_ Fresh _Cats & Dogs_ Tripe Boiled and Paunshes Waited on daily and regler. Taters once a ============== Cart fortnite NO CREDDIT kept ] [Illustration: "_Sw-e-e-p!_"] this century, providing that every chimney-sweeper's apprentice should wear a brass plate in front of his cap, with the name and abode of his master engraved thereon. The boys were accustomed to beg for food and money in the streets; but by means of the badges, the masters were traced, and an improvement in the general condition of the apprentices followed. But the early morning is still disturbed by the long-drawn cry, "Sw-e-e-p." This, and the not unmusical "ow-oo," of the jodeling milkman--all that is left of "milk below maids,"--the London milk-maids are usually strongly-built Irish or Welsh girls--and the tardier and rather too infrequent "dust-o" are amongst the few unsuppressed Cries of London-town. They are tolerated and continued because they are convenient, and from a vague sense of prescriptive right dear to the heart of an Englishman. [Illustration: "_Ow-oo!_"] Until quite recently, the flower girls at the Royal Exchange--decent and well-behaved Irishwomen who work hard for an honest living--were badgered and driven about by the police. They are now allowed to collect and pursue their calling in peace by the Wellington statue, where their cry, "Buy a flower, sir," is heard, whatever the weather, all the year round. "Speshill 'dishun, 'orrible railway haccident," the outcome of an advanced civilization, is a cry that was unknown to our forefathers. Our forebears had often to pay a shilling for a newspaper, and the newsman made known his progress through the streets by sound of tin trumpet: as shown in Rowlandson's graphic illustration, a copy of the newspaper was carried in the hatband. [Illustration: _Rowlandson Delin. 1819._ "_Great News!_"] "C'gar lights, 'ere y'ar, sir; 'apenny a box," and "Taters all 'ot," also belong to the modern school of London Cries; while the piano-organ is a fresh infliction in connection with the new order of street noises. And although a sort of portable penthouse was used in remote times for screening from heat and rain, the ribbed and collapsible descendant thereof did not come into general use much before the opening of the present century; hence the cry, "Any umbrellas-termend," may properly be classed as a modern one.