The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 287, December 15, 1827Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 287, December 15, 1827
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
Perhaps the reader may have never witnessed the ejection of a
dust-cart: presuming he has not, I will endeavour to give him a general
outline of the ceremony; together with all the circumstances attending
it, and a sketch of the group and foreground. Suppose an eminence of
about five or six feet already collected, in a circular form; on the
heap is a man raking about, and a little child playing with a small
brown shaggy mongrel of a dog, with a community of pigs battening on
the acclivity; a youth below, with spade and axe, is supplying three
women with stuff--if women they may be called, who, of all the progeny
of old Mother Nox, seemed most the resemblances of age, misery, and
want; I say _seemed_, for when one was called--one of three--I
beheld, as she raised her dilapidated Dunstable, a face, where beams of
pensive beauty struggled through dusty darkness, and which mantled to a
smile at the sound of notes whistled to the tune of--"In Bunhill-row
there liv'd a Maid"--indicating the approach of Joe--for it was _his
cart:_--the dying cadence now gave way to the gee-up! uttered in deep
bass, accompanied with a smart smack of the whip, to urge the horse up
the ascent. Joe was a decent sort of boy enough for his avocation, not
to be ranked among those who "troop under the sooty flag of Acheron;"
but a clean, square-built fellow, with a broadish face and forehead,
blue eyes, nose rather short, expanded, and inclined upwards, and tinted
with that imperial hue that indicated his knowledge was not confined
to dry measure; this, with a mouth a little elongated, formed a
countenance, upon the whole, full of mirth and good-humour. This piece
of device was surmounted by a hat of the usual professional form--a
domed piece of felt, with a most prodigious margin: he wore a good stout
flannel jacket, and waistcoat; his shirt collar fastened by a leaden
brooch, in the shape of a heart, deviating from the general costume.
His continuations were of white drill; but, mark the vanity! short
enough to display a pair of hoppers, otherwise gaiters, of the same
material; these, with a stout pair of ancle-Johns, completed his
outward man of an order "simply Doric."
At Joe's approach, all was stir and bustle; the pigs, to the third and
fourth generation, moved "in perfect phalanx," not "to the Dorian mood
of flutes and soft recorders," but to their own equally inspiring grunt;
varying from the shrill treble to the deep-toned bass. Jewler, too, ran
barking; but with less interested feelings; and his little patron ran
to take the whip.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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