"One of the Dutch girls, who obtain a livelihood by selling brooms, applied to the magistrates at Lambeth Street for a summons against the man who brought her over to this country for withholding her wages. It appeared, from her statement, that it was the practice for the dealers in brooms to bring over a number of girls, at miserable wages, which are contracted to be paid when the girl returns to Germany. Many, therefore, have an opportunity of defrauding the girls of their miserable pittance; and in this case, from the girl's statement, appeared likely to add to their number. She had contracted for 1_s._ 8_d._ a week to sell brooms about the country. On this pittance she was to board, clothe, and lodge herself, which she had only been able to do by the bounty and charity of the gentry in the country. Her master had run into her debt to the amount of £2, and was preparing to quit England. The magistrates ordered that the summons should be immediately granted." Hone, who has rescued for us so many unconsidered trifles, tells us in his _Every-day Book_ (vol. i. 809) that-- "These girls are Flemings. They come to England from the Netherlands, in the spring, and they take their departure with the summer. They have only one shrill twittering note, 'Buy a broom?' sometimes varying it into the singular plural, 'Buy a brooms?' It is a domestic cry: two or three go together, and utter it in company with each other; not in concert, nor to a neighbourhood, and scarcely louder than will attract the notice of an inmate at a parlour window or an open street door, or a lady or two passing in the street. The hair is tightened up in front and at the sides, and so secured or skewered at the top of the head, as if it were constricted by a tourniquet; the little close cap, not larger than an infant's, seems to be put on and tied down by strings fastened beneath the chin, merely as a concealment of the machinery.