Street sweeper

“ Street sweepers, in red cotton blouses and clean white linen aprons, sweep on calmly in the icy chill. The police, with their bashlyks wrapped round their heads in a manner peculiar to themselves, stand always in the middle of the street and regulate the traffic.
We will hire an izvostchik and join the throng. The process is simple; it consists in setting ourselves up at auction on the curbstone, among the numerous cabbies waiting for a job, and knocking ourselves down to the lowest bidder. ”

“ There is nearly always a pretty strong wind stirring, and the streets have to be kept perfectly clean. For this purpose large street-sweepers are drawn over the road by horses{367} every day, and sprinkling is done besides. The riding and driving over these rocks is very disagreeable; and the horses do not usually last very long. ”

“ The pavement of the street is tesselated with all sorts of little pebbles and cockle-shells, and is kept in such exquisite order, that a dog or a cat is never seen to trespass upon it; and it is said, that formerly there was a law which obliged all passengers to take off their shoes in the summer when they walked upon it; that a man was once reprimanded for sneezing in the streets ”

“ The sweepers who work on the great lines of traffic from Oxford Street west to Aldgate, are consequently not nearly so numerous as they once were, though the members of the profession have probably doubled their numbers within the last twenty years. They exercise considerable judgment in the choice of their locations, making frequent experiments in different spots, feeling the pulse of the neighbourhood, as it were, ere they finally settle down to establish a permanent connection. ”

“ By the time we are half-way along the street the whole city seems in wild tumult. Men rush ahead, peer into my face, deliver themselves of the above-mentioned peculiar squeak, and run hastily down some convergent alley-way. ”

“ The street appearance of the present race of sweepers, all adults, may every here and there bear out Charles Lamb’s dictum, that grown sweepers are by no means attractive. Some of them are broad-shouldered and strongly-built men, who, as they traverse the streets, sometimes look as grim as they are dingy. The chimney-scavager carries the implement of his calling propped on his shoulder, in the way shown in the daguerreotype which I have given. His dress is usually a jacket, waistcoat, and trowsers of dark-coloured corduroy ”

“ A walk in the principal streets and avenues from seven to nine o'clock in the morning will convince the observer that, whatever the shortcomings of the Street-cleaning Department, storekeepers and housekeepers are primarily and incidentally responsible for dirty streets by allowing their employés to sweep into the streets the dust of their houses or stores, and the dirt and refuse found upon the sidewalk. ”

“ The teeming tenements open their doors, and out into the dark passageways and courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ever renewed streams of playing children. Under the feet of passing horses, under the wheels of passing street-cars, jostled about by the pedestrian, driven on by the policeman, they annoy everyone. ”

“ The daily and nightly grinding of thousands of wheels, the iron friction of so many horses’ hoofs, the evacuations of horses and cattle, and the ceaseless motion of pedestrians, all decomposing the substance of our streets and roads, give rise to many distinct kinds of street-dirt. ”

“ Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. ”

“ At every fourth or fifth house, alleys seldom above a yard wide and streaming with filth, opened out of the street. These were crowded with dwellings of various size, while from the principal court often branched out a number of smaller alleys or rather narrow passages, than which nothing can be conceived more close and squalid and obscure. Here during the days of business, the sound of the hammer and the file never ceased, amid gutters of abomination and piles of foulness and stagnant pools of filth ”

“ The street itself was dim, lit only by stray lanterns, hanging at long intervals, on ropes that ran across from house to house, but the pavement was awake to the tramp of passing feet, and men and women flitted before us like gray shadows, or stood out in bold silhouette against the lights from the doors of a cabaret, or the windows of a shop, or maybe dwelling-house. ”

“ If the day was fine, the men sat dull and sodden in the sunshine on the pavement in the wide street out of which Gardener's Lane ran, propping their backs against the wall and stretching their legs out, greatly to the danger and annoyance of passers-by ”

“ In traversing the same route in the middle of the day, not three of the sweepers would be found at their post; and the reason would be obvious enough, since the streets are then comparatively deserted, being populous in the morning only, because they are so many short-cuts or direct thoroughfares from the suburbs to the city. The morning sweeper is generally a lively and active young fellow; often a mere child, who is versed in the ways of London life, and who, knowing well the value of money from the frequent want of it, is anxious to earn a penny by any honest means. ”

“ I turned uptown and floated along with the current of the Avenue throng. It was a glittering April throng. The newest stockings were out. I had not seen them before. The newest stockings (you will have noted) are so very, very thin and the pores (so to say) in them are so large that they give the ladies who wear them the agreeable effect of being bare-legged.
At Thirty-fourth Street the traffic policeman on post at our side of this corner, by an outward gesture of his arms pressed back the sidewalk stream for a couple of moments of cross-town vehicular traffic. ”

“ And in the end they depart, leaving beside the stiff the heap of their discarded rags.
Another vision comes to me. It is a dark night. My push is coming along the sidewalk in the suburbs. Ahead of us, under an electric light, a man crosses the street diagonally. There is something tentative and desultory in his walk. The kids scent the game on the instant. The man is drunk. He blunders across the opposite sidewalk and is lost in the darkness as he takes a short-cut through a vacant lot. No hunting cry is raised, but the pack flings itself forward in quick pursuit. ”

“ It generally takes the sweep twenty-five minutes exactly to bring the servants to open the door. Meanwhile, the eminent men of letters in the street open their windows, and show a very fair command of language understanded by the people. But the sweep only laughs, and every three minutes utters a howl which resembles no other noise with which men are acquainted. ”

“ These images are subject, I confess, to a soft confusion—which is somehow consecrated, none the less, and out of which, with its shade of contributory truth, some sort of scene insists on glancing. The very flush of the uneven bricks of the pavement lives in it, the very smell of the street cobbles, the imputed grace of the arching umbrage—I see it all as from under trees; the form of Steuben Street, which crossed our view, as steep even to the very essence of adventure, with a summit, and still more with a nethermost and riskiest incline, very far away. ”

“ In any other street in the world you catch the eye of the passer-by. In the Strand, no man sees another except as a solid body, whose contact is to be avoided. You are safe nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of your senses. Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, and porters, beset the street. Newspaper-hawkers, pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, and a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk. If you venture to look at a print in a shop-window, you arrest the tide of passengers, who immediately walk over you ”

“ The chief streets are of stone, are paved with stone, and have remarkably tall buildings, and so with the side streets: the sole difference being that while the principal thoroughfares contain the shops, every side street leading out of them is a more or less dirty slum, where dirty little bare-legged, ragged-tailed boys and girls play in the road or spit out of windows on the passing stranger. ”

“ In the street, where the city wields the broom, there is at least an effort at cleaning up. There has to be, or it would be swamped in filth overrunning from the courts and alleys where the rag-pickers live. ”

“ The situation of the open grids in the street is sometimes somewhat awkward for traffic, and horses will frequently shy at them, they also admit solid road detritus into the sewer unless they are protected by a catch plate of some description. ”

“ In Garden Street all the houses had been closed and dark, but here they were open and often brightly lighted and noisy from cellar to roof. Men, women, and frequently children, jostled him on the pavement, and he felt his pockets touched more than once. But he wasn’t Caleb Sweetwater of the New York department of police for nothing. ”

“ To the denizen of the city, accustomed to travel from street to street by the assistance of sign boards at every corner and numbers on every door, it must appear almost incredible that the wild savage, or untutored hunter, can, without guide or compass, unerringly follow, day after day, the track of some equally cunning foe. ”

“ A street, court, lane, alley, or other place, where the number of houses or poverty of the inhabitants will not afford a watchman on the terms before mentioned, should be gated in, and the inhabitants let in and out by the watchman of the street. ”

“ I awoke with its uproar in my ears, and gazed with interest from my window at the hurrying torrent of carriages and vehicles of every kind which filled the street from side to side and constantly threatened to engulf and overwhelm the foot passengers, hurled hither and thither by the ceaseless crush. I watched with apprehension the attempts of a pretty woman to cross the crowded roadway, and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her safely over. A tap at the door brought me from the window, and I opened it to find Jacques bowing on the threshold. ”

“ In the confusion of that which I took to be the main street because of the stores and piles of goods and the medley of signs, what with the hubbub from the many barkers for saloons and gambling games, the constant dodging among the pedestrians, vehicles and horses and dogs, in a thoroughfare that was innocent of sidewalk, I really had scant opportunity to gaze; certainly no opportunity as yet to get my bearings. My squat guide shuttled aside; a group of loafers gave us passage, with sundry stares at me and quips for him ”

“ The popular shoemaker was leaning out of his window looking earnestly in the same direction as his neighbor—the girls were peeping through their windows in a state of expectancy, and the young bucks of the town, dressed in their best, were flitting about in sight of the fair inhabitants, or clustering in groups directly opposite the abode of certain village beauties, while the more juvenile portion of the community were throwing up dust in the street, and huzzaing in a most animated and enthusiastic manner—in short, the town wras upon the eve of a great occasion. ”

“ The crowds of pedestrians, who refrain from following after the firemen, and who scurried for the sidewalks at their approach, now resume their place in the middle of the street; but again the wild cry of "yangoon var!" resounds along the narrow street, and the same scene of citizens scuttling to the sidewalks, and a hurrying fire brigade followed by a noisy crowd of gamins, is enacted over again, as another and yet another of these primitive organizations go scooting swiftly past. ”

“ You have seen the long, gray, stony street filled morning and evening with horses and laborers going out to work or returning, and in the meantime dozing somnolent in the sun, with only a cat or dog to cross it, an old woman going out for the grass, or a long, gray American Ford Ambulance banging along over the paving, the square-jawed, clean-shaven boy from the States zigzagging desperately with the vain idea that the other side of the street cannot be so rough as the one he is on. ”

“ IF you leave King William-street just at the foot of London-bridge and turn to the right, you will find your way into a set of narrow and steep streets, few only of which admit of carriage and horse traffic. The lower stories of the houses are let out as offices, and the upper as warehouse floors; the pavement is narrow and the road as bad as broken stones and long neglect can make it; dirty boys in sailors’ jackets play at leap-frog over the street posts; legions of wheel-barrows encumber the broader parts of these thoroughfares ”

“ Swiggs, her fingers wandering to her spectacles. Turning into Orange street, Mr. Toddleworth tenders his services in piloting Mrs. Swiggs into Centre street, which, as he adds, will place her beyond harm. As they advance the scene becomes darker and darker. Orange street seems that centre from which radiates the avenues of every vice known to a great city. One might fancy the world's outcasts hurled by some mysterious hand into this pool of crime and misery, and left to feast their wanton appetites and die. ”