Nor have I forgotten the cheerful clatterthe brush-and-shovel musicof our little British negroes"innocent blacknesses," as Lamb calls themthe chimney-sweepers,a class now almost swept away themselves by machinery.

The second decapitated a street-sweeper as he was running for shelter.

"Oh no, you don't!" exclaimed all the spider-sweepers.

There goes a trench-sweeper.

"You would not jostle a chimney-sweeper," said Adams.

An attempt to force the door brought upon us the resentment of a highly irritable swarm of big red wasps, who plainly regarded us as objectionable intruders; and Jane was really getting quite cross (she saysshe always doesthat it was I who lost my temper)before the bold sweeper, prying round the back premises, found an unbarred window, and the joy bells rang once more.

Bits of cloth, not French, showed, too, in the uneven lines of debris at the trench lip, and some thoughtful soul had marked an unexploded Boche trench-sweeper as "not to be touched."

I passed along the pavement with it, until I met a street-sweeper, and there threw it upon his heap with a nod, which he reciprocated with a bow.

They were to have been vagrants, tatterdemalions, but I needed some dress the change of which would change their whole appearance in a moment, and there came to mind the chimney sweepers of my childhood.

Those critics forget to praise the mine-sweepers that we saw all about, whose bravery, endurance and noble spirit of self-sacrifice lead them to persevere in their perilous work and enable a thousand ships to reach port to one that goes down.

[Illustration: Remember the Sweeper.]