ere is a considerable number constantly at work, and, to do them
justice, they appear by no means the least energetic of the
brotherhood. Nature frequently compensates bodily defects by the
bestowal of a vigorous temperament. The sweeper of one leg or one arm,
or the poor cripple who, but for the support of his broom, would be
crawling on all-fours, is as active, industrious, and efficient as the
best man on the road; and he takes a pride in the proof of his
prowess, surveying his work when it is finished with a complacency too
evident to escape notice. He considers, perhaps, that he has an extra
claim upon the public on account of the afflictions he has undergone,
and we imagine that such claim must be pretty extensively allowed: we
know no other mode of accounting for the fact, that now and then one
of these supposed maimed or halt performers turns out to be an
impostor, who, considering a broken limb, or something tantamount to
that, essential to the success of his broom, concocts an impromptu
fracture or amputation to serve his purpose. Some few years ago, a
lively, sailor-looking fellow appeared as a one-handed sweeper in a
genteel square on the Surrey side of the water. The right sleeve of
his jacket waved emptily in the wind, but he flourished his left arm
so vigorously in the air, and completed the gyration of his weapon,
when it stuck fast in the mud, so manfully by the impulse of his right
leg, that he became quite a popular favourite, and won '_copper_
opinions from all sorts of men,' to say nothing of a shower of
sixpences from the ladies in the square. Unfortunately for the
continuance of his prosperity, a gentleman intimate with one of his
numerous patronesses, while musing in the twilight at an upstairs
window, saw the fellow enter his cottage after his day's work, release
his right arm from the durance in which it had lain beneath his jacket
for ten or twelve hours, and immediately put the power of the
long-imprisoned limb to the test by belabouring his wife with it. That
same night every tenant in the square was made acquainted with the
disguised arm, and the use for which it was reserved, and the
ingenious performer was the next morning delivered over to the police.
The law, however, allows a man to dispose of his limbs as he chooses;
and as the delinquent was never proved to have _said_ that he had lost
an arm; and as he urged that one arm being enough for the profession
he had embraced, he considered