" When the dust-sheets laid on the floors announced
the advent of the sweeps, I used, if possible, to hide until they
had left the house. I cannot understand how public opinion
tolerated for so long the abominable cruelty of forcing little
boys to clamber up flues. These unhappy brats were made to creep
into the chimneys from the grates, and then to wriggle their way
up by digging their toes into the interstices of the bricks, and
by working their elbows and knees alternately; stifled in the
pitch-darkness of the narrow flue by foul air, suffocated by the
showers of soot that fell on them, perhaps losing their way in the
black maze of chimneys, and liable at any moment, should they lose
their footing, to come crashing down twenty feet, either to be
killed outright in the dark or to lie with a broken limb until
they were extricated--should, indeed, it be possible to rescue
them at all. These unfortunate children, too, were certain to get
abrasions on their bare feet and on their elbows and knees from
the rough edges of the bricks. The soot working into these
abrasions gave them a peculiar form of sore.
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