God help us if we don't not cry, how are we to pursue our callings? I'm sure we're not half so bad as other businesses with their bawlings. For instance, the general postmen, that at six o'clock go about ringing, And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to sleep with singing. Greens ought n't to be cried no more than blacks—to do the unpartial job, If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty Bob. Is a dustman's voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking arter the cinders, Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily under your windows? There's the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling out Bank and City; Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just as pretty. I can't see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close thro' their hooky noses, And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone laws of Moses, Why is n't the mouths of the muffin-men compelled to be equally shut? Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no sut. Next year there won't be any May-day at all, we shan't have no heart to dance, And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our mischance; If we live as long as May, that 's to say, through the hard winter and pinching weather, 350 For I don't see how we're to earn enough to keep body and soul together. I only wish Mr. Wilberforce, or some of them that pities the niggers, Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures, A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other, And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking Father and Mother. They have n't a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles, But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles. If they'd only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such peeps, I don't think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps. Climbing's an ancient respectable art. and if History's of Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir When he wrote on a pane of glass how I'd climb, if the And she writ beneath, if your heart's afeared, don't venture up the flue. As for me I was always loyal, and respected all powers that are higher, But how can I now say God save the King, if I an't to be a Cryer? There's London milk, that's one of the cries, even on Sunday the law allows, But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than black cows? Do we go calling about, when it's church time, like the noisy Billingsgate vermin, And disturb the parson with "All alive O!" in the middle of a funeral sermon? But the fish won't keep, not the mackarel won't, is the cry of the Parliament elves, Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep themselves! Lord help us! what's to become of us if we must n't cry no more? We shan't do for black mutes to go a standing at a death's door. And we shan't do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations, For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our situations! And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of quality nimbly, For when we were drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to desire us to sweep the hearth, we could n't resist the chimbley. COCKLE vs. CACKLE. THOSE Who much read advertisements and bills Must have seen puffs of Cockle's Pills, Called Anti-bilious Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious, Will not decide; But no two things in union go like these- Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow, Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow, She was, indeed, so very far from well, Of those said pellets to resist Bile's shocks, Bark to the Bow-wows," hated physic so, It seemed to share "the bitterness of Death :" Powder or Draught-but least her throat inclined For all her lights's or all her liver's sake, 'Tis not to wonder at, in such a case, But Mrs. W. by disease's dint, Kept getting still more yellow in her tint, 66 Deeper and deeper, still," of course, The fatal color daily grew in force; These going where the others went before, And then-some hue of health her cheek adorning, 353 They brought her dose on dose, which she The pillage of each box, and quite enriched |