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Updated: June 26, 2025
Arrived at his objective, the old gardener, with most admired deliberation, loaded down long-handled birch-broom, rake and hoe; and applied himself to mysterious peckings and sweeping of the gravel around the wooden carriages of the little cannon and black pyramid of ball.
"Has he company, then?" "Oh, very good company plenty of company! he got Taliesin Owen Glyndwr Iolo Morganwg and all the rest of them! and he's quite happy in their company. But once he comes down to live with us he's as rough and prickly as a birch-broom. Indeed he wass nevver used to be like this whatever; 'tis ever since his brother John die, and leave all his money to Valmai."
To remedy this inconvenience Captain Calver devised an arrangement not unlike that employed by the coral- fishers. He fastened half a dozen swabs, such as are used for drying decks, to the dredge. A swab is something like what a birch-broom would be if its twigs were made of long, coarse, hempen yarns.
'What sort of a Christmas-tree, and why Sal's? Well, the carpenter put it up, and an uncommon neat thing he made too, of pinewood and birch-broom, and some of the men hung it over with paper chains.
The birch-broom scattered the birds for a while, but they soon came back, for they were not going to be frightened away by a bundle of twigs, when they did not even care for a scarecrow, but used to go and sit upon its head; while the tomtit declared it was a capital spider trap, and used to pick out no end of savoury little spinners for his dinner.
Even the master of Greenlawn opened his window and looked out and wondered, and at last crabby old Todkins, the gardener, opened his window, and even called the birch-broom boy up to listen; but they could not make out what the noise was. Nobody knew, and at last they began to be like the birds, rather frightened; for it was such a wild, dreadful cry as they had never heard before.
He was bound to his uncle for a series of years, but he was treated so harshly that he ran away, at seventeen years of age. The record is, that "on the 12th day of July, 1741, the ill-treatment he received from his uncle in the shape of a brutal flogging, with a birch-broom handle of white hazel, which almost killed him, caused him to run away."
Of the thousands and tens of thousands thus rudely dealt with, he is surely not the worst who, wanting a better weapon, shoulders a birch-broom, and goes forth to make his own way in the world, by removing the moist impediments of filth and refuse from the way of his more fortunate fellows. Indeed, look upon him in what light you may, he is in some sort a practical moralist.
When the seed has been shaken from the plant, the tops are brought together, and form those excellent besoms which, throughout southern Europe, supply the place of birch-broom, than which they are more elastic, not so brittle, and much cleaner.
The two younger daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting tight at the back, and with trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when they went to pay visits. But next morning they would get up at dawn, as usual, sweep out the rooms with a birch-broom, empty the slops, and clean up after lodgers.
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