The Road From Birmingham Onwards Is Not Very Agreeable, Being In General Uncommonly Sandy.

Yet the same evening I reached a little place called Sutton, where everything, however, appeared to be too grand

For me to hope to obtain lodgings in it, till quite at the end of it I came to a small inn with the sign of the Swan, under which was written Aulton, brickmaker.

This seemed to have something in it that suited me, and therefore I boldly went into it; and when in I did not immediately, as heretofore, inquire if I could stay all night there, but asked for a pint of ale. I own I felt myself disheartened by their calling me nothing but master, and by their showing me into the kitchen, where the landlady was sitting at a table and complaining much of the toothache. The compassion I expressed for her on this account, as a stranger, seemed soon to recommend me to her favour, and she herself asked me if I would not stay the night there? To this I most readily assented; and thus I was again happy in a lodging for another night.

The company I here met with consisted of a female chimney-sweeper and her children, who, on my sitting down in the kitchen, soon drank to my health, and began a conversation with me and the landlady.

She related to us her history, which I am not ashamed to own I thought not uninteresting. She had married early, but had the hard luck to be soon deprived of her husband, by his being pressed as a soldier. She neither saw nor heard of him for many years, so concluded he was dead. Thus destitute, she lived seven years as a servant in Ireland, without any one's knowing that she was married. During this time her husband, who was a chimney-sweeper, came back to England and settled at Lichfield, resumed his old trade, and did well in it. As soon as he was in good circumstances, he everywhere made inquiry for his wife, and at last found out where she was, and immediately fetched her from Ireland. There surely is something pleasing in this constancy of affection in a chimney-sweeper. She told us, with tears in her eyes, in what a style of grandeur he had conducted her into Lichfield; and how, in honour to her, he made a splendid feast on the occasion. At this same Lichfield, which is only two miles from Sutton, and through which she said the road lay which I was to travel to-morrow, she still lived with this same excellent husband, where they were noted for their industry, where everybody respected them, and where, though in the lowest sphere, they are passing through life neither uselessly nor unhappily.

The landlady, during her absence, told me as in confidence, that this chimney-sweeper's husband, as meanly as I might fancy she now appeared, was worth a thousand pounds, and that without reckoning in their plate and furniture, that he always wore his silver watch, and that when he passed through Sutton, and lodged there, he paid like a nobleman.

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