Somehow Mrs. Montagu's only son got kidnapped, and all attempts to
recover the child failed. Time went on, and he was regarded as
dead. On a certain 1st of May the sweeps arrived to clean Mrs.
Montagu's chimneys, and a climbing-boy was sent up to his horrible
task. Like Tom in the Water-Babies, he lost his way in the network
of flues and emerged in a different room to the one he had started
from. Something in the aspect of the room struck a half-familiar,
half-forgotten chord in his brain. He turned the handle of the
door of the next room and found a lady seated there. Then he
remembered. Filthy and soot-stained as he was, the little sweep
flung himself into the arms of the beautiful lady with a cry of
"Mother!" Mrs. Montagu had found her lost son.

In gratitude for the recovery of her son, Mrs. Montagu entertained
every climbing-boy in London at dinner on the anniversary of her
son's return, and arranged that they should all have a holiday on
that day. At her death she left a legacy to continue the treat.

Such, at least, is the story as I have always heard it.

At the Sweeps' Carnival, there was always a grown-up man figuring
as "Jack-in-the-green." Encased in an immense frame of wicker-work
covered with laurels and artificial flowers, from the midst of
which his face and arms protruded with a comical effect, "Jack-in-
the-green" capered slowly about in the midst of the street,
surrounded by some twenty little climbing-boys, who danced
joyously round him with black faces, their soot-stained clothes
decorated with tags of bright ribbon, and making a deafening
clamour with their dustpans and brushes as they sang some popular
ditty. They then collected money from the passers-by, making