The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

; "WH SPRING OF PHAROS. Nee ee oeecaenmmmnmemmnnnennmmmencnent <i aaaaaaaal CHAPTER LI. THE STRANGE CUSTOMER AT SWEENEY TODD'S. Bzrrone Fleet-street had reached its present importance, and when George the Third was young, and the two figures who used to strike the chimes at old St. Dunstan’s church were in all their elory—being a great impediment to errand-boys on their progress, and a matter of gaping curiosity to country people—there stood close to the sacred edifice a small barber’s shop, which was kept by a man of the name of Sweeney Todd. be | How it was that he came by thenameof Sweeney, as a Christian appellation, we | | are at a loss to conceive, but such was his name, as might be seen in extremely || corpulent yellow letters over his shop window, by any who chase there to look for | it. ~ Barbers by that time in Fleet-street had not become fashionable, and no more | dreamt of calling themselves artists than of taking the tower by storm; moreover | they were not, as they are now, constantly slaughtering fine ‘fat bears, and yet, || somehow people had hair on their heads just the same as they have at present, || without the aid of that unctuous auxiliary. Moreover, Sweeney Todd, in common | with those really primitive sort of times, did not think if at all necessary to have any | waxen effigies of humanity in his window. There was no languishing young lady || looking oyer the left shoulder in order that a profusion of auburn tresses might repose upon her lily neck, and great conquerors and great statesmen were not then, as they are now, held up to public ridicule with dabs of rouge upon their | heeks, a quantity of cunpowder seattered in for heard, and some bristles || sticking on end for eyebrows. | | No. Sweeney Todd was a barber of the old school, and he never thought of || Jorifying himself on account of any extraneous eireumstance, If he had livedin || Henry ¢ e Kighth’s palace, it would be all the same as Henry the Highth’s dog- | kennel, and he auld searcely have believed human nature te be so green as to || pay an extra sixpence to be shaven and shorn in any particular locality. | A long pole painted white, with a red stripe eurling spirally round it, projected || into the street from hig doorway, and on one af the pains of glass in his window, | was presented the following couplet :— d Hasy shaving for a penny, As good as you will find any," We do not put these lines forth as a specimen of the poetry of the age; they | may pave Pees et peoduetion of sg young ray oy but it they were a little | wanting in poetie fire, that was amply made up by the elear and precise manner in || which they set forth what they intended. py Fae CPay Fo FO : The barber himself, was a long, low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow, with an Immense mouth, and such huge hands and feet, that ‘ was, in his way, quite a natural curiosity; and, what was more wonderful, considering his trade, there neyer was seen such a head of hair as Sweeney Todd's, We know not what to compare it to; probably it came nearest to what one might suppose to be the appearance of a thick-set hedge, in which a quantity of small wire had got en- tangled. In truth, it was a most terrific head of hair; and as Sweeney Todd kept all his combs in it—some people said his scissors likewise—when he put his head out of the shop-door to see what sort of weather it was, he might have been mistaken for an Indian warrior with a very remarkable head-dress. a He had a short disagreeable kind of unmirthful laugh, which came in at all sorts '| of odd times when nobody else saw anything to laugh at at all, and which some- | times made people start again, especially when they were being shaved, and '| Sweeney Todd would stop Kort in that operation to indulge in one of those cachi- 4 | | natory effusions. It was evident that the remembrance of some very strange and | | | t i tn ce -n SON _ ai . I a a NR le i em a it comicbooks.com