I came across the following reference at
http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=6/6/1832 but
can make no sense of the line "the black man that swept the crossing"
Charles Dickens spoke out against the Utilitarian approach whenever
given the chance. An early satirical sketch entitled "Full Report of
the First Meeting of the Mudfog Association" documents the outrage of
the statistician, Mr. Slug, when reporting "the result of some
calculations he had made with great difficulty and labour, regarding
the state of infant education among the middle classes of London." Mr.
Slug had discovered that "within a circle of three miles from the
Elephant and Castle, the following were the names and numbers of
children's books principally in circulation":
Jack and the Giant-killer . . . 7,943
Ditto and the Bean-stalk . . . 8,621
Ditto and Eleven Brothers . . . 2,845
Ditto and Jill . . . 1,998
Some of the children appeared to believe in dragons and to wish to
grow up to slay them; very few had a solid grasp of mathematics; "Not
one child among the number interrogated had ever heard of Mungo Park --
some inquiring whether he was at all connected to the black man that
swept the crossing."
Any ideas?
Many thanks
Angela Allison
Coventry, UK
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