Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — How They Clean Streets in Paris. [ARTICLE]

How They Clean Streets in Paris.

The superficial area of public way which has to be swept daily amounts to 11,000,000 meters (a meter is a yard and one-ninth), and the work must be finished before the hour at which general traffic begins. To accomplish this the operation has to be begun at about three o’clock in the morning. The hands employed muster by brigades at certain points in each district; thence they are subdivided into bands, and proceed at once to their early task. Whatever the weather, whatever the temperature, the street-cleaners must be at their post and at work. These toilers of the small hours are to be counted by thousands. They are, as it were, the chanticleers of the great city. Long before aurora peeps from the east the tramp of their sabots or wooden shoes, and the harsh noise of their stiff brooms are to be heard upon the pavement. At that matutinal hour, when the streets of Paris are under the dominion of the sweepers, you will meet, side by side with them, those nocturnal philosophers who. explore the heaps of rubbish and refuse which incumber the roadside. These two classes get on together fin the most fraternal manner. The sweeper, or the sweepress, is ever ready to lend a willing hand to the chiffonier’s or ragpicker’s investigations, and to contribute to his reaping a good harvest. Your sweeper is. for the most part, both steady and thrifty, and he is rarely to be seen at the public-house. Indeed, he is too glad to get home and to bed as soon as he has got through his fatiguing work. Besides'the hand-broofn there is the ma-chifie-sweeping. More than forty machines for the latter purpose are employed upon the Paris pavement. They require only one man each. This is the driver, who", while attending to his horse, manages a spring from the box where he sits, by means of which he lifts and dets down the sweeping cylinder at will. These machines are chiefly used, on the boulevards, the .avenues, squares and broader thoroughfares, where they are to be seen at work the greater part es the day. In bad weather, more espe cially. they ply their w&y along the most crowded highways, dissipating the mud, half-mel’ed snow, etc. — Journal, ' —A lady in Paris attended a recent ball masque out of mere curiosity. She wore a pretty pink domino which made her particularly conspicuous. She supped, and when she left the ball she found she had drank too much champagne. A .policeman put his hand on her shoulder, and she sank down horrified at the idea of being taken off to the gtation-house. When they picked her up she was dead; she had died from fright. So the body was taken off to the Morgue clad in its carnival finely, and there it was recognized the next May by the husband.