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LIFE OF JAMES GUIDNEY.
THE individual whose memoir is contained in the following pages, is well known in Birmingham, as the seller of a kind of sweetmeat. As he walks along he constantly cries, "Composition."—"Good for cough or cold."—"Cough or cold." He will be immediately recognised by those who have once seen him, from his costume, and his long flowing beard.
He was born at Norwich, September 1st, 1782; his father, Jeremiah Guidney, was a poor, but hard-working man, who, though unable to give his son a liberal education, sent him on alternate days to a charity school, to learn reading and arithmetic; and to a spinning school, where about five hundred boys were employed in spinning wool into skeins. James was the best spinner of the
