Next Grandma made a twig broom and they swept the dirty ground.

The Sweeper moved slowly along, cleaning with his twig broom.

Already the Sweeper was out, cleaning the debris between huts with his twig broom.

In another courtyard, an old wizened man with a twig broom sold me a good luck charm.

Outside, sleepy, obedient children sweep their front stoops with twig brooms.

Ne seized the twig broom on the hearth by its handle and thrust it into the bed of coals.

Cera plied her twig broom on the earthen floor so ferociously that she stirred up a cloud of dust, making her father cough.

The Sweeper lay on his face, his outstretched left hand still clutching his twig broom, his legs twitching feebly.

Word spreads that foreigners have arrived and as we walk along the recently swept village street, women lay aside their twig brooms and beckon us into large shuttered teak homes raised on stilts.

Engineers in Paris's sanitation department had long appreciated how efficiently peasants' twig brooms swept debris along, but they were frustrated by how much the brooms cost and how often the twigs broke.

TOURISTS strolling along Quai de Montebello near Notre Dame often pass a man in a green uniform who is intently sweeping the street with what looks like a large twig broom.

Then in the bone light of such early morning he saw figures on the trackside darkness waving adzes and thick twig brooms, shouting for the train to Go on, go on and telling it Welcome home.

The four falcons joined the crowd of Redwallers who had flooded out to greet them, laughing uproariously as they watched Thrugg fleeing across the Abbey grounds with Thrugann, hard on his heels, swinging a twig broom.

While the chalicotheres were feeding, the men mucked out the pen with big twig brooms and wooden shovels, dumped the manure into wheeled carts, and trundled it off toward the corridor leading to the castle's postern gate.

Oblivious, the sweeper moved among them, an old man bent double as if examining the dust at his feet, one hand behind his back, the other making tiny strokes with a small twig broom, pushing a cluster of dry leaves across the ground toward some unseen destination.

And dirt, always dirt, no matter how many times the old ones came out with their twig brooms to sweep, like some antique parody of what once was, but was still, because the sanitation bureau was too corrupt and the automated cleaners were more often broken down and in the shop than not.

At the morning briefing, Jack Innes told President David Herbert Hood about a note that had been handed to one of the CIA operatives the day before in Moscow by a street sweeper, one of the old women who swept trash and dirt from public places with a long twig broom.