initial commit of ebook 28548HEADmain

49 files changed, 35535 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/28548-0.txt b/28548-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e64496
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10941 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gipsy Life, by George Smith
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Gipsy Life
+       being an account of our Gipsies and their children
+
+
+Author: George Smith
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 9, 2009  [eBook #28548]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1880 Haughton and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+            [Picture: Frontispiece: Among the Gipsy children]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               GIPSY LIFE:
+
+
+                             BEING AN ACCOUNT
+
+                                    OF
+
+                     OUR GIPSIES AND THEIR CHILDREN.
+
+                                   WITH
+                    SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT.
+
+                                    BY
+                       GEORGE SMITH, OF COALVILLE.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 LONDON:
+                   HAUGHTON & CO., 10, PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         [_All Rights Reserved_.]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  1880.
+
+I give my warmest thanks to W. H. OVEREND, Esq., for the block forming
+the Frontispiece, which he has kindly presented to me on the condition
+that the picture occupies the position it does in this book; and also to
+the proprietor of the _Illustrated London News_ for the blocks to help
+forward my work, the pictures of which appeared in his journal in
+November and December of last year and January in the present year, as
+found herein on pages 42, 48, 66, 76, 96, 108, 118, 122, 174, 192, 236,
+283.
+
+I must at the same time express my heart-felt thanks to the manager and
+proprietors of the _Graphic_ for the blocks forming the illustrations on
+pages 1, 132, 170, 222, 228, 248, 272, 277, and which appeared in their
+journal on March 13th in the present year, and which they have kindly
+presented to me to help forward my object, connected with which sketches,
+at the kind request of the Editor, I wrote the article.
+
+W. H. OVEREND, Esq., was the artist for the sketches in the _Illustrated
+London News_, and HERBERT JOHNSON, Esq., was the artist for the sketches
+in the _Graphic_.
+
+I also tender my warmest thanks to the Press generally for the help
+rendered to me during the crusade so far, without which I should have
+done but little.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
+THE PEERS AND MEMBERS
+OF THE
+HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT.
+
+
+I have taken the liberty of humbly dedicating this work to you, the
+object of which is not to tickle the critical ears of ethnologists and
+philologists, but to touch the hearts of my countrymen on behalf of the
+poor Gipsy women and children and other roadside Arabs flitting about in
+our midst, in such a way as to command attention to these neglected,
+dark, marshy spots of human life, whose seedlings have been running wild
+among us during the last three centuries, spreading their poisonous
+influence abroad, not only detrimental to the growth of Christianity and
+the spread of civilisation, but to the present and eternal welfare of the
+children; and, what I ask for is, that the hand of the Schoolmaster may
+be extended towards the children; and that the vans and other temporary
+and movable abodes in which they live may be brought under the eye and
+influence of the Sanitary Inspector.
+
+                                                  Very respectfully yours,
+                                                             GEORGE SMITH,
+                                                           _Of Coalville_.
+
+_April_ 30_th_, 1880.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+Part I.
+
+                         RAMBLES IN GIPSYDOM.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+Origin of the Gipsies and their Names                                1
+Article in _The Daily News_                                          8
+The Travels of the Gipsies                                           9
+Acts of Parliament relating to the Gipsies                          16
+Article in _The Edinburgh Review_                                   23
+   ,, _The Saturday Review_                                         25
+Professor Bott on the Gipsies                                       29
+The Changars of India                                               32
+The Doms of India                                                   33
+The Sanseeas of India                                               35
+The Nuts of India                                                   36
+Grellmann on the Gipsies                                            39
+Gipsies of Notting Hill                                             40
+Rev. Charles Wesley                                                 42
+The Number of Gipsies                                               44
+
+Part II.
+
+                     COMMENCEMENT OF THE CRUSADE.
+
+Work begun                                                          48
+Letter to _The Standard_ and _Daily Chronicle_                      51
+Leading Article in _The Standard_                                   53
+Correspondence in _The Standard_                                    59
+Mr. Leland’s Letter, &c., &c.                                       60
+My Reply                                                            66
+_Leicester Free Press_                                              69
+Article in _The Derby Daily Telegraph_                              70
+   „ _The Figaro_                                                   73
+Letter in _The Daily News_                                          75
+Mr. Gorrie’s Letter                                                 78
+My Reply                                                            79
+Leading Article in _The Standard_                                   82
+_May’s Aldershot Advertiser_                                        87
+Article in _Hand and Heart_                                         90
+Article in _The Illustrated London News_                            91
+Leading Article in _The Daily News_                                 92
+Social Science Congress Paper                                       95
+Article in _Birmingham Daily Mail_                                 102
+   „ _The Weekly Dispatch_                                         106
+   „ _The Weekly Times_                                            109
+   „ _The Croydon Chronicle_                                       117
+   „ _Primitive Methodist_                                         119
+   „ _Illustrated London News_                                     121
+   „ _The Quiver_                                                  126
+Letter in _Daily News_ and _Chronicle_                             127
+Article in _Christian World_                                       129
+   ,, _Sunday School Chronicle_                                    132
+   „ _Unitarian Herald_                                            134
+   „ _Weekly Times_                                                135
+
+Part III.
+
+       THE TREATMENT THE GIPSIES HAVE RECEIVED IN THIS COUNTRY.
+
+The Social History of our Country                                  142
+Acts of Parliament concerning the Gipsies                          145
+Treatment of the Gipsies in Scotland, Spain, and Denmark           150
+Efforts put forth to improve their Condition                       155
+His Majesty George III. and the Dying Gipsy                        161
+Mr. Crabb at Southampton in 1827                                   164
+Fiction and the Gipsies                                            166
+Hubert Petalengro’s Gipsy Trip to Norway                           169
+Esmeralda’s Song                                                   174
+George Borrow’s Travels in Spain                                   177
+Romance and Poetry about the Gipsies                               183
+Dean Stanley’s Prize Poem                                          190
+
+Part IV.
+
+                 GIPSY LIFE IN A VARIETY OF ASPECTS.
+
+Persecution, Missionary Efforts, and Romance                       192
+The Gipsy Contrast and _Punch_                                     193
+Gipsy Slang                                                        195
+Rees and Borrow’s Description of the Gipsies                       199
+Leland among the Russian Gipsies                                   201
+Burning a Russian Fortune-teller                                   203
+A Welsh Gipsy’s Letter                                             208
+Ryley Bosvil and his Poetry: a Sad Example                         213
+My Visit to Canning Town Gipsies                                   220
+Article in _The Weekly Times_                                      222
+My Son’s Visit to Barking Road                                     227
+Mrs. Simpson, a Christian Gipsy                                    228
+
+Part V.
+
+     THE SAD CONDITION OF THE GIPSIES, WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR
+                             IMPROVEMENT.
+
+Gipsy Beauty and Songsters                                         237
+Gipsy Poetry                                                       239
+Smart and Crofton                                                  239
+A Little Gipsy Girl’s Letter                                       242
+Scotch Gipsies                                                     243
+Gipsy Trickery                                                     244
+My Visit to the Gipsies at Kensal Green                            248
+Fortune-telling and other Sins                                     249
+Wretched Condition of the Gipsies                                  254
+Hungarian Gipsies                                                  259
+Visit to Cherry Island                                             260
+The Cleanliness and Food of the Gipsies                            262
+A Gipsy Woman’s Opinion upon Religion                              264
+Gipsy Faithfulness and Fidelity                                    264
+A Visit to Hackney Marshes                                         266
+Sickness among the Gipsies                                         270
+A Gipsy Woman’s Funeral                                            271
+Gipsies and the Workhouse                                          274
+Education of the Gipsy Children Sixty Years ago                    274
+Mission Work among the Gipsies                                     275
+Gipsy Children upon Turnham Green and Wandsworth Common            276
+Sad Condition of the Gipsy Children                                277
+The Hardships of the Gipsy Women                                   281
+Efforts put forth in Hungary and other Countries                   282
+Things made by the Gipsies                                         284
+Pity for the Gipsies                                               285
+What the State has done for the Thugs                              286
+The Remedy                                                         287
+My Reasons for Government Interference                             289
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+Frontispiece.  Among the Gipsy Children.
+
+A Gipsy Beauty                                                       1
+
+A Gentleman Gipsy’s Tent and his dog “Grab”                         42
+
+A Gipsy’s Home for Man and Wife and Six Children                    48
+
+Gipsies Camping among the Heath                                     66
+
+Gipsy Quarters, Mary Place                                          76
+
+A Farmer’s Pig that does not like a Gipsy’s Tent                    96
+
+Gipsies’ Winter Quarters, Latimer Road                             108
+
+A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven                  118
+Children, and in which “Deliverance” was born
+
+A Gipsy Knife Grinder’s Home                                       122
+
+A Gipsy Girl Washing Clothes                                       132
+
+A Respectable Gipsy and his Family “on the Road”                   170
+
+A Bachelor Gipsy’s Bed-room                                        174
+
+A Gipsy’s Van, near Notting Hill                                   192
+
+A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her Pipe                          222
+
+Inside a Christian Gipsy’s Van—Mrs. Simpson’s                      228
+
+Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller’s Van                                236
+
+Gipsy Fortune tellers Cooking their Evening Meal                   248
+
+Outside a Christian Gipsy’s Van                                    272
+
+Four Little Gipsies sitting for the Artist                         277
+
+A Top Bed-room in a Gipsy’s Van                                    281
+
+
+
+         [Picture: A Gipsy beauty who can neither read nor write]
+
+
+
+
+Part I.—Rambles in Gipsydom.
+
+
+The origin of the Gipsies, as to who they are; when they became regarded
+as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel, ragamuffin vagabonds; the
+primary object they had in view in setting out upon their shuffling,
+skulking, sneaking, dark pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the
+point of the sword, or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing
+dark deeds of plunder, cruelty, and murder, or anxious to seek a haven of
+rest; the route by which they travelled, whether over hill and dale, by
+the side of the river and valley, skirting the edge of forest and dell,
+delighting in the jungle, or pitching their tent in the desert, following
+the shores of the ocean, or topping the mountains; whether they were
+Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Ishmaelites, Roumanians, Peruvians, Turks,
+Hungarians, Spaniards, or Bohemians; the end of their destination; their
+religious views—if any—their habits and modes of life have been during
+the last three or four centuries wrapped, surrounded, and encircled in
+mystery, according to some writers who have been studying the Gipsy
+character.  They have been a theme upon which a “bookworm” could gloat, a
+chest of secret drawers into which the curious delight to pry, a
+difficult problem in Euclid for the mathematician to solve; and an
+unreadable book for the author.  A conglomeration of languages for the
+scholar, a puzzle for the historian, and a subject for the novelist.
+These are points which it is not the object of this book to attempt to
+clear up and settle; all it aims at, as in the case of my “Cry of the
+Children from the Brick-yards of England,” and “Our Canal Population,”
+is, to tell “A Dark Chapter in the Annals of the Poor,” little wanderers,
+houseless, homeless, and friendless in our midst.  At the same time it
+will be necessary to take a glimpse at some of the leading features of
+the historical part of their lives in order to get, to some extent, a
+knowledge of the “little ones” whose pitiable case I have ventured to
+take in hand.
+
+Paint the words “mystery” and “secrecy” upon any man’s house, and you at
+once make him a riddle for the cunning, envious, and crafty to try to
+solve; and this has been the case with the Gipsies for generations, and
+the consequence has been, they have trotted out kings, queens, princes,
+bishops, nobles, ladies and gentlemen of all grades, wise men, fools, and
+fanatics, to fill their coffers, while they have been standing by
+laughing in their sleeves at the foolishness of the foolish.
+
+In Spain they were banished by repeated edicts under the severest
+penalties.  In Italy they were forbidden to remain more than two nights
+in the same place.  In Germany they were shot down like wild beasts.  In
+England during the reign of Elizabeth, it was felony, without the
+“benefit of the clergy,” to be seen in their company.  The State of
+Orleans decreed that they should be put to death with fire and
+sword—still they kept coming.
+
+In the last century, however, a change has come over several of the
+European Governments.  Maria Theresa in 1768, and Charles III. of Spain
+in 1783, took measures for the education of these poor outcasts in the
+habits of a civilised life with very encouraging results.  The experiment
+is now being tried in Russia with signal success.  The emancipation of
+the Wallachian Gipsies is a fact accomplished, and the best results are
+being achieved.
+
+The Gipsies have various names assigned to them in different countries.
+The name of Bohemians was given to them by the French, probably on
+account of their coming to France from Bohemia.  Some derive the word
+Bohemians from the old French word “Boëm,” signifying a sorcerer.  The
+Germans gave them the name of “Ziegeuner,” or wanderers.  The Portuguese
+named them “Siganos.”  The Dutch called them “Heiden,” or heathens.  The
+Danes and Swedes, “Tartars.”  In Italy they are called “Zingari.”  In
+Turkey and the Levant, “Tschingenes.”  In Spain they are called
+“Gitanos.”  In Hungary and Transylvania, where they are very numerous,
+they are called “Pharaoh Nepek,” or “Pharaoh’s People.”  The notion of
+their being Egyptian is entirely erroneous—their appearance, manners, and
+language being totally different from those of either the Copts or
+Fellahs; there are many Gipsies now in Egypt, but they are looked upon as
+strangers.
+
+Notwithstanding that edicts have been hurled against them, persecuted and
+hunted like vermin during the Middle Ages, still they kept coming.  Later
+on, laws more merciful than in former times have taken a more humane view
+of them and been contented by classing them as “vagrants and
+scoundrels”—still they came.  Magistrates, ministers, doctors, and
+lawyers have spit their spite at them—still they came; frowning looks,
+sour faces, buttoned-up pockets, poverty and starvation staring them in
+the face—still they came.  Doors slammed in their faces, dogs set upon
+their heels, and ignorant babblers hooting at them—still they came; and
+the worst of it is they are reducing our own “riff-raff” to their level.
+The novelist has written about them; the preacher has preached against
+them; the drunkards have garbled them over in their mouths, and yelped
+out “Gipsy,” and stuttered “scamp” in disgust; the swearer has sworn at
+them, and our “gutter-scum gentlemen” have told them to “stand off.”
+These “Jack-o’-th’-Lantern,” “Will-o’-th’-Wisp,” “Boo-peep,” “Moonshine
+Vagrants,” “Ditchbank Sculks,” “Hedgerow Rodneys,” of whom there are not
+a few, are black spots upon our horizon, and are ever and anon flitting
+before our eyes.  A motley crowd of half-naked savages, carrion eaters,
+dressed in rags, tatters, and shreds, usually called men, women, and
+children, some running, walking, loitering, traipsing, shouting, gaping,
+and staring; the women with children on their backs, and in their arms;
+old men and women tottering along “leaning upon their staffs;” hordes of
+children following in the rear; hulking men with lurcher dogs at their
+heels, sauntering along in idleness, spotting out their prey; donkeys
+loaded with sacks, mules with tents and sticks, and their vans and
+waggons carrying ill-gotten gain and plunder; and the question arises in
+the mind of those who take an interest in this singularly unfortunate
+race of beings: From whence came they?  How have they travelled?  By what
+routes did they travel?  What is their condition, past and present?  How
+are they to be dealt with in any efforts put forth to improve their
+condition?  These are questions I shall in my feeble way endeavour to
+solve; at any rate, the two latter questions; the first questions can be
+dealt better with by abler hands than mine.
+
+I would say, in the first place, that it is my decided conviction that
+the Gipsies were neither more nor less, before they set out upon their
+pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste,
+good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan—not ashamed to beg, with
+some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical
+tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances,
+without any true religious motives or influences.  It may be worth while
+to notice that I have come to the conclusion that they were originally
+from India by observing them entirely in the light given to me years ago
+of the different characters of human beings both in Asia, Europe, and
+Africa.  Their habits, manners, and customs, to me, is a sufficient test,
+without calling in the aid of the philologist to decide the point of
+their originality.  I may here remark that in order to get at the real
+condition of the Gipsies as they are at the present day in this country,
+and not to have my mind warped or biassed in any way, I purposely kept
+myself in ignorance upon the subject as to what various authors have said
+either for or against them until I had made my inquiries and the movement
+had been afloat for several months.  The first work touching the Gipsy
+question I ever handled was presented to me by one of the authors—Mr.
+Crofton—at the close of my Social Science Congress paper read at
+Manchester last October, entitled “The Dialect of the English Gipsies,”
+which work, without any disrespect to the authors—and I know they will
+overlook this want of respect—remained uncut for nearly two months.  With
+further reference to their Indian origin, the following is an extract
+from “Hoyland’s Historical Survey,” in which the author says:—“The
+Gipsies have no writing peculiar to themselves in which to give a
+specimen of the construction of their dialect.  Music is the only science
+in which the Gipsies participate in any considerable degree; they
+likewise compose, but it is after the manner of the Eastern people,
+extempore.”  Grellmann asserts that the Hindustan language has the
+greatest affinity with that of the Gipsies.  He also infers from the
+following consideration that Gipsies are of the lowest class of Indians,
+namely, Parias, or, as they are called in Hindustan, Suders, and goes on
+to say that the whole great nation of Indians is known to be divided into
+four ranks, or stocks, which are called by a Portuguese name, Castes,
+each of which has its own particular sub-division.  Of these castes, the
+Brahmins is the first; the second contains the Tschechterias, or Setreas;
+the third consists of the Beis, or Wazziers; the fourth is the caste of
+the above-mentioned Suders, who, upon the peninsula of Malabar, where
+their condition is the same as in Hindustan, are called Parias and
+Pariers.  The first were appointed by Brahma to seek after knowledge, to
+give instruction, and to take care of religion.  The second were to serve
+in war.  The third were, as the Brahmins, to cultivate science, but
+particularly to attend to the breeding of cattle.  The caste of the
+Suders was to be subservient to the Brahmins, the Tschechterias, and the
+Beis.  These Suders, he goes on to say, are held in disdain, and they are
+considered infamous and unclean from their occupation, and they are
+abhorred because they eat flesh; the three other castes living entirely
+on vegetables.  Baldeus says the Parias or Suders are a filthy people and
+wicked crew.  It is related in the “Danish Mission Intelligencer,” nobody
+can deny that the Parias are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians;
+they are thievish, and have wicked dispositions.  Neuhof assures us, “the
+Parias are full of every kind of dishonesty; they do not consider lying
+and cheating to be sinful.”  The Gipsy’s solicitude to conceal his
+language is also a striking Indian trait.  Professor Pallas says of the
+Indians round Astracan, custom has rendered them to the greatest degree
+suspicious about their language.  Salmon says that the nearest relations
+cohabit with each other; and as to education, their children grow up in
+the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or instruction.  The
+missionary journal before quoted says with respect to matrimony among the
+Suders or Gipsies, “they act like beasts, and their children are brought
+up without restraint or information.”  “The Suders are fond of horses, so
+are the Gipsies.”  Grellmann goes on to say “that the Gipsies hunt after
+cattle which have died of distempers in order to feed on them, and when
+they can procure more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day’s
+consumption, they dry it in the sun.  Such is the constant custom with
+the Suders in India.”  “That the Gipsies and natives of Hindustan
+resemble each other in complexion and shape is undeniable.  And what is
+asserted of the young Gipsy girls rambling about with their fathers, who
+are musicians, dancing with lascivious and indecent gesture to divert any
+person who is willing to give them a small gratuity for so acting, is
+likewise perfectly Indian.”  Sonneratt confirms this in the account he
+gives of the dancing girls of Surat.  Fortune-telling is practised all
+over the East, but the peculiar kind professed by the Gipsies, viz.,
+chiromancy, constantly referring to whether the parties shall be rich or
+poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, &c., is nowhere met with but in
+India.  Sonneratt says:—“The Indian smith carries his tools, his shop,
+and his forge about with him, and works in any place where he can find
+employment.  He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus
+is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file.  This is very much
+like Gipsy tinkers,” &c.  It is usual for Parias, or Suders, in India to
+have their huts outside the villages of other castes.  This is one of the
+leading features of the Gipsies of this country.  A visit to the
+outskirts of London, where the Gipsies encamp, will satisfy any one upon
+this point, viz., that our Gipsies are Indians.  In isolated cases a
+strong religious feeling has manifested itself in certain persons of the
+Bunyan type of character and countenance—a strong frame, with large,
+square, massive forehead, such as Bunyan possessed; for it should be
+noted that John Bunyan was a Gipsy tinker, with not an improbable mixture
+of the blood of an Englishman in his veins, and, as a rule, persons of
+this mixture become powerful for good or evil.  A case in point, viz.,
+Mrs. Simpson and her family, has come under my own observation lately,
+which forcibly illustrates my meaning, both as regards the evil Mrs.
+Simpson did in the former part of her life, and for the last twenty years
+in her efforts to do good among persons of her class, and also among
+others, as she has travelled about the country.  The exodus of the
+Gipsies from India may be set down, first, to famine, of which India, as
+we all know, suffers so much periodically; second, to the insatiable love
+of gold and plunder bound up in the nature of the Gipsies—the West, from
+an Indian point of view, is always looked upon as a land of gold, flowing
+with milk and honey; third, the hatred the Gipsies have for wars, and as
+in the years of 1408 and 1409, and many years previous to these dates,
+India experienced some terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of
+thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster
+Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by
+Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith,
+it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances the Gipsies
+would leave the country to escape the consequences following those
+calamities, over-populated as it was, numbering close upon 200,000,000 of
+human beings. {8}  I am inclined to think that it would be hunger and
+starvation upon their heels that would be the propelling power to send
+them forward in quest of food.  From Attock, Peshawur, Cabul, and Herat,
+they would tramp through Persia by Teheran, and enter the Euphrates
+Valley at Bagdad.  From Calcutta, Madras, Seringapatam, Bangalore, Goa,
+Poonah, Hydrabad, Aurungabad, Nagpoor, Jabbulpoor, Benares, Allahabad,
+Surat, Simla, Delhi, Lahore, they would wander along to the mouth of the
+river Indus, and commence their journey at Hydrabad, and travelling by
+the shores of the Indian Ocean, stragglers coming in from Bunpore,
+Gombaroon, the commencement of the Persian Gulf, when they would travel
+by Bushino to Bassora.  At this place they would begin to scatter
+themselves over some parts of Arabia, making their headquarters near
+Molah, Mecca, and other parts of the country, crossing over Suez, and
+getting into Egypt in large numbers.  Others would take the Euphrates
+Valley route, which, by the way, is the route of the proposed railway to
+India.  Tribes branching off at Kurnah, some to Bagdad, following the
+course of the river Tigris to Mosul and Diarbeker, and others would go to
+Jerusalem, Damuscus, and Antioch, till they arrived at Allepo and
+Alexandretta.  Here may be considered the starting-point from which they
+spread over Asiatic Turkey in large numbers, till they arrived before
+Constantinople at the commencement of the fourteenth century.
+
+Straggling Gipsies no doubt found their way westward prior to the wars of
+Timur Beg, and in this view I am supported by the fact that two of our
+own countrymen—Fitz-Simeon and Hugh the Illuminator, holy friars—on their
+pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1322, called at Crete, and there found
+some Gipsies—I am inclined to think only a few sent out as a kind of
+advance-guard or feeler, adopting the plan they have done subsequently in
+peopling Europe and England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+Brand, in his observations in “Popular Antiquities,” is of opinion also
+that the Gipsies fled from Hindustan when Timur Beg ravaged India with a
+view of making Mohammedans of the heathens, and it is calculated that
+during his deeds of blood he butchered 500,000 Indians.  Some writers
+suppose that the Gipsies, in order to escape the sword of this human
+monster, came into Europe through Egypt, and on this account were called
+English Gipsies.
+
+In a paper read by Colonel Herriot before the Royal Asiatic Society, he
+says that the Gipsies, or Indians—called by some Suders, by others Naths
+or Benia, the first signifying rogue, the second dancer or tumbler—are to
+be met in large numbers in that part of Hindustan which is watered by the
+Ganges, as well as the Malwa, Gujerat, and the Deccan.
+
+The religious crusades to the Holy Land commenced in the year 1095 and
+lasted to 1270.  It was during the latter part of the time of the
+Crusades, and prior to the commencement of the wars by Timur Beg, that
+the Gipsies flocked by hundreds of thousands to Asiatic Turkey.  While
+the rich merchants and princes were trying to outvie each other in their
+costly equipages, grandeur, and display of gold in their pilgrimage to
+the Holy Land, and the tremendous death-struggles between Christianity,
+Idolatry, and Mohammedism, the Gipsies were busily engaged in singing
+songs and plundering, and in this work they were encouraged by the
+Persians as they passed through their territory.  The Persians have
+always been friendly to these wandering, loafing Indians, for we find
+that during the wars of India by Timur Beg, and other monsters previous,
+they were harbouring 20,000 of these poor low-caste and outcast Indians;
+and, in fact, the same thing may be said of the other countries they
+passed through on their way westward, for we do not read of their being
+persecuted in these countries to anything like the extent they have been
+in Europe.  This, no doubt, arises from the affinity there is between the
+Indian, Persian, and Gipsy races, and the dislike the Europeans have
+towards idlers, loafers, liars, and thieves; and especially is this so in
+England.  Gipsy life may find favour in the East, but in the West the
+system cannot thrive.  A real Englishman hates the man who will not work,
+scorns the man who would tell him a lie, and would give the thief who
+puts his hands into his pocket the cat-o’-nine-tails most unmercifully.
+The persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has
+been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves.  John Bull dislikes
+keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations.  He readily protects
+all those who tread upon English soil, but in return for this kindness he
+expects them, like bees, to be all workers.  Drones, ragamuffins, and
+rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of the hive.  If 20,000
+Englishmen were to tramp all over India, Turkey, Persia, Hungary, Spain,
+America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Germany, or France, in
+bands of from, say two to fifty men, women, and children, in a most
+wretched; miserable condition, doing little else but fiddling upon the
+national conscience and sympathies, blood-sucking the hardworking
+population, and frittering their time away in idleness, pilfering, and
+filth, I expect, and justly so, the inhabitants would begin to “kick,”
+and the place would no doubt get rather warm for Mr. John Bull and his
+motley flock.  If the Gipsies, and others of the same class in this
+country, will begin to “buckle-to,” and set themselves out for real hard
+work, instead of cadging from door to door, they will find,
+notwithstanding they are called Gipsies, John Bull extending to them the
+hand of brotherhood and sympathy, and the days of persecution passed.
+
+One thing is remarkable concerning the Gipsies—we never hear of their
+being actually engaged in warfare.  They left India for Asiatic Turkey
+before the great and terrible wars broke out during the fourteenth
+century, and before the great religious wars concerning the Mohammedan
+faith in Turkey, during the fourteenth century, they fled to Western
+Europe.  Thus it will be seen that they “would sooner run a mile than
+fight a minute.”  The idea of cold steel in open day frightens them out
+of their wits.  Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in
+which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on
+the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till
+after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey.
+This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some
+honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark,
+deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity.  For a number of years
+prior to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. in 1453 the
+Gipsies had commenced to wend their way to various parts of Europe.  The
+200,000 Gipsies who had emigrated to Wallachia and Moldavia, their
+favourite spot and stronghold, saw what was brewing, and had begun to
+divide themselves into small bands.  A band of 300 of these wanderers,
+calling themselves Secani, appeared in 1417 at Lüneburg, and in 1418 at
+Basil and Bern in Switzerland.  Some were seen at Augsberg on November 1,
+1418.  Near to Paris there were to be seen numbers of Gipsies in 1424,
+1426, and 1427; but it is not likely they remained long in Paris.  Later
+on we find them at Arnheim in 1429, and at Metz in 1430, Erfurt in 1432,
+and in Bavaria in 1433.  The reason they appeared at these places at
+those particular times, was, no doubt, owing to the internal troubles of
+France; for it was during 1429 that Joan of Arc raised the siege of
+Orleans.  The Gipsies appearing in small bands in various parts of the
+Continent at this particular time were, no doubt, as Mr. Groom says in
+his article in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” sent forward by the main
+body of Gipsies left behind in Asiatic and European Turkey, to spy out
+the land whither they were anxious to bend their ways; for it was in the
+year 1438, fifteen years before the terrible struggle by the Mohammedans
+for Constantinople, that the great exodus of Gipsies from Wallachia,
+Roumania, and Moldavia, for the golden cities of the West commenced.
+From the period of 1427 to 1514, a space of about eighty-seven
+years—except spies—they were content to remain on the Continent without
+visiting our shores; probably from two causes—first, their dislike to
+crossing the water; second, the unsettled state of our own country during
+this period.  For it should be remembered that the Wars of the Roses
+commenced in 1455, Richard III. was killed at the Battle of Bosworth
+Field, and in 1513 the Battle of Flodden took place in Scotland, in which
+the Scots were defeated.  The first appearance of the Gipsies in large
+numbers in Great Britain was in Scotland in 1514, the year after the
+Battle of Flodden.  Another remarkable coincidence connected with their
+appearance in this country came out during my inquiries; but whether
+there is any foundation for it further than it is an idea floating in my
+brain I have not yet been able to ascertain, as nothing is mentioned of
+it in any of the writings I have perused.  It seems reasonable to suppose
+that the Gipsies, would retain and hand down some of their pleasant, as
+well as some of the bitter, recollections of India, which, no doubt,
+would at this time be mentioned to persons high in position—it should be
+noted that the Gipsies at this time were favourably received at certain
+head-quarters amongst merchants and princes—for we find that within
+fourteen years after the landing of the Indians upon our shores attempts
+were made to reach India by the North-east and North-west passages, which
+proved a disastrous affair.  Then, again, in 1579 Sir F. Drake’s
+expedition set out for India.  In 1589 the Levant Company made a land
+expedition, and in all probability followed the track by which the
+Gipsies travelled from India to the Holy Land in the fourteenth century,
+by the Euphrates valley and Persian Gulf.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1417, in the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic
+coast and at the mouth of the Elbe, there appeared before the gates of
+Lüneburg, and later on at Hamburg, Lübeck, Wirmar, Rostock, and
+Stralsuna, a herd of swarthy and strange specimens of humanity, uncouth
+in form, hideous in complexion, and their whole exterior shadowed forth
+the lowest depths of poverty and degradation.  A cloak made of the
+fragments of oriental finery was generally used to disguise the filth and
+tattered garments of their slight remaining apparel.  The women and young
+children travelled in rude carts drawn by asses or mules; the men trudged
+alongside, casting fierce and suspicious glances on those they met,
+thief-like, from underneath their low, projecting foreheads and eyebrows;
+the elder children, unkempt and half-clad, swarmed in every direction,
+calling with shrill cries and monkey-like faces and grimaces to the
+passers-by to their feats of jugglery, craft, and deception.  Forsaking
+the Baltic provinces the dusky band then sought a more friendly refuge in
+central Germany—and it was quite time they had begun to make a move, for
+their deeds of darkness had oozed out, and a number of them paid the
+penalty upon the gallows, and the rest scampered off to Meissen, Leipsic,
+and Herse.  At these places they were not long in letting the inhabitants
+know, by their depredations, witchcraft, devilry, and other abominations,
+the class of people they had in their midst, and the result was their
+speedy banishment from Germany; and in 1418, after wandering about for a
+few months only, they turned their steps towards Switzerland, reaching
+Zurich on August 1st, and encamped during six days before the town,
+exciting much sympathy by their pious tale and sorrowful appearance.  In
+Switzerland the inhabitants were more gullible, and the soft parts of
+their nature were easily getatable, and the consequence was the Gipsies
+made a good thing of it for the space of four years.  Soon after leaving
+Zurich, according to Dr. Mikliosch, the wanderers divided their forces.
+One detachment crossed the Botzberg and created quite a panic amongst the
+peaceable inhabitants of Sisteron, who, fearing and imagining all sorts
+of evils from these satanic-looking people, fed them with a hundred
+loaves, and induced them, for the good of their health, to make
+themselves miserably less.  We next hear of them in Italy, in 1422.
+After leaving Asiatic Turkey, and in their wanderings through Russia and
+Germany, the Asiatic, sanctimonious, religious halo, borrowed from their
+idolatrous form and notions of the worship of God in the East, had
+suffered much from exposure to the civilising and Christianising
+influences of the West; and the result was their leaders decided to make
+a pilgrimage to Rome to regain, under the cloak of religion, some of the
+self-imagined lost prestige; and in this they were, at any rate, for a
+time, successful.  On the 11th day of July, 1422, a leader of the
+Gipsies, named Duke Andrew, arrived at Bologna, with men, women and
+children, fully one hundred persons, carrying with them, as they alleged,
+a decree signed by the King of Hungary, permitting them, owing to their
+return to the Christian faith—stating at the same time that 4,000 had
+been re-baptised—to rob without penalty or hindrance wherever they
+travelled during seven years.  Here these long-faced, pious hypocrites
+were in clover, as a reward for their professed re-embracing
+Christianity.  After the expiration of this term they told the
+open-mouthed inhabitants, as a kind of sweetener, that they were to
+present themselves to the Pope, and then return to India—aye, with the
+spoils of their lying campaign, gained by robbing and plundering all they
+came in contact with.  The result of their deceitful, lying expedition to
+Rome was all they could wish, and they received a fresh passport from .
+the Pope, asking for alms from his faithful flock on behalf of these
+wretches, who have been figuring before western nations of the
+world—sometimes as kings, counts, martyrs, prophets, witches, thieves,
+liars, and murderers; sometimes laying their misfortunes at the door of
+the King of Egypt, the Sultan of Turkey, religious persecution in India,
+the King of Hungary, and a thousand other Gorgios since them.  Sometimes
+they would appear as renegade Christians, converted heathens, Roman
+Catholics, in fact, they have been everything to everybody; and, so long
+as the “grist was coming to the mill,” it did not matter how or by whom
+it came.
+
+By an ordinance of the State of Orleans in the year 1560 it was enjoined
+that all those impostors and vagabonds who go tramping about under the
+name of Bohemians and Egyptians should quit the kingdom, on penalty of
+the galleys.  Upon this they dispersed into lesser companies, and spread
+themselves over Europe.  They were expelled from Spain in 1591.  The
+first time we hear of them in England in the public records was in the
+year 1530, when they were described by the statute 22 Hen. VIII., cap.
+10, as “an outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians.  Using no
+craft nor seat of merchandise, who have come into this realm and gone
+from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company, and used great
+subtile, crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand, that
+they by palmistry could tell men’s and women’s fortunes, and so many
+times by craft and subtilty have deceived the people of their money, and
+also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.  Wherefore they
+are directed to avoid the realm, and not to return under pain of
+imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods and chattels; and upon their
+trials for any felony which they may have committed they shall not be
+entitled to a jury _de medietate linguæ_.”  As if the above enactment was
+not sufficiently strong to prevent these wretched people multiplying in
+our midst and carrying on their abominable practices, it was afterwards
+enacted by statutes 1 and 2 Ph., and in c. 4 and 5 Eliz., cap. 20, “that
+if any such person shall be imported into this kingdom, the importer
+shall forfeit £40.  And if the Egyptians themselves remain one month in
+this kingdom, or if any person being fourteen years old (whether
+natural-born subject or stranger), which hath been seen or found in the
+fellowship of such Egyptians, or which hath disguised him or herself like
+them, shall remain in the same one month, or if several times it is
+felony, without the benefit of the clergy.”
+
+Sir Matthew Hale informs us that at the Suffolk Assizes no less than
+thirteen Gipsies were executed upon these statutes a few years before the
+Restoration.  But to the honour of our national humanity—which at the
+time of these executions could only have been in name and not in reality,
+for those were the days of bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and like sports,
+the practice of which in those dark ages was thought to be the highest
+pitch of culture and refinement—no more instances of this kind were
+thrown into the balance, for the public conscience had become somewhat
+awakened; the days of enlightenment had begun to dawn, for by statute 23,
+George III., cap. 51, it was enacted that the Act of Eliz., cap. 20, is
+repealed; and the statute 17 George II., cap. 5, regards them under the
+denomination of “rogues and vagabonds;” and such is the title given to
+them at the present day by the law of the land—“Rogues and Vagabonds.”
+
+Borrow, in page 10 of his “Bible in Spain,” says: “Shortly after their
+first arrival in England, which is upwards of three centuries since, a
+dreadful persecution was raised against them, the aim of which was their
+utter extermination—the being a Gipsy was esteemed a crime worthy of
+death, and the gibbets of England groaned and creaked beneath the weight
+of Gipsy carcases, and the miserable survivors were literally obliged to
+creep into the earth in order to preserve their lives.  But these days
+passed by; their persecutors became weary of persecuting them; they
+showed their heads from the caves where they had hidden themselves; they
+ventured forth increased in numbers, and each tribe or family choosing a
+particular circuit, they fairly divided the land amongst them.
+
+“In England the male Gipsies are all dealers in horses [this is not
+exactly the case with the Gipsies of the present day], and sometimes
+employ their time in mending the tin and copper utensils of the
+peasantry; the females tell fortunes.  They generally pitch their tents
+in the vicinity of a village or small town, by the roadside, under the
+shelter of the hedges and trees.  The climate of England is well known to
+be favourable to beauty, and in no part of the world is the appearance of
+the Gipsies so prepossessing as in that country.  Their complexion is
+dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features
+regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small.
+
+“The crimes of which these people were originally accused were various,
+but the principal were theft, sorcery, and causing disease among the
+cattle; and there is every reason for supposing that in none of these
+points they were altogether guiltless.
+
+“With respect to sorcery, a thing in itself impossible, not only the
+English Gipsies, but the whole race, have ever professed it; therefore,
+whatever misery they may have suffered on that account they may be
+considered as having called it down upon their own heads.
+
+“Dabbling in sorcery is in some degree the province of the female Gipsy.
+She affects to tell the future, and to prepare philters by means of which
+love can be awakened in any individual towards any particular object; and
+such is the credulity of the human race, even in the more enlightened
+countries, that the profits arising from their practices are great.  The
+following is a case in point:—Two females, neighbours and friends, were
+tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands.  It
+appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had
+conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work
+charms to captivate his affection.  Whatever little effect the charm
+might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the
+person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with
+both.  The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking
+means to break off this connection, were respectively poisoned by their
+wives.  Till the moment of conviction these wretched females betrayed
+neither emotion nor fear; but then their consternation was indescribable,
+when they afterwards confessed that the Gipsy who had visited them in
+prison had promised to shield them from conviction by means of her art.
+
+“Poisoning cattle is exercised by them in two ways: by one, they merely
+cause disease in the animals, with the view of receiving money for curing
+them upon offering their services.  The poison is generally administered
+by powders cast at night into the mangers of the animals.  This way is
+only practised upon the larger cattle, such as horses and cows.  By the
+other, which they practise chiefly on swine, speedy death is almost
+invariably produced, the drug administered being of a highly intoxicating
+nature, and affecting the brain.  Then they apply at the house or farm
+where the disaster has occurred for the carcase of the animal, which is
+generally given them without suspicion, and then they feast on the flesh,
+which is not injured by the poison, it only affecting the head.”
+
+In looking at the subject from a plain, practical, common-sense point of
+view—divested of “opinions,” “surmises,” “technicalities,”
+“similarities,” certain ethnological false shadows and philological
+mystifications, the little glow-worm in the hedge-bottom on a dark night,
+which our great minds have been running after for generations, and
+“natural consequences,” “objects sought,” and “certain results”—we shall
+find that the same thing has happened to the Gipsies, or Indians,
+centuries ago, that has happened to all nations at one time or other.
+There can be no doubt but that terrible internal struggles took place,
+and hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants were butchered in cold
+blood, in India, during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
+centuries; there can be no question, also, that the 200,000,000
+inhabitants, in this over-populated country, would suffer, in various
+forms, the direst consequences of war, famine, and bloodshed; and, it is
+more than probable, that hundreds of thousands of the idle, low-caste
+Indians, too lazy to work, too cowardly to fight in open day, with no
+honourable ambition or true religious instincts in their nature, other
+than to aspire to the position similar to bands of Nihilists, Communists,
+Socialists, or Fenians of the present day, would emigrate to Wallachia,
+Roumania, or Moldavia, which countries, at that day, were looked upon as
+England is at the present time.  The Gipsies, many centuries ago, as now,
+did not believe in yokes being placed round their necks.  The fact of
+200,000 of these emigrants, about whom, after all, there is not much
+mystery, emigrating to Wallachia in such large numbers, proves to my mind
+that there was a greater power behind them and before them than is
+usually supposed to be the case, and than that attending wandering
+minstrels, impelling them forward.  Mohammedism, soldiers, and death
+would not be looked upon by the Gipsies as pleasant companions.  By
+fleeing for their lives they escaped death, and Wallachia was to the
+Gipsies, for some time, what America has been to the Fenians—an ark of
+safety and the land of Nod.  Many of the Gipsies themselves imagine that
+they are the descendants of Ishmael, from the simple fact that it was
+decreed by God, they say, that his descendants should wander about in
+tents, and they were to be against everybody, and everybody against them.
+This erroneous impression wants removing, or the Gipsies will never rise
+in position.
+
+In no country in the world is there so much caste feeling, devilish
+jealousy, and diabolical revenge manifested as in India.  These are true
+types and traits of Indian character, especially of the lower orders and
+those who have lost caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians,
+Hungarians, and Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the
+Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts of
+India.  Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have been trying to
+do for some time, outside their mystery boxes, with their thin, flimsy
+veil of romance and superstitious turn of their faces, will soon discover
+their Indian character.  Of course their intermixture with Circassians
+and other nations, in the course of their travels from India, during five
+or six centuries, till the time they arrived at our doors, has brought,
+and is still bringing, to the surface the blighted flowers of humanity,
+whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the soil of Arabia,
+Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, Hungary,
+Norway, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland,
+and Wales, as the muddy stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for
+ages through various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this
+little dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a
+horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been fed and augmented by
+the dregs of English society from Sunday-schools and the hearthstones of
+pious parents.  The different nationalities to be seen among the Gipsies,
+in their camps and tents, may be looked upon as so many bastard
+off-shoots from the main trunk of the trees that have been met with in
+their wanderings.
+
+In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation, is the old
+Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter rabble as in our
+own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical
+Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams.  Then, again,
+their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among
+others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and
+other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers as being the
+ancestors of the Gipsies.  Their tramping over the hills and plains of
+India, and exposure to all the changes of the climate, has no doubt
+fitted them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various
+parts of the world.  To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part
+of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the
+burning sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents.  The treatment
+of the women and children by the men corresponds exactly with the
+treatment the women and children are receiving at the hands of the
+low-caste Indians.  The Arabian women, the Turkish women, and Egyptian
+women, may be said to be queens when set up in comparison with the poor
+Gipsy woman in this country.  In Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and some other
+Eastern nations, the women are kept in the background; but among the
+low-caste Indians and Gipsies the women are brought to the front divested
+of the modesty of those nations who claim to be the primogenitors of the
+Gipsy tribes and races.  Among the lower orders of Indians, from whom the
+Gipsies are the outcome, most extraordinary types of characters and
+countenances are to be seen.  Any one visiting the Gipsy wigwams of the
+present day will soon discover the relationship.
+
+In early life, as among the Indians, some of the girls are pretty and
+interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, idle and
+loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl soon becomes the coarse, vulgar
+woman, with the last trace of virtue blown to the winds.  If any one with
+but little keen sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy’s tent when
+the man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the low-caste
+Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his bench—all squatting
+upon the ground—he will not be long in coming to the conclusion that they
+are all pretty much of the same family.
+
+Ethnologists and philologists may find certain words used by the Gipsies
+to correspond with the Indian language, and this adds another proof to
+those I have already adduced; but, to my mind, this, after the lapse of
+so many centuries, considering all the changes that have taken place
+since the Gipsies emigrated, is not the most convincing argument, any
+more than our forms of letters, the outcome of hieroglyphics, prove that
+we were once Egyptians.  No doubt, there are a certain few words used by
+all nations which, if their roots and derivations were thoroughly looked
+into, a similarity would be found in them.  As America, Australia, New
+Zealand, and Africa have been fields for emigrants from China and Europe
+during the last century, so, in like manner, Europe was the field for
+certain low-caste poor emigrants from India during the two preceding
+centuries, with this difference—the emigrants from India to Europe were
+idlers, loafers who sought to make their fortunes among the Europeans by
+practising, without work, the most subtle arts of double-dealing, lying,
+deception, thieving, and dishonesty, and the fate that attends
+individuals following out such a course as this has attended the Gipsies
+in all their wanderings; the consequence has been, the Gipsy emigrants,
+after their first introduction to the various countries, have, by their
+actions, disgusted those whom they wished to cheat and rob, hence the
+treatment they have received.  This cannot be said of the emigrant from
+England to America and our own or other colonies.  An English emigrant,
+on account of his open conduct, straightforward character, and industry,
+has been always respected.  In any country an English emigrant enters,
+owing to his industrious habits, an improvement takes place.  In the
+country where an Indian emigrant of the Gipsy tribe enters the tendency
+is the reverse of this, so far as their influence is concerned—downward
+to the ground and to the dogs they go.  In these two cases the difference
+between civilisation and Christianity and heathenism comes out to a
+marked degree.
+
+In a leading article in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1878, upon the
+origin and wanderings of the Gipsies, the following appears:—“We next
+encounter them in Corfu, probably before 1346, since there is good reason
+to believe them to be indicated under the name of _homines vageniti_ in a
+document emanating from the Empress Catharine of Valois, who died in that
+year; certainly, about 1370, when they were settled upon a fief
+recognised as the _feudum Acinganorum_ by the Venetians, who, in 1386,
+succeeded to the right of the House of Valois in the island.  This fief
+continued to subsist under the lordship of the Barons de Abitabulo and of
+the House of Prosalendi down to the abolition of feudalism in Corfu in
+the beginning of the present century.  There remain to be noted two
+important pieces of evidence relating to this period.  The first is
+contained in a charter of Miracco I., Waiwode of Wallachia, dated 1387,
+renewing a grant of forty ‘tents’ of Gipsies, made by his uncle,
+Ladislaus, to the monastery of St. Anthony of Vodici.  Ladislaus began to
+reign in 1398.  The second consists in the confirmation accorded in 1398
+by the Venetian governor of Nanplion of the privileges extended by his
+predecessors to the Acingani dwelling in that district.  Thus we find
+Gipsies wandering through Crete in 1322, settled in Corfu from 1346,
+enslaved in Wallachia about 1370, protected in the Peloponnesus before
+1398.  Nor is there is any reason to believe that their arrival in those
+countries was a recent one.”
+
+Niebuhr, in his travels through Arabia, met with hordes of these
+strolling Gipsies in the warm district of Yemen, and M. Sauer in like
+manner found them established in the frozen regions of Siberia.  His
+account of them, published in 1802, shows the Gipsy to be the same in
+Northern Russia as with us in England.  He describes them as follows:—“I
+was surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the
+Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several roving
+companies of these people had strolled into the city of Tobolsk.”  The
+governor thought of establishing a colony of them, but they were too
+cunning for the simple Siberian peasant.  He placed them on a footing
+with the peasants, and allotted a portion of land for cultivation with a
+view of making them useful members of society.  They rejected houses even
+in this severe climate, and preferred open tents or sheds.  In Hungary
+and Transylvania they dwell in tents during the summer, and for their
+winter quarters make holes ten or twelve feet deep in the earth.  The
+women, one writer says, “deal in old clothes, prostitution, wanton
+dances, and fortune-telling, and are indolent beggars and thieves.  They
+have few disorders except the measles and small-pox, and weaknesses in
+their eyes caused by the smoke.  Their physic is saffron put into their
+soup, with bleeding.”  In Hungary, as with other nations, they have no
+sense of religion, though with their usual cunning and hypocrisy they
+profess the established faith of every country in which they live.
+
+The following is an article taken from the _Saturday Review_, December
+13th, 1879:—“It has been repeated until the remark has become accepted as
+a sort of truism that the Gipsies are a mysterious race, and that nothing
+is known of their origin.  And a few years ago this was true; but within
+those years so much has been discovered that at present there is really
+no more mystery attached to the beginning of those nomads than is
+peculiar to many other peoples.  What these discoveries or grounds of
+belief are we shall proceed to give briefly, our limits not permitting
+the detailed citation of authorities.  First, then, there appears to be
+every reason for believing with Captain Richard Burton that the Jats of
+North-Western India furnished so large a proportion of the emigrants or
+exiles who, from the tenth century, went out of India westward, that
+there is very little risk in assuming it as an hypothesis, at least, that
+they formed the _Hauptstamm_ of the Gipsies of Europe.  What other
+elements entered into these, with whom we are all familiar, will be
+considered presently.  These Gipsies came from India, where caste is
+established and callings are hereditary even among out-castes.  It is not
+assuming too much to suppose that, as they evinced a marked aptitude for
+certain pursuits and an inveterate attachment to certain habits, their
+ancestors had in these respects resembled them for ages.  These pursuits
+and habits were, that:—They were tinkers, smiths, and farriers.  They
+dealt in horses, and were naturally familiar with them.  They were
+without religion.  They were unscrupulous thieves.  Their women were
+fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy.  They ate without scruple
+animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig,
+which, when it has thus been ‘butchered by God,’ is still regarded even
+by the most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy.  They flayed
+animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar
+detested callings that in several European countries they long
+monopolised them.  They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles
+of wood.  They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers,
+acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that there is hardly
+a travelling company of such performers, or a theatre in Europe or
+America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany
+blood.  Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it
+longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals.  They speak an Aryan
+tongue, which agrees in the main with that of the Jats, but which
+contains words gathered from other Indian sources.  Admitting these as
+the peculiar pursuits of the race, the next step should be to consider
+what are the principal nomadic tribes of Gipsies in India and Persia, and
+how far their occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe.  That
+the Jats probably supplied the main stock has been admitted.  This was a
+bold race of North-Western India which at one time had such power as to
+obtain important victories over the caliphs.  They were broken and
+dispersed in the eleventh century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them
+wandering to the West.  They were without religion, ‘of the horse,
+horsey,’ and notorious thieves.  In this they agree with the European
+Gipsy.  But they are not habitual eaters of _mullo balor_, or ‘dead
+pork;’ they do not devour everything like dogs.  We cannot ascertain that
+the Jat is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket-maker, a
+rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a pedlar.  We do not know whether they are
+peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to
+old age, as do pure-blood English Gipsies.  All of these things are,
+however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers,
+or Gipsies, in India.  From this we conclude—hypothetically—that the Jat
+warriors were supplemented by other tribes.
+
+“Next to the word Rom itself, the most interesting in Romany is Zingan,
+or Tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the
+people of every country, except England, to indicate the Gipsy.  An
+incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has been wasted in pursuing
+this philological _ignis-fatuus_.  That there are leather-working and
+saddle-working Gipsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair
+basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar Gipsies of
+Jat affinity in the Punjab.  Wonderful it is that in this war of words no
+philologist has paid any attention to what the Gipsies themselves say
+about it.  What they do say is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in
+the form of a legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient.
+It is given as follows in ‘The People of Turkey,’ by a Consul’s Daughter
+and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, London, 1878:—
+
+    “‘Although the Gipsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy
+    and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to
+    be founded upon a strange legend current in the country.  This legend
+    says that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and
+    arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a
+    wheel was attached.’  From the context of this imperfectly told
+    story, it would appear as if the Gipsies could not travel further
+    until this wheel should revolve:—‘Nobody appeared to be able to turn
+    it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit
+    presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the
+    chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only
+    when he had married his sister Guin.  The chief accepted the advice,
+    the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident
+    became that of the combined names of the brother and sister,
+    Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of Turkey at the present
+    day.’  The legend goes on to state that, in consequence of this
+    unnatural marriage, the Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a
+    Mohammedan saint to wander for ever on the face of the earth.  The
+    real meaning of the myth—for myth it is—is very apparent.  Chen is a
+    Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while Guin
+    is almost universally rendered _Gan_ or _Kan_.  _Kan_ is given by
+    George Borrow as meaning sun, and we have ourselves heard English
+    Gipsies call it _kan_, although _kam_ is usually assumed to be right.
+    Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun.  And it may be remarked in this
+    connection that the Roumanian Gipsies have a wild legend stating that
+    the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister,
+    was condemned as the sun to wander for ever in pursuit of her turned
+    into the moon.  A similar legend exists in Greenland and the island
+    of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish.  It was very natural
+    that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always
+    apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life
+    with that of these luminaries.  It may be objected by those to whom
+    the term ‘solar myth’ is as a red rag that this story, to prove
+    anything, must first be proved itself.  This will probably not be far
+    to seek.  If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it
+    may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the
+    possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan.  It is quite as
+    plausible as Dr. Mikliosch’s derivation from the Acingani—
+    ̓Ατσίyανοι—‘an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in
+    Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.’
+    The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story came
+    from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name.  And
+    if the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan, or Zin-gan, in the
+    East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name
+    from the Gorgios in Europe.”
+
+Professor Bott, in his “Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien,” speaks of the
+Gipsies or _Lüry_ as follows:—“In the great Persian epic, the
+‘Shah-Nameh’—in ‘Book of Kings,’ Firdusi—relates an historical tradition
+to the following effect.  About the year 420 A.D., Behrâm Gûr, a wise and
+beneficent ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, finding that his poorer
+subjects languished for lack of recreation, bethought himself of some
+means by which to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of a
+laborious life.  For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King of
+Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a strict bond
+of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and transmit
+to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could by their arts
+help to lighten the burden of existence, and lend a charm to the monotony
+of toil.  The result was the importation of twelve thousand minstrels,
+male and female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as well as an
+ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living independently,
+they might provide his people with gratuitous amusement.  But at the end
+of one year they were found to have neglected agricultural operations, to
+have wasted their seed corn, and to be thus destitute of all means of
+subsistence.  Then Behrâm Gûr, being angry, commanded them to take their
+asses and instruments, and roam through the country, earning a livelihood
+by their songs.  The poet concludes as follows:—‘The Lüry, agreeably to
+this mandate, now wander about the world in search of employment,
+associating with dogs and wolves, and thieving on the road, by day and by
+night.’”  These words were penned nearly nine centuries ago, and
+correctly describe the condition of one of the wandering tribes of Persia
+at the present day, and they have been identified by some travellers as
+members of the Gipsy family.
+
+Dr. Von Bott goes on to say this:—“The tradition of the importation of
+the Lüry from India is related by no less than five Persian or Arab
+writers: first, about the year 940 by Hamza, an Arab historian, born at
+Ispahan; next, as we have seen, by Firdusi; in the year 1126 by the
+author of the ‘Modjmel-al-Yevaryk;’ in the fifteenth century by Mirkhoud,
+the historian of the Sassanides.  The transplanted musicians are called
+by Hamza _Zuth_, and in some manuscripts of Mirkhoud’s history the same
+name occurs, written, according to the Indian orthography, _Djatt_.
+These words are undistinguishable when pronounced, and, in fact, may be
+looked upon as phonetically equivalent, the Arabic _z_ being the
+legitimate representative of the Indian _dj_.  Now Zuth or Zatt, as it is
+indifferently written, is one of the designations of the Syrian Gipsies,
+and Djatt is the tribal appellative of the ancient Indian race still
+widely diffused throughout the Punjab and Beloochistan.  Thus we find
+that the modern Lüry, who may, without fear of error, be classed as
+Persian Gipsies, derive a traditional origin from certain Indian
+minstrels called by an Arab author of the tenth century _Zuth_, and by a
+Persian historian of the fifteenth, _Djatt_, a name claimed, on the one
+hand by the Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the
+other by a people dwelling in the valley of the Indus.”  The Djatts were
+averse to religious speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances;
+the Hindu was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions
+of caste.  From a remote period there were Djatt settlements along the
+shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the route by which the
+Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I have before intimated, rather
+than endure the life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan
+task-masters.  Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no
+disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran through
+their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a hedge-sparrow in
+spring-time would bring into action, and cause them to bound like wild
+asses to the lanes, commons, and moors.  They have always refused to
+submit to the Mohammedan faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither
+Brahma nor Budda, and have never adopted any national religion whatever.
+The church of the Gipsies, according to a popular saying in Hungary, “was
+built of bacon, and long ago eaten by the dogs.”  Captain Richard F.
+Burton wrote in 1849, in his work called the “Sindh, and the Races that
+Inhabit the Valley of the Indus:”—“It seems probable, from the appearance
+and other peculiarities of the race, that the Djatts are connected by
+consanguinity with that singular race, the Gipsies.”  Some writers have
+endeavoured to prove that the Gipsies were formerly Egyptians; but, from
+several causes, they have never been able to show conclusively that such
+was the case.  The wandering Gipsies in Egypt, at the present day, are
+not looked upon by the Egyptians as in any way related to them.  Then,
+again, others have tried to prove that the Gipsies are the descendants of
+Hagar; but this argument falls to the ground simply because the
+connecting links have not been found.  The two main reasons alleged by
+Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this theory are, first, that the
+Ishmaelites are wanderers; second, that they are smiths, or workers in
+iron and brass.  The Mohammedans claim Ishmael as their father, and
+certainly they would be in a better position to judge upon this point
+eleven centuries ago then we possibly can be at this late date.  And so,
+in like manner, where it is alleged that the Gipsies sprang from,
+Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and Hungary.
+
+The following are specimens of Indian characters, taken from “The People
+of India,” prepared under the authority of the Indian Government, and
+edited by Dr. Forbes Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S.  In
+speaking of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable
+character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of the large
+class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to Hinduism and
+unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a miserable condition of
+life as outcasts from the more civilised communities.  Changars are, in
+general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation.
+They object to continuous labour.  The women make baskets, beg, pilfer,
+or sift and grind corn.  They have no settled places of residence, and
+live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages.
+They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but
+they make offerings at Mohammedan shrines.  They have private ceremonies,
+separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the
+aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most
+ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant
+demons and malicious sprites.  They marry exclusively among themselves,
+and polygamy is common.  In appearance, both men and women are
+repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular
+being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type.  The Changars are one
+of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper
+provinces.  They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by others, never
+changing, never improving, never advancing in the social rank, scale, or
+utility—outcast and foul parasites from the earliest ages, and they so
+remain.  The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits,
+indulging freely in intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured
+hemp leaves, to a great extent.  Their food can hardly be particularised,
+and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there
+are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at
+marriages and other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which
+usually end in foul orgies.  In the clothes and person the Changars are
+decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the
+tribes can hardly be exceeded.
+
+The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the far
+Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appear as the
+Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan.  In “The People of India,” we
+are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a
+marked difference from those who surround them (in Behar).  The Hindus
+admit their claim to antiquity.  Their designation in the Shastras is
+Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater.  They are wanderers, they make baskets and
+mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings
+on it.  They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling
+all dead bodies.  They eat all animals which have died a natural death,
+and are particularly fond of pork of this description.  “Notwithstanding
+profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and
+it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white.”
+The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers.
+Travellers speak of them as “Gipsies.”  A specimen which we have of their
+language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an
+error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be
+called pure Romany.  Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his
+wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana.
+_D_ in Hindustani is found as _r_ in English Gipsy speech—_e.g._, _doi_,
+a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as _roi_.  Now in common Romany we
+have, even in London:—
+
+Rom            A Gipsy.
+
+Romni          A Gipsy wife.
+
+Romnipen       Gipsydom.
+
+Of this word _rom_ we shall more to say.  It may be observed that there
+are in the Indian _Dom_ certain distinctly-marked and degrading features,
+characteristic of the European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the
+habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the
+caliphs.  Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making
+baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness, does not agree with
+anything we can learn of the Jats.  Yet the European Gipsies are all
+this, and at the same time ‘horsey’ like the Jats.  Is it not extremely
+probable that during the “out-wandering” the Dom communicated his name
+and habits to his fellow-emigrants?
+
+The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other
+European Gipsies appears to link them with the Lüri of Persia.  These are
+distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves,
+fortune-tellers, and minstrels.  The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that
+about the year 420 A.D., Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram
+Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels,
+male and female, called _Lüri_.  Though lands were allotted to them, with
+corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds.
+Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:—
+
+“They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of Europe.”  [“Travels in
+Beloochistan and Scinde,” p. 153.]  “They speak a dialect peculiar to
+themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping
+and pilfering.  Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and
+music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and
+monkeys that are broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks.  In
+each company there are always two or three members who profess . . .
+modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into every
+society.”  This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and
+monkeys, identifies them with the Ricinari, or bear-leading Gipsies of
+Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania.  A party of these lately
+came to England.  We have seen these Syrian Ricinari in Egypt.  They are
+unquestionably Gipsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied
+the early migration of Jats and Doms.
+
+The following is the description of another low-caste, wandering tribe of
+Indians, taken from “The People of India,” called “Sanseeas,” vagrants of
+no particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi.  The
+editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been vagrants from
+the earliest periods of Indian history.  They may have accompanied Aryan
+immigrants or invaders, or they may have risen out of aboriginal tribes;
+but whatever their origin, they have not altered in any respect, and
+continue to prey upon its population as they have ever done, and will
+continue to do as long as they are in existence, unless they are forcibly
+restrained by our Government and converted, as the Thugs have been, into
+useful members of society.
+
+They are essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship,
+ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or
+profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime,
+and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they
+please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever
+preying upon the people.  When they are not engaged in acts of crime,
+they are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the most
+abject poverty.  The women and children have the true whine of the
+professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged bazaars, receiving
+charity and stealing what they can.  They sell mock baubles in some
+instances, but only as a cloak to other enterprises, and as a pretence of
+an honest calling.  The men are clever at assuming disguises; and being
+often intelligent and even polite in their demeanour, can become
+religious devotees, travelling merchants, or whatever they need to
+further their ends.  They are perfectly unscrupulous and very daring in
+their proceedings.  The Sanseeas are not only Thugs and Dacoits, but
+kidnappers of children, and in particular of female children, who are
+readily sold even at very tender ages to be brought up as household
+slaves, or to be educated by professional classes for the purpose of
+prostitution.  These crimes are the peculiar offence of the women members
+of the tribe.  Generally a few families in company wander over the whole
+of Northern India, but are also found in the Deccan, sometimes by
+themselves, sometimes in association with Khimjurs, or a class of
+Dacoits, called Mooltanes.  It is, perhaps, a difficult question for
+Government to deal with, but it is not impossible, as the Thugs have been
+employed in useful and profitable arts, and thus reclaimed from pursuits
+in which they have never known in regard to others the same instincts of
+humanity which exist among ourselves.  Sanseeas have as many wives and
+concubines as they can support.  Some of the women are good-looking, but
+with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of suspicion in
+their features which is repulsive.  They are, as a class, in a condition
+of miserable poverty, living from hand to mouth, idle, disreputable,
+restless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even
+habitations.  They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a
+dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or _argot_ terms of
+their own that is unintelligible to other classes.  In “The People of
+India” mention is made of another class of wandering Indians, called
+Nuts, or Nâths, who correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like
+these, have no settled home.  They are constant thieves.  The men are
+clever as acrobats.  The women attend their performances, and sing or
+play on native drums or tambourines.  The Nuts do not mix with or
+intermarry with other tribes.  They live for the most part in tents made
+of black blanket stuff, and move from village to village through all
+parts of the country.  They are as a marked race, and generally
+distrusted wherever they go.
+
+They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers,
+blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents.  They eat everything, except
+garlic.  There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by
+travellers as “Gipsies.”  They are travelling merchants or pedlars.
+Among all of these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in
+England.  This slang extends even into Persia.  Each tribe has its own,
+but the general name for it is _Rom_.
+
+It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in Northern and
+Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded even by the Nats and
+Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly Gipsy.  “We have
+met,” says one writer, “in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of
+Calcutta.  This man had in his youth lived with these wanderers, and
+been, in fact, one of them.  He had also, as is common with intelligent
+Mohammedans, written his autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of
+the Indian Gipsy language.  This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his
+English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so ‘because she
+was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not understand.’
+With the assistance of an eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly
+familiar with both Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully
+examined.  He declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, ‘like
+English Gipsies here.’  ‘People in India called them Trablus or Syrians,
+a misapplied word, derived from a town in Syria, which in turn bears the
+Arabic name for Tripoli.  But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus,
+and not Syrian Gipsies.  They had a peculiar language, and called both
+this tongue and themselves _Rom_.  In it bread was called Manro.’  Manro
+is all over Europe the Gipsy word for _bread_.  In English Romany it is
+softened into _maro_ or _morro_.  Captain Burton has since informed us
+that _manro_ is the Afghan word for bread; but this our ex-Gipsy did not
+know.  He merely said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect
+except that of the Rom, and that Rom was the general slang of the road,
+derived, as he supposed, from the Trablus.”
+
+These are, then, the very Gipsies of Gipsies in India.  They are thieves,
+fortune-tellers, and vagrants.  But whether they have or had any
+connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish.  Their
+language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be
+borne in mind that the word Rom, like Dom, is one of wide dissemination,
+Dom being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race.  And the very great majority
+of even English Gipsy words are Hindu, with an admixture of Persian, and
+not belonging to a slang of any kind.  As in India, _churi_ is a knife,
+_nak_, the nose, _balia_, hairs, and so on, with others which would be
+among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents.  And yet these
+very Gipsies are _Rom_, and the wife is a _Romni_, and they use words
+which are not Hindu in common with European Gipsies.  It is therefore not
+improbable that in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as
+they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least
+of the real stock.  It is to be desired that some resident in India would
+investigate the Trablus.
+
+Grellmann in his German treatise on Gipsies, says:—“They are lively,
+uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently
+inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith
+and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding
+benefits with the most insidious malice.  Fear makes them slavishly
+compliant when under subjection, but having nothing to apprehend, like
+other timorous people, they are cruel.  Desire of revenge often causes
+them to take the most desperate resolutions.  To such a degree of
+violence is their fury sometimes excited, that a mother has been known in
+the excess of passion to take her small infant by the feet, and therewith
+strike the object of her anger.  They are so addicted to drinking as to
+sacrifice what is most necessary to them that they may feast their
+palates with ardent spirits.  Nothing can exceed the unrestrained
+depravity of manners existing among them.  Unchecked by any idea of shame
+they give way to every libidinous desire.  The mother endeavours by the
+most scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to
+sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer
+of others.  Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist
+by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the
+seven days in the week.  This indolence increases their propensity to
+stealing and cheating.  They seek to avail themselves of every
+opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires.  Their universal bad
+character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge,
+malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning,
+though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of
+no use in society.  The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let
+it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle,
+there these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest numbers.”
+
+So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent
+their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes
+within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact
+sufficient to cope with them.  A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies
+must have his hands out of his pockets, “all his buttons on,” “his head
+screwed upon the right place,” and no fool, or he will be swamped before
+he leaves the place.  This I experienced myself a week or two since.
+During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, the
+_Illustrated London News_, had a number of faithful sketches showing
+Gipsy life round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I
+have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &c., encouraged by the
+untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a clergyman, not overdone with
+too much wisdom and common sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N---
+Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the neighbour hood
+of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ
+Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the
+work of education among the Gipsy children—it is certain that this
+farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a
+friend wrote to me, stating that the next time I went to the
+neighbourhood of N--- Hill I “must look out for a warm reception,” to
+which I replied, that “the sooner I had it the better, and I would go for
+it in a day or two;” accordingly I went, believing in the old Book,
+“Resist the devil and he will flee from thee.”  Upon my first approach
+towards them, I was met with sour looks, scowls, and not over polite
+language, but with a little pleasantry, chatting, and a few little
+things, such as Christmas cards, oranges to give to the children, the sun
+began to beam upon their countenances, and all passed off with smiles,
+good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a man who had the
+colour and expression upon his face of his satanic majesty from the
+regions below.  It took me all my time to smile and say kind things while
+he was pacing up and down opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his
+eye like fire, step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge.  He was
+speaking out in no unmistakable language, “I should like to see you hung
+like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should, and I mean it
+from my heart.”  When I asked him to point out anything I had said or
+done that was not correct, he was in a fix, and all he could say was,
+that “I would be likely to stop his game.”  Every now and then he would
+thrust his hands into his pockets, as if feeling for his clasp-knife, and
+then again, occasionally, he would give a shrug of the shoulders, as if
+he felt not at all satisfied.  I felt in my pocket, and opened my small
+penknife.  I thought it might do a little service in case he should
+“close in upon me.”  Just to feel his pulse, and set his heart a beating,
+I told him, good-humouredly, that “I was not afraid of half-a-dozen
+better men than he was if they would come one at a time, but did not
+think I could tackle them all at once.”  This caused him to open his eyes
+wider than I had seen them before, as if in wonder and amazement at the
+kind of fellow he had come in contact with.  I told him I was afraid that
+he would find me a queer kind of customer.  Gipsies as a rule are
+cowards, and this feature I could see in his actions and countenance.
+However, after talking matters over for some time we parted friends,
+feeling thankful that the storm had abated.
+
+The Gipsies plan of attacking a house, town, city, or country for the
+sake of pillage, plunder, and gain remains the same to-day as it did
+eight centuries ago.  They do not generally resort to open violence as
+the brigands of Spain, Turkey and other parts of the East.  They follow
+out an organised system, at least, they go to work upon different lines.
+In the first place, they send a kind of advance-guard to find out where
+the loot and soft hearts lay and the weaknesses of those who hold them,
+and when this has been done they bring all the arts their evil
+disposition can devise to bear upon the weak points till they are
+successful.  When Mahmood was returning with his victorious army from the
+war in the eleventh century with the spoils and plunder of war upon their
+backs, and while the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured
+away with the Gipsy girls’ “witching eyes,” the old Gipsies, numbering
+some hundreds, who where camping in the neighbourhood, bolted off with
+their war prizes; this so enraged Mahmood, after finding out that he had
+been sold by a lot of low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army
+after them and slew the whole band of these wandering Indians.
+
+[Picture: A gentleman gipsy’s tent, and his dog, “Grab,” Hackney Marshes]
+
+Sometimes they will put on a hypocritical air of religious sanctity; at
+other times they will dress their prettiest girls in Oriental finery and
+gaudy colours on purpose to catch the unwary; at other times they will
+try to lay hold of the sympathic by sending out their old women and
+tottering men dressed in rags; and at other times they will endeavour to
+lay hold of the benevolent by sending out women heavily laden with
+babies, and in this way they have Gipsyised and are still Gipsyising our
+own country from the time they landed in Scotland in the year 1514, until
+they besieged London now more than two centuries ago, planting their
+encampments in the most degraded parts on the outskirts of our great
+city; and this holds good of them even to this day.  They are never to be
+seen living in the throng of a town or in the thick of a fight.  In
+sketching the plan of campaigning for the day, the girls with pretty
+“everlasting flowers” go in one direction, the women with babies tackle
+the tradesmen and householders by selling skewers, clothes-pegs, and
+other useful things, but in reality to beg, and the old women with the
+assistance of the servant girls face the brass knockers through the back
+kitchen.  The men are all this time either loitering about the tents or
+skulking down the lanes spotting out their game for the night, with their
+lurcher dogs at their heels.  Thus the Gipsy lives and thus the Gipsy
+dies, and is buried like a dog; his tent destroyed, and his soul flown to
+another world to await the reckoning day.  He can truthfully say as he
+leaves his tenement of clay behind, “No man careth for my soul.”  Charles
+Wesley, no doubt, in his day, had seen vast numbers of these wandering
+English heathens in various parts of the country as he travelled about on
+his missionary tour, and it is not at all improbable but that they were
+in his mind when those soul-inspiring, elevating, and tear-fetching lines
+were penned by him in 1748, and first published by subscription in his
+“Hymns and Sacred Poems,” 2 vols., 1749, the profits of which enabled him
+to get a wife and set up housekeeping on his own account at Bristol.
+They are words that have healed thousands of broken hearts, fixed the
+hopes of the downcast on heaven, and sent the sorrowful on his way
+rejoicing; and they are words that will live as long as there is a
+Methodist family upon earth to lisp its song of triumph.
+
+   “Come on, my partners in distress,
+   My comrades through the wilderness,
+      Who still your bodies feel;
+   A while forget your griefs and fears,
+   And look beyond this vale of tears,
+      To that celestial hill.
+
+   “Beyond the bounds of time and space,
+   Look forward to that heavenly place,
+      The saints’ secure abode;
+   On faith’s strong eagle-pinions rise,
+   And force your passage to the skies,
+      And scale the mount of God.
+
+   “Who suffer with our Master here,
+   We shall before His face appear,
+      And by His side sit down;
+   To patient faith the prize is sure;
+   And all that to the end endure
+      The cross, shall wear the crown.”
+
+It is impossible to give anything like a correct number of Gipsies that
+are outside Europe.  Many travellers have attempted to form some idea of
+the number, and have come to the conclusion that there were not less than
+3,000 families in Persia in 1856, and in 1871 there were not less than
+67,000 Gipsies in Armenia and Asiatic Turkey.  In Egypt of one tribe only
+there are 16,000.  With regard to the number of Gipsies there are in
+America no one has been able to compute; but by this time the number must
+be considerable, for stragglers have been wending their way there from
+England, Europe, and other parts of the world for some time.
+
+Mikliosch, in 1878, stated that there are not less than 700,000 in
+Europe.  Turkey, previous to the war with Russia, 104,750, Bosnia and
+Herzegovina in 1874 contained 9,537.  Servia in 1874 had 24,691; in 1873
+Montenegro had 500, and in Roumania there are at the present time from
+200,000 to 300,000.  According to various official estimates in Austria
+there are about 10,000, and in 1846 Bohemia contained 13,500, and Hungary
+159,000.  In Transylvania in 1850 there were 78,923, and in Hungary
+proper there were in 1864, 36,842.  In Spain there are 40,000; in France
+from 3,000 to 6,000; in Germany and Italy, 34,000; Scandinavia, 1,500; in
+Russia they numbered in 1834, 48,247, exclusive of Polish Gipsies.  Ten
+years later they numbered 1,427,539, and in 1877 the number is given as
+11,654.  It seems somewhat strange that the number of Gipsies should be
+in 1844, 1,427,539, and thirty-five years later the number should have
+been reduced to 11,654.  Presuming these figures to be correct, the
+question arises, What has become of the 1,415,885 during the last
+thirty-five years?
+
+As regards the number of Gipsies in England, Hoyland in his day, 1816,
+calculated that there were between 15,000 and 18,000, and goes on to say
+this:—“It has come to the knowledge of the writer what foundation there
+has been for the report commonly circulated that a member of Parliament
+had stated in the House of Commons, when speaking on some question
+relating to Ireland, that there were not less than 36,000 Gipsies in
+Great Britain.
+
+“To make up such an aggregate the numerous hordes must have been included
+who traverse most of the nation with carts and asses for the sale of
+earthenware, and live out of doors great part of the year, after the
+manner of the Gipsies.  These potters, as they are commonly called,
+acknowledge that Gipsies have intermingled with them, and their habits
+are very similar.  They take their children along with them on travel,
+and, like the Gipsies, regret that they are without education.”  Mr.
+Hoyland says that he endeavoured to obtain the number of pot-hawking
+families of this description who visited the earthenware manufactories at
+Tunstall, Burslem, Longport, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Fenton, Longton, and
+other places in Staffordshire, but without success.
+
+Borrow, in his time, 1843, put the number as upwards of 10,000.  The last
+census shows that there were under 4,000; but then it should be borne in
+mind that the Gipsies decidedly objected to their numbers being taken.
+Their reason for taking this step and putting obstacles in the way of the
+census-takers has never been stated, except that they looked upon it with
+a superstitious regard and dislike, the same as they look upon
+photographers, painters, and artists, as kind of _Bengaw_, for whom Gipsy
+models will sit for _soonakei_, _Roopeno_, or even a _posh-hovi_.  They
+told me that during the day the census was taken they made it a point to
+always be upon the move, and skulking about in the dark.  The census
+returns for the number of canal-boatmen gives under 12,000.  The Duke of
+Richmond stated in the House of Lords, August 8, 1877, that there were
+between 29,000 and 80,000 canal boatmen.  The number I published in the
+daily papers in 1873, viz., 100,000 men, women, and children is being
+verified as the Canal Boats Act is being put into operation.
+
+At a pretty good rough estimate I reckon there are at least from 15,000
+to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom.  Apart from London, if I may
+take ten of the Midland counties as a fair average, there are close upon
+3,000 Gipsy families living in tents and vans in the by-lanes, and
+attending fairs, shows, &c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and
+four children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched abodes
+called domiciles, this would show us 18,000; and judging from my own
+inquiries and observation, and also from the reliable statements of
+others who have mixed among them, there are not less than 2,000 on the
+outskirts of London in various nooks, corners, and patches of open
+spaces.  Thus it will be seen, according to this statement, we shall have
+1,000 Gipsies for every 1,750,000 of the inhabitants in our great London;
+and this proportion will be fully borne out throughout the rest of the
+country; so taking either the Midland counties or London as an average,
+we arrive at pretty much the same number—_i.e._, 15,000 to 20,000 in our
+midst, and moving about from place to place.  Upon Leicester Race Course,
+at the last races, I counted upwards of ninety tents, vans, and shows;
+connected with each there would be an average of man, woman, and three
+children.  A considerable number of Gipsies would also be at Nottingham,
+for the Goose Fair was on about the same time.  One gentleman tells me
+that he has seen as many as 5,000 Gipsies collected together at one time
+in the North of England.
+
+Of this 20,000, 19,500 cannot read a sentence and write a letter.  The
+highest state of their education is to make crosses, signs, and symbols,
+and to ask people to tell them the names of the streets, and read the
+mile-posts for them.  The full value of money they know perfectly well.
+Out of this 20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering
+about the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the
+alphabet.  The others mostly will tell you that they have “finished their
+education,” and when questioned on the point and asked to put three
+letters together, you put them into a corner, and they are as dumb as
+mutes.  Of the whole number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds
+might be attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of
+education in this way.  Then, again, we have some 1,500 to 2,000 families
+of our own countrymen travelling about the country with their families
+selling hardware and other goods, from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham,
+Leeds, Leicester, the Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing
+towns, from London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children
+running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told me, the
+little education they receive in the winter.
+
+Caravans will be moving about in our midst with “fat babies,” “wax-work
+models,” “wonders of the age,” “the greatest giant in the world,” “a
+living skeleton,” “the smallest man alive,” “menageries,” “wild beast
+shows,” “rifle galleries,” and like things connected with these caravans;
+there will be families of children, none of whom, or at any rate but very
+few of them, are receiving an education and attending any school, and
+living together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van.  In
+addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of school age “on
+the road” tramping with their parents, who sleep in common
+lodging-houses, and who might be brought under educational supervision on
+the plan I shall suggest later on in this book.  Altogether, with the
+Gipsies, we have a population of over 30,000 outside our educational and
+sanitary laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with
+our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.
+
+   “I was a bruised reed
+   Pluck’d from the common corn,
+   Play’d on, rude-handled, worn,
+   And flung aside, aside.”
+
+                                            DR. GROSART, “Sunday at Home.”
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+Commencement of the Gipsy Crusade.
+
+
+ [Picture: A Gipsy’s home for man, wife,  and six children, Hackney Wick]
+
+When as a lad I trudged along in the brick-yards, now more than forty
+years ago, I remember most vividly that the popular song of the
+_employés_ of that day was
+
+   “When lads and lasses in their best
+      Were dress’d from top to toe,
+   In the days we went a-gipsying
+      A long time ago;
+   In the days we went a-gipsying,
+      A long time ago.”
+
+Every “brick-yard lad” and “brick-yard wench” who would not join in
+singing these lines was always looked upon as a “stupid donkey,” and the
+consequence was that upon all occasions, when excitement was needed as a
+whip, they were “struck up;” especially would it be the case when the
+limbs of the little brick and clay carrier began to totter and were
+“fagging up.”  When the task-master perceived the “gang” had begun to
+“slinker” he would shout out at the top of his voice, “Now, lads and
+wenches, strike up with the:
+
+    “‘In the days we went a-gipsying, a long time ago.’”
+
+And as a result more work was ground out of the little English slave.
+Those words made such an impression upon me at the time that I used to
+wonder what “gipsying” meant.  Somehow or other I imagined that it was
+connected with fortune-telling, thieving and stealing in one form or
+other, especially as the lads used to sing it with “gusto” when they had
+been robbing the potato field to have “a potato fuddle,” while they were
+“oven tenting” in the night time.  Roasted potatoes and cold turnips were
+always looked upon as a treat for the “brickies.”  I have often vowed and
+said many times that I would, if spared, try to find out what “gipsying”
+really was.  It was a puzzle I was always anxious to solve.  Many times I
+have been like the horse that shies at them as they camp in the ditch
+bank, half frightened out of my wits, and felt anxious to know either
+more or less of them.  From the days when carrying clay and loading
+canal-boats was my toil and “gipsying” my song, scarcely a week has
+passed without the words
+
+   “When lads and lasses in their best
+      Were dress’d from top to toe,
+   In the days we went a-gipsying
+      A long time ago,”
+
+ringing in my ears, and at times when busily engaged upon other things,
+“In the days we went a-gipsying” would be running through my mind.  In
+meditation and solitude; by night and by day; at the top of the hill, and
+down deep in the dale; in the throng and battle of life; at the deathbed
+scene; through evil report and good report these words, “In the days we
+went a-gipsying,” were ever and anon at my tongue’s end.  The other part
+of the song I quickly forgot, but these words have stuck to me ever
+since.  On purpose to try to find out what fortune-telling was, when in
+my teens I used to walk after working hours from Tunstall to Fenton, a
+distance of six miles, to see “old Elijah Cotton,” a well-known character
+in the Potteries, who got his living by it, to ask him all sorts of
+questions.  Sometimes he would look at my hands, at other times he would
+put my hand into his, and hold it while he was reading out of the Bible,
+and burning something like brimstone-looking powder—the forefinger of the
+other hand had to rest upon a particular passage or verse; at other times
+he would give me some of this yellow-looking stuff in a small paper to
+wear against my left breast, and some I had to burn exactly as the clock
+struck twelve at night, under the strictest secrecy.  The stories this
+fortune-teller used to relate to me as to his wonderful power over the
+spirits of the other world were very amusing, aye, and over “the men and
+women of this generation.”  He was frequently telling me that he had
+“fetched men from Manchester in the dead of the night flying through the
+air in the course of an hour;” and this kind of rubbish he used to relate
+to those who paid him their shillings and half-crowns to have their
+fortunes told.  My visits lasted for a little time till he told me that
+he could do nothing more, as I was “not one of his sort.”  Like Thomas
+called Didymus, “hard of belief.”  Except an occasional glance at the
+Gipsies as I have passed them on the road-side, the subject has been
+allowed to rest until the commencement of last year, when I mentioned the
+matter to my friends, who, in reply, said I should find it a difficult
+task; this had the effect of causing a little hesitation to come over my
+sensibilities, and in this way, between hesitation and doubt, matters
+went on till one day in July last year, when the voice of Providence and
+the wretched condition of the Gipsy children seemed to speak to me in
+language that I thought it would be perilous to disregard.  On my return
+home one evening I found a lot of Gipsies in the streets; it struck me
+very forcibly that the time for action had now arrived, and with this
+view in mind I asked Moses Holland—for that was his name, and he was the
+leader of the gang—to call into my house for some knives which required
+grinding, and while his mate was grinding the knives, for which I had to
+pay two shillings, I was getting all the information I could out of him
+about the Gipsy children—this with some additional information given to
+me by Mr. Clayton and several other Gipsies at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
+together with a Gipsy woman’s tale to my wife, mentioned in my “Cry of
+the Children from the Brick-yards of England,” brought forth my first
+letter upon the condition of the poor Gipsy children as it appeared in
+the _Standard_, _Daily Chronicle_, and nearly every other daily paper on
+August 14th of last year:—“Some years since my attention was drawn to the
+condition of these poor neglected children, of whom there are many
+families eking out an existence in the Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and
+Staffordshire lanes.  Two years since a pitiful appeal was made in one of
+our local papers asking me to take up the cause of the poor Gipsy
+children; but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one
+with time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue.  Sir, a few
+weeks since our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of
+the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to
+please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time
+if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant’s
+life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children,
+dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells—if living
+under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, can be
+called living in tents—on the roadside in the midst of grass, sticks,
+stones, and mud; and they would have done well also if they had put out
+their hand to rescue from idleness, ignorance, and heathenism our
+roadside arabs, _i.e._, the children living in vans, and who attend
+fairs, wakes, &c.  Recently I came across some of these wandering tribes,
+and the following facts gleaned from them will show that missionaries and
+schoolmasters have not done much for them.  Moses Holland, who has been a
+Gipsy nearly all his life, says he knows about two hundred and fifty
+families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties and thinks that a
+similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom.  He
+has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles.
+He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent.  He has
+seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many of
+them able to read or write.  His child of six months old—with his wife
+ill at the same time in the tent—sickened, died, and was ‘laid out’ by
+him, and it was also buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the
+roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last January.  When the poor thing died he
+had not sixpence in his pocket.  In shaking hands with him as we parted
+his face beamed with gladness, and he said that I was the first who had
+held out the hand to him during the last twenty years.  At another time
+later on I came across Bazena Clayton, who said that she had had sixteen
+children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a
+roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of one of these tents;
+and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.  This poor woman knows about three hundred families of
+Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself,
+so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the
+present time.  She said she could not read herself, and thinks that not
+one Gipsy in twenty can.  She has travelled all her life.  Her mother,
+named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother of fifteen
+children, all of whom were born in a tent.  A Gipsy lives, but one can
+scarcely tell how; they generally locate for a time near hen-roosts,
+potato-camps, turnip-fields, and game-preserves.  They sell a few
+clothes-lines and clothes-pegs, but they seldom use such things
+themselves.  Washing would destroy their beauty.  Telling fortunes to
+servant girls and old maids is a source of income to some of them.  They
+sleep, but in many instances lie crouched together, like so many dogs,
+regardless of either sex or age.  They have blood, bone, muscle, and
+brains, which are applied in many instances to wrong purposes.  To have
+between three and four thousand men and women, and fifteen thousand
+children classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all
+over the country, in ignorance and evil training, that carries peril with
+it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim on the grounds
+of justice and equity, that if these poor children, living in vans and
+tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places,
+they shall be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of
+1877, so that the children may be brought under the Compulsory Clauses of
+the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other
+children.”
+
+The foregoing letter, as it appeared in the _Standard_, brought forth the
+following leading article upon the subject the following day, August
+15th, in which the writer says:—“We yesterday published a letter from Mr.
+George Smith, whose efforts to ameliorate and humanise the floating and
+transitory population of our canals and navigable rivers have already
+borne good fruit, in which he calls attention to the deserted and almost
+hopeless lot of English Gipsy children.  Moses Holland—the Hollands are a
+Gipsy family almost as old as the Lees or the Stanleys, and a Holland
+always holds high rank among the ‘Romany’ folk—assures Mr. Smith that in
+ten of the Midland counties he knows some two hundred and fifty families
+of Gipsies, and that none of their children can read or write.  Bazena
+Clayton, an old lady of caste, almost equal to that of a Lee or a
+Holland, confirms the story.  She has lived in tents all her life.  She
+was born in a tent, married from a tent, has brought up a family of
+sixteen children, more or less, under the same friendly shelter, and
+expects to breathe her last in a tent.  That she can neither read nor
+write goes without saying; although doubtless she knows well enough how
+to ‘kair her patteran,’ or to make that strange cross in the dust which a
+true Gipsy alway leaves behind him at his last place of sojourn, as a
+mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track.  ‘Patteran,’ it
+may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own
+‘path;’ and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy
+dialect will show their secret _argot_ to be, as Mr. Leland calls it, ‘a
+curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point
+of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient
+language.’  No Sanscrit or even Greek scholar can fail to be struck by
+the fact that, in the Gipsy tongue, a road is a ‘drum,’ to see is to
+‘dicker,’ to get or take to ‘lell,’ and to go to ‘jall;’ or, after
+instances so pregnant, to agree with Professor von Kogalnitschan that ‘it
+is interesting to be able to study a Hindu dialect in the heart of
+Europe.’  Mr. Smith, however, being a philanthropist rather than a
+philologist, takes another view of the question.  His anxiety is to see
+the Gipsies—and especially the Gipsy children—reclaimed.  ‘A Gipsy,’ he
+reminds us, ‘lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate
+for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and
+game-preserves.  They sell a few clothes-lines and clothes-pegs; but they
+Seldom use such things themselves.  Washing would destroy their beauty
+. . . To have between three and four thousand men and women, and eight or
+ten thousand children, classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds,
+roaming all over the country in ignorance and evil training, is not a
+pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim that if these poor
+children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed
+to live in these places, they shall be registered in a manner analogous
+to the Canal Boats Act, so that the children may be brought under the
+Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised.’
+
+“Mr. Smith, it is to be feared, hardly appreciates the insuperable
+difficulty of the task he proposes.  The true Gipsy is absolutely
+irreclaimable.  He was a wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of the
+earth before the foundations of Mycenæ were laid or the plough drawn to
+mark out the walls of Rome; and such as he was four thousand years ago or
+more, such he still remains, speaking the same tongue, leading the same
+life, cherishing the same habits, entertaining the same wholesome or
+unwholesome hatred of all civilisation, and now, as then, utterly devoid
+of even the simplest rudiments of religious belief.  His whole attitude
+of mind is negative.  To him all who are not Gipsies, like himself, are
+‘Gorgios,’ and to the true Gipsy a ‘Gorgio’ is as hateful as is a ‘cowan’
+to a Freemason.  It would be interesting to speculate whether, when the
+Romany folk first began their wanderings, the ‘Gorgios’ were not—as the
+name would seem to indicate—the farmers or permanent population of the
+earth; and whether the nomad Gipsy may not still hate the ‘Gorgio’ as
+much as Cain hated Abel, Ishmael Isaac, and Esau Jacob.  Certain in any
+case it is that the Gipsy, however civilised he may appear, remains, as
+Mr. Leland describes him, ‘a character so entirely strange, so utterly at
+variance with our ordinary conceptions of humanity, that it is no
+exaggeration whatever to declare that it would be a very difficult task
+for the best writer to convey to the most intelligent reader any idea of
+such a nature.’  The true Gipsy is, to begin with, as devoid of
+superstition as of religion.  He has no belief in another world, no fear
+of a future state, nor hope for it, no supernatural object of either
+worship or dread—nothing beyond a few old stories, some Pagan, some
+Christian, which he has picked up from time to time, and to which he
+holds—much as a child holds to its fairy tales—uncritically and
+indifferently.  Ethical distinctions are as unknown to him as to a kitten
+or a magpie.  He is kindly by nature, and always anxious to please those
+who treat him well, and to win their affection.  But the distinction
+between affection and esteem is one which he cannot fathom; and the
+precise shade of _meum_ and _tuum_ is as absolutely unintelligible to him
+as was the Hegelian antithesis between _nichts_ and _seyn_ to the late
+Mr. John Stuart Mill.  To make the true Gipsy we have only to add to this
+an absolute contempt for all that constitutes civilisation.  The Gipsy
+feels a house, or indeed anything at all approaching to the idea of a
+permanent dwelling, to amount to a positive restraint upon his liberty.
+He can live on hedgehog and acorns—though he may prefer a fowl and
+potatoes not strictly his own.  Wherever a hedge gives shelter he will
+roll himself up and sleep.  And it is possibly because he has no property
+of his own that he is so slow to recognise the rights of property in
+others.  But above all, his tongue—the weird, corrupt, barbarous Sanscrit
+‘patter’ or ‘jib,’ known only to himself and to those of his blood—is the
+keynote of his strange life.  In spite of every effort that has been made
+to fathom it, the Gipsy dialect is still unintelligible to ‘Gorgios’—a
+few experts such as Mr. Borrow alone excepted.  But wherever the true
+Gipsy goes he carries his tongue with him, and a Romany from Hungary,
+ignorant of English as a Chippeway or an Esquimaux, will ‘patter’
+fluently with a Lee, a Stanley, a Locke, or a Holland, from the English
+Midlands, and make his ‘rukkerben’ at once easily understood.  Nor is
+this all, for there are certain strange old Gipsy customs which still
+constitute a freemasonry.  The marriage rites of Gipsies are a definite
+and very significant ritual.  Their funeral ceremonies are equally
+remarkable.  Not being allowed to burn their dead, they still burn the
+dead man’s clothes and all his small property, while they mourn for him
+by abstaining—often for years—from something of which he was fond, and by
+taking the strictest care never to even mention his name.
+
+“What are we to do with children in whom these strange habits and
+beliefs, or rather wants of belief, are as much part of their nature as
+is their physical organisation?  Darwin has told us how, after
+generations had passed, the puppy with a taint of the wolf’s blood in it
+would never come straight to its master’s feet, but always approach him
+in a semicircle.  Not Kuhleborhn nor Undine herself is less susceptible
+of alien culture than the pure-blooded Gipsy.  We can domesticate the
+goose, we can tame the goldfinch and the linnet; but we shall never
+reclaim the guinea-fowl, or accustom the swallow to a cage.  Teach the
+Gipsy to read, or even to write; he remains a Gipsy still.  His love of
+wandering is as keen as is the instinct of a migratory bird for its
+annual passage; and exactly as the prisoned cuckoo of the first year will
+beat itself to death against its bars when September draws near, so the
+Gipsy, even when most prosperous, will never so far forsake the
+traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place.  His mind is
+not as ours.  A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will
+learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or
+the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously
+dispose of the stones in a cherry tart.  But the lesson sits lightly on
+him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever.  Already, indeed,
+our Gipsies are leaving us.  They are not dying out, it is true.  They
+are making their way to the Far West, where land is not yet enclosed,
+where game is not property, where life is free, and where there is always
+and everywhere room to ‘hatch the tan’ or put up the tent.  Romany will,
+in all human probability, be spoken on the other side of the Atlantic
+years after the last traces of it have vanished from amongst ourselves.
+We begin even now to miss the picturesque aspects of Gipsy life—the tent,
+the strange dress, the nomadic habits.  English Gipsies are no longer
+pure and simple vagrants.  They are tinkers, or scissor-grinders, or
+basket-makers, or travel from fair to fair with knock-’em-downs, or rifle
+galleries, or itinerant shows.  Often they have some ostensible place of
+residence.  But they preserve their inner life as carefully as the Jews
+in Spain, under the searching persecution of the Inquisition, preserved
+their faith for generation upon generation; and even now it is a belief
+that when, for the sake of some small kindness or gratuity, a Gipsy woman
+has allowed her child to be baptised, she summons her friends, and
+attempts to undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting the infant to
+some weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the original import
+of which is in all probability a profound mystery to her.  There is a
+quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a prosperous horse-dealer, who,
+becoming wealthy, came up to town, and, amongst other sights, was shown a
+goldsmith’s window.  His sole remark was that the man must be a big thief
+indeed to have so many spoons and watches all at once.  The expression of
+opinion was as naïve and artless as that of Blucher, when observing that
+London was a magnificent city ‘for to sack.’  Mr. Smith’s benevolent
+intentions speak for themselves.  But if he hopes to make the Gipsy ever
+other than a Gipsy, to transform the Romany into a Gorgio, of to alter
+habits of life and mind which have remained unchanged for centuries, he
+must be singularly sanguine, and must be somewhat too disposed to
+overlook the marvellously persistent influences of race and tongue.”
+
+Rather than the cause of the children should suffer by presenting garbled
+or one-sided statements, I purpose quoting the letters and articles upon
+the subject as they have appeared.  To do otherwise would not be fair to
+the authors or just to the cause I have in hand.  The flattering
+allusions and compliments relating to my humble self I am not worthy of,
+and I beg of those who take an interest in the cause of the little ones,
+and deem this book worthy of their notice, to pass over them as though
+such compliments were not there.  The following are some of the letters
+that have appeared in the _Standard_ in reply to mine of the 14th
+instant.  “B. B.” writes on August 16th:—“Would you allow an Irish Gipsy
+to express his views touching George Smith’s letter of this date in your
+paper?  Without in the least desiring to warp his efforts to improve any
+of his fellow-creatures, it seems to me that the poor Gipsy calls for
+much less sympathy, as regards his moral and social life, than more
+favoured classes of the community.  Living under the body of an old cart,
+‘within the sound of church bells,’ in the midst of grass, sticks, and
+stones, by no means argues moral degradation; and if your correspondent
+looks up our criminal statistics he will not find one Gipsy registered
+for every five hundred criminals who have not only been within hearing of
+the church bells but also listening to the preacher’s voice.  It should
+be remembered that the poor Gipsy fulfils a work which is a very great
+convenience to dwellers in out-of-the-way places—brushes, baskets, tubs,
+clothes-stops, and a host of small commodities, in themselves apparently
+insignificant, but which enable this tribe to eke out a living which
+compares very favourably with the hundreds of thousands in our large
+cities who set the laws of the land as well as the laws of decency at
+defiance.  As to education—well, let them get it, if possible; but it
+will be found they possess, as a rule, sufficient intelligence to
+discharge the duties of farm-labourers; and already they are beginning to
+supply a felt want to the agriculturist whose educated assistant leaves
+him to go abroad.”
+
+“An Old Woman” writes as follows:—“In the article on Gipsies in the
+_Standard_ of to-day I was struck with the truth of this; remark—‘He is
+kindly by nature, and always anxious to please those who treat him well,
+and to win their affections.’  I can give you one instance of this in my
+own family, although it happened long, long ago.  The Boswell tribe of
+Gipsies used to encamp once a year near the village in which my
+grandfather (my mother’s father), who was a miller and farmer, lived; and
+there grew up a very kindly feeling between the head of the tribe and my
+grandfather and his family.  Some of the Gipsies would often call at my
+grandfather’s house, where they were always received kindly, and oftener
+still, on business or otherwise, at the mill, to see ‘Pe-tee,’ as they
+called my grandfather, whose Christian name was Peter.  Once upon a time
+my grandfather owed a considerable sum of money, and, alas! could not pay
+it; and his wife and children were much distressed.  I believe they
+feared he would be arrested.  Everything is known in a village; and the
+news of what was feared reached the Gipsies.  The idea of their friend
+Pe-tee being in such trouble was not borne quietly; the chief and one or
+two more appeared at the farm-house, asking to see my grandmother.  They
+told her they had come to pay my grandfather’s debt; ‘he should never be
+distressed for the money,’ they said, ‘as long as they had any.’  I
+believe some arrangement had been made about the debt, but nevertheless
+my grandmother felt just as grateful for the kindness.  The head of the
+tribe wore guineas instead of buttons to his coat, and when his daughter
+was married her dowry was measured in guineas, in a pint measure.  I
+suppose, as in the old ballad of ‘The Beggar of Bethnal Green,’ the
+suitor would give measure for measure.  The villagers all turned out to
+gaze each year when they heard the ‘Boswell gang’ were coming down the
+one long street; the women of the tribe, fine, bold, handsome-looking
+women, in ‘black beaver bonnets, with black feathers and red cloaks,’
+sometimes quarrelled, and my mother, then a girl, saw the procession
+several times stop in the middle of the village, and two women (sometimes
+more) would fall out of the ranks, hand their bonnets to friends, strip
+off cloak and gown, and fight in their ‘shift’ sleeves, using their fists
+like men.  The men of the tribe took no notice, stood quietly about till
+the fight was over, and then the whole bevy passed on to their
+camping-ground.  My grandfather never passed the tents without calling in
+to see his friends, and it would have been an offence indeed if he had
+not partaken of some refreshment.  Two or three times my mother
+accompanied him, and whenever and wherever they met her they were always
+very kind and respectful to ‘Pe-tee’s little girl.’  In after years, when
+visiting her native village, she often inquired if it was known what had
+become of the tribe; at last she heard from some one it was thought they
+had settled in Canada: at any rate they had passed away for ever from
+that part of England.”
+
+Mr. Leland wrote as follows in the _Standard_, August 19:—“As you have
+kindly cited my work on the English Gipsies in your article on them, and
+as many of your readers are giving their opinions on this curious race,
+perhaps you will permit me to make a few remarks on the subject.  Mr.
+Smith is one of those honest philanthropists whom it is the duty of every
+one to honour, and I for one, honour him most sincerely for his kind
+wishes to the Romany; but, with all my respect, I do not think he
+understands the travellers, or that they require much aid from the
+‘Gorgios,’ being quite capable of looking out for themselves.  A _tacho
+Rom_, or real Gipsy, who cannot in an emergency find his ten, or even
+twenty, pounds is a very exceptional character.  As I have, even within a
+few days, been in company, and on very familiar footing with a great
+number of Romanys of different families of the dark blood who spoke the
+‘jib’ with unusual accuracy, I write under a fresh impression.  The Gipsy
+is almost invariably strong and active, a good rough rider and
+pedestrian, and knowing how to use his fists.  He leads a very hard life,
+and is proud of his stamina and his pluck.  Of late years he _kairs_, or
+‘houses,’ more than of old, particularly during the winter, but his life
+at best requires great strength and endurance, and this must, of course,
+be supported by a generous diet.  In fact, he lives well, much better
+than the agricultural labourer.  Let me explain how this is generally
+done.  The Gipsy year may be said to begin with the races.  Thither the
+dark children of Chun-Gwin, whether pure blood, _posh an’ posh_
+(half-and-half), or _churedis_, with hardly a drop of the _kalo-ratt_,
+flock with their cocoa-nuts and the balls, which have of late taken the
+place of the _koshter_, or sticks.  With them go the sorceresses, old and
+young, who pick up money by occasional _dukkerin_, or fortune-telling.
+Other small callings they also have, not by any means generally
+dishonest.  Wherever there is an open pic-nic on the Thames, or a country
+fair, or a regatta at this season, there are Romanys.  Sometimes they
+appear looking like petty farmers, with a bad, or even a good, horse or
+two for sale.  While summer lasts this is the life of the poorer sort.
+
+“This merry time over, they go to the _Livinengro tem_, or
+hop-land—_i.e._, Kent.  Here they work hard, not neglecting the beer-pot,
+which goes about gaily.  In this life they have great advantages over the
+tramps and London poor.  Hopping over, they go, almost _en masse_, or
+within a few days, to London to buy French and German baskets, which they
+get in Houndsditch.  Of late years they send more for the baskets to be
+delivered at certain stations.  Some of them make baskets themselves very
+well, but, as a rule, they prefer to buy them.  While the weather is good
+they live by selling baskets, brooms, clothes-lines, and other small
+wares.  Most families have their regular ‘beats’ or rounds, and confine
+themselves to certain districts.  In winter the men begin to _chiv the
+kosh_, or cut wood—_i.e._, they make butchers’ skewers and clothes-pegs.
+Even this is not unprofitable, as a family, what between manufacturing
+and selling them, can earn from twelve to eighteen shillings a week.
+With this and begging, and occasional jobs of honest hard work which they
+pick up here and there, they contrive to feed well, find themselves in
+beer, and pay, as they now often must, for permission to camp in fields.
+Altogether they work hard and retire early.
+
+“Considering the lives they lead, Gipsies are not dishonest.  If a Gipsy
+is camped anywhere, and a hen is missing for miles around, the theft is
+always at once attributed to him.  The result is that, being sharply
+looked after by everybody, and especially by the police, they cannot act
+like their ancestors.  Their crimes are not generally of a heinous
+nature.  _Chiving a gry_, or stealing a horse, is, I admit, looked upon
+by them with Yorkshire leniency, nor do they regard stealing wood for
+fuel as a great sin.  In this matter they are subject to great
+temptation.  When the nights are cold—
+
+    “Could anything be more alluring
+    Than an old hedge?
+
+“As for Gipsy lying, it is so peculiar that it would be hard to explain.
+The American who appreciates the phrase ‘to sit down and swap lies’ would
+not be taken in by a Romany _chal_, nor would an old salt who can spin
+yarns.  They enjoy hugely being lied unto, as do all Arabs or Hindus.
+Like many naughty children, they like successful efforts of the
+imagination.  The old _dyes_, or mothers, are ‘awful beggars,’ as much by
+habit as anything; but they will give as freely as they will take, and
+their guest will always experience Oriental hospitality.  They are very
+fond of all gentlemen and ladies who take a real interest in them, who
+understand them, and like them.  To such people they are even more honest
+than they are to one another.  But it must be a real _aficion_, not a
+merely amateur affectation of kindness.  Owing to their entire ignorance
+of ordinary house and home life, they are like children in many respects,
+though so shrewd in others.  Among the Welsh Gipsies, who are the most
+unsophisticated and the most purely Romany, I have met with touching
+instances of gratitude and honesty.  The child-like ingenuity which some
+of them manifested in contriving little gratifications for myself and for
+Professor E. H. Palmer, who had been very kind to them, were as naïve as
+amiable.  I have observed that some Gipsies of the more rustic sort loved
+to listen to stories, but, like children, they preferred those which they
+had heard several times and learned to like.  They knew where the laugh
+ought to come in.  The Gipsy is both bad and good, but neither his faults
+nor his virtues are exactly what they are supposed to be.  He is
+certainly something of a scamp—and, _nomen est omen_, there is a tribe of
+Scamps among them—but he is not a bad scamp, and he is certainly a most
+amusing and eccentric one.
+
+“There is not the least use in trying to ameliorate the condition of the
+Gipsy while he remains a traveller.  He will tell you piteous stories,
+but he will take care of himself.  As Ferdusi sings:
+
+    “‘Say what you will and do what you can,
+    No washing e’er whitens the black Zingan.’
+
+“The only kindness he requires is a little charity and forgiveness when
+he steals wood or wires a hare.  All wrong doubtless; but something
+should be allowed to one whose ancestors were called ‘dead-meat eaters’
+in the Shastras.  Should the reader wish to reform a Gipsy, let him
+explain to the Romany that the days for roaming in England are rapidly
+passing away.  Tell him that for his children’s sake he had better rent a
+cheap cottage; that his wife can just as well peddle with her basket from
+a house as from a waggon, and that he can keep a horse and trap and go to
+the races or hopping ‘genteely.’  Point out to him those who have done
+the same, and stimulate his ambition and pride.  As for suffering as a
+traveller he does not know it.  I once asked a Gipsy girl who was sitting
+as a model if she liked the _drom_ (road) best, or living in a house.
+With sparkling eyes and clapping her hands she exclaimed, ‘oh, the road!
+the road!’”
+
+Mr. Beerbohm writes under date August 19th:—“In reading yesterday’s
+article on the customs and idiosyncrasies of Gipsies I was struck by the
+similarity they present to many peculiarities I have observed among the
+Patagonian Indians.  To those curious in such matters it may be of
+interest to know that the custom of burning all the goods and chattels of
+a deceased member of the tribe prevails among the Patagonians as among
+the Gipsies; and the identity of custom is still further carried out,
+inasmuch as with the former, as with the latter, the name of the deceased
+is never uttered, and all allusion to him is strictly avoided.  So much
+so, that in those cases when the deceased has borne some cognomen taken
+from familiar objects, such as ‘Knife,’ ‘Wool,’ ‘Flint,’ &c., the word is
+no longer used by the tribe, some other sound being substituted instead.
+This is one of the reasons why the Tshuelche language is constantly
+fluctuating, but few of the words expressing a proper meaning, as
+chronicled by Fitzroy and Darwin (1832), being now in use.”
+
+The Rev. Mr. Hewett writes to the _Standard_, under date August 19th, to
+say that he baptised two Gipsy children in 1871.  One might ask, in the
+language of one of the “Old Book,” “What are these among so many?”  The
+following letter from Mr. Harrison upon the subject appeared on August
+20th:—“I have just returned from the head-quarters of the Scotch
+Gipsies—Yetholm (Kirk), a small village nestling at the foot of the
+Cheviots in Roxburghshire.  Here I saw the abode of the Queen, a neat
+little cottage, with well-trimmed garden in front.  Inside all was a
+perfect pattern of neatness, and the old lady herself was as clean ‘as a
+new pin.’  As I passed the cottage a carriage and pair drove up, and the
+occupants, four ladies, alighted and entered the cottage.  I was
+afterwards told that they were much pleased with their visit, and that,
+in remembrance of it, each of the four promised to send a new frock to
+the Queen’s grandchild.  The Queen’s son (‘the Prince,’ as he is called)
+I saw at St. James’s Fair, where he was swaggering about in a drunken
+state, offering to fight any man.  I believe he was subsequently locked
+up.  In the month of August there are few Gipsies resident in Yetholm:
+they are generally on their travels selling crockeryware (the country
+people call the Gipsies ‘muggers,’ from the fact that they sell mugs),
+baskets made of rushes, and horn spoons, both of which they manufacture
+themselves.  I have a distinct recollection of Will Faa, the then King of
+the Gipsies.  He was 95 when I knew him, and was lithe and strong.  He
+had a keen hawk eye, which was not dimmed at that extreme age.  He was
+considered both a good shot and a famous fisher.  There was hardly a
+trout hole in the Bowmont Water but he knew, and his company used to be
+eagerly sought by the fly-fishers who came from the South.  My opinion of
+the Gipsies—and I have seen much of them during the last forty years—is
+that they are a lazy, dissolute set of men and women, preferring to beg,
+or steal, or poach, to work, and that, although many efforts have been
+made (more especially by the late Rev. Mr. Baird, of Yetholm), to settle
+them, they are irreclaimable.  There are but two policemen in Yetholm and
+Kirk Yetholm, but sometimes the assistance of some of the townsfolk is
+required to bring about order in that portion of the village in which the
+Gipsies reside.  I may say that the townsfolk do not fraternise with the
+Gipsies, who are regarded with the greatest suspicion by the former.  Ask
+a townsman of Yetholm what he thinks of the Gipsies, and he will tell you
+they are simply vagabonds and impostors, who lounge about, and smoke, and
+drink, and fight.  In fact, they are the very scum of the human race;
+and, what is more singular, they seem quite satisfied to remain as they
+are, repudiating every attempt at reformation.”
+
+“F. G. S.” writes:—“One of your correspondents suggests that the silence
+of the Gipsies concerning their dead is carried so far as to consign them
+to nameless graves.  In my churchyard there is a headstone, ‘to the
+memory of Mistress Paul Stanley, wife of Mr. Paul Stanley, who died
+November, 1797,’ the said Mistress Stanley having been the Queen of the
+Stanley tribe.  In my childhood I remember that annually some of the
+members of the tribe used to come and scatter flowers over the grave; and
+when my father had restored the stone, on its falling into decay, a
+deputation of the tribe thanked him for so doing.  I have reason to think
+they still visit the spot, to find, I am sorry to say, the stone so
+decayed now as to be past restoration, and I would much like to see
+another with the same inscription to mark the resting-place of the head
+of a leading tribe of these interesting people.”
+
+          [Picture: Gipsies Camping among the Heath near London]
+
+To these letters I replied as under, on August 21st:—“The numerous
+correspondents who have taken upon themselves to reply to my letter that
+appeared in your issue of the 14th inst., and to show up Gipsy life in
+some of its brightest aspects, have, unwittingly, no doubt, thoroughly
+substantiated and backed up the cause of my young clients—_i.e._, the
+poor Gipsy children and our roadside arabs—so far as they have gone, as a
+reperusal of the letters will show the most casual observer of our
+hedge-bottom heathens of Christendom.  At the same time, I would say the
+tendency of some of the remarks of your correspondents has special
+reference to the adult Gipsies, roamers and ramblers, and, consequently,
+there is a fear that the attention of some of your readers may be drawn
+from the cause of the poor uneducated children, living in the midst of
+sticks, stones, ditches, mud, and game, and concentrated upon the ‘guinea
+buttons,’ ‘black-haired Susans,’ ‘red cloaks,’ ‘scarlet hoods,’ the
+cunning craft of the old men, the fortune-telling of the old women, the
+‘sparkling eyes’ and ‘clapping of hands,’ and ‘twopenny hops’ of the
+young women, who certainly can take care of themselves, just as other
+un-Christianised and uncivilised human beings can.  I do not profess—at
+any rate, not for the present—to take up the cause of the men and women
+ditch-dwelling Gipsies in this matter; I must leave that part of the work
+to fiction writers, clergymen, and policemen, abler hands than mine.  I
+may not be able, nor do I profess, to understand the singular number of
+the masculine gender of _dad_, _chavo_, _tikeno_, _moosh_, _gorjo_,
+_raklo_, _rakli_, _pal palla_; the feminine gender _dei_, _tikeno_,
+_chabi_, _joovel_, _gairo_, _rakle_, _raklia_, _pen penya_, or the plural
+of the masculine gender _dada_, _chavi_, and the feminine gender _deia_,
+_chavo_; but, being a matter of fact kind of man—out of the region of
+romance, fantastical notions, enrapturing imagery, nicely coloured
+imagination, clever lying and cleverer deception, beautiful green fields,
+clear running rivulets, the singing of the wood songster, bullfinch, and
+wren, in the midst of woodbine, sweetbriar, and roses—with an eye to
+observe, a heart to feel, and a hand ready to help, I am led to
+contemplate, aye, and to find out if possible, the remedy, though my
+friends say it is impossible—just because it is impossible it becomes
+possible, as in the canal movement—for the wretched condition of some
+eight to ten thousand little Gipsy children, whose home in the winter is
+camping half-naked in a hut, so called, in the midst of ‘slush’ and snow,
+on the borders of a picturesque ditch and roadside, winterly delights,
+Sunday and week day alike.  The tendency of human nature is to look on
+the bright side of things; and it is much more pleasant to go to the edge
+of a large swamp, lie down and bask in the summer’s sun, making
+‘button-holes’ of daisies, buttercups, and the like, and return home and
+extol the fine scenery and praise the richness of the land, than to take
+the spade, in shirt-sleeves and heavy boots, and drain the poisonous
+water from the roots of vegetation.  Nevertheless, it has to be done, if
+the ‘strong active limbs’ and ‘bright sparkling eyes’ are to be turned to
+better account than they have been in the past.  It is not creditable to
+us as a Christian nation, in size compared with other nations not much
+larger than a garden, to have had for centuries these heathenish tribes
+in our midst.  It does not speak very much for the power of the Gospel,
+the zeal of the ministers of Christ’s Church, and the activity of the
+schoolmaster, to have had these plague spots continually flitting before
+our eyes without anything being done to effect a cure.  It is true
+something has been done.  One clergyman, who has ‘had opportunities of
+observing them,’ if not brought in daily contact with them, tells us that
+some eight or nine years since he publicly baptised two Gipsy children.
+Another tells us that some time since he baptised many Gipsy children, as
+if baptism was the only thing required of the poor children for the
+duties and responsibilities of life and a future state.  Better a
+thousand times have told us how many poor roadside arabs and Gipsy
+children they have taken by the hand to educate and train them, so as to
+be able to earn an honest livelihood, instead of ‘cadging’ from door to
+door, and telling all sorts of silly stories and lies.  How many poor
+children’s lives have been sacrificed at the hands of cruelty,
+starvation, and neglect, and buried under a clod without the shedding of
+a tear, it is fearful to contemplate.  The idlers, loafers, rodneys,
+mongrels, gorgios, and Gipsies are increasing, and will increase, in our
+midst, unless we put our hand upon the system, from the simple fact that
+by packing up with wife and children and ‘taking to the road,’ he thus
+escapes taxes, rent, and the School-board officer.  This they see, and a
+‘few kind words’ and ‘gentle touches’ will never cause them to see it in
+any other light.  The sooner we get the ideal, fanciful, and romantic
+side of a vagrant’s and vagabond’s life removed from our vision, and see
+things as they really are, the better it will be for us.  For the life of
+me I cannot see anything romantic in dirt, squalor, ignorance, and
+misery.  Ministers and missionaries have completely failed in the work,
+for the simple reason that they have never begun it in earnest;
+consequently, the schoolmaster and School-board officer must begin to do
+their part in reclaiming these wandering tribes, and this can only be
+done in the manner stated by me in my previous letter.”
+
+In the _Leicester Free Press_ the following appeared on August 16th:—“Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, is earning the title of the Children’s
+Friend.  His ‘Cry of the Brick-yard Children’ rang through England, and
+issued in measures being adopted for their protection.  His description
+of the canal-boat children has also resulted in legislation for their
+relief.  Now I see Mr. Smith has put in a good word for Gipsy children.
+It will surprise a good many who seldom see or hear of these Gipsies,
+except perhaps at the races, to find how numerous they are even in this
+county.  I do not think the number is at all exaggerated.  A few days ago
+while driving down a rural lane in the country I ‘interviewed’ one of
+these children, who had run some hundreds of yards ahead, in order to
+open a gate.  At first the young, dark-eyed, swarthy damsel declared she
+did not know how many brothers and sisters she had, but on being asked to
+mention their names she rattled them over, in quick succession, giving to
+each Christian name the surname of Smith—thus, Charley Smith, Emma Smith,
+Fanny Smith, Bill Smith, and the like, till she had enumerated either
+thirteen or fifteen juvenile Smiths, all of whom lived with their parents
+in a tent which was pitched not far from the side of the lane.  Of
+education the child had had none, but she said she went to church on a
+Sunday with her sister.  This is a sample of the kind of thing which
+prevails, and in his last generous movement Mr. Smith, of Coalville, will
+be acting a good part to numerous children who, although unable to claim
+relationship, rejoice in the same patronymic as himself.”
+
+In the _Derby Daily Telegraph_, under date August 16th, the following
+leading article was published:—“When the social history of the present
+generation comes to be written a prominent place among the list of
+practical philanthropists will be assigned to George Smith, of Coalville.
+The man is a humanitarian to the manner born.  His character and labours
+serve to remind us of the broad line which separates the real apostle of
+benevolence from what may be termed the ‘professional’ sample.  George
+Smith goes about for the purpose of doing good, and—he does it.  He does
+not content himself with glibly talking of what needs to be done, and
+what ought to be done.  He prefers to act upon the spirit of Mr. Wackford
+Squeers’ celebrated educational principle.  Having discovered a sphere of
+Christian duty he goes and ‘works’ it.  Few more splendid monuments of
+practical charity have been reared than the amelioration of the social
+state of our canal population—an achievement which has mainly been
+brought about by Mr. Smith’s indomitable perseverance and self-denial.  A
+few years ago we were accustomed to speak of the dwellers in these
+floating hovels as beings who dragged out a degraded existence in a
+far-off land.  We were gloomily told that they could not be reached.
+Orators at fashionable missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as
+irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from
+impenetrable fastnesses.  Mr. George Smith may be credited with having
+broken down this discreditable state of things.  He brought us face to
+face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what
+result it is not necessary to say.  The sympathies of the public were
+effectually roused by the narratives which revealed to us the deplorable
+depths of human depravity into which vast numbers of English people had
+fallen.  The sufferings of the children in the gloomy, pestiferous cabins
+used for ‘living’ purposes especially excited the country’s pity.  At
+this present moment the lot of these poor waifs is far from being
+inviting, but it is vastly different from what it was a short time back.
+It was only a few days ago that the Duke of Richmond, in reply to no less
+a personage than the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that express
+arrangements had been made by the Government to meet the educational
+requirements of the once helpless and neglected victims.
+
+“Mr. Smith has now embarked upon a fresh crusade against misery and
+ignorance.  He has turned his attention from the ‘water Gipsies’ to their
+brethren ashore.  He has already began to busy himself with the condition
+of ‘our roadside arabs,’ as he calls them.  We fear Mr. Smith in
+prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of
+disenchantment.  The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds
+by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to
+our vision.  He does not pretend to show us the romantic,
+fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the
+imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy species.  Those of our
+readers who have formed their notions of Gipsy life upon the strength of
+the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James
+and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes
+of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the
+dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon
+examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent.
+Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world’s history
+the picturesque and jovial rascality which novelist and poet have
+insisted in connecting with the Ishmaelites is stamped ruthlessly out of
+being by force of circumstances, it is barely possible to say.  Perhaps
+Gipsies, in common with other tribes of the romantic past, have gradually
+become denuded of their old attractiveness.  It is, we confess, rather
+difficult to believe that Bamfylde Moore Carew (wild, restless fellow
+though he was) would persistently have linked his lot with that of the
+poor, degraded, poverty-stricken wretches whom Mr. Smith has taken in
+hand.  Perchance it happens that our old heroes of song and story have,
+so far as England is concerned, deteriorated as a consequence of the
+money-making, business-like atmosphere that they are compelled to
+breathe, and that with more favoured climes they are to be seen in much
+of their primitive glory.  In Hungary, for instance, it is declared that
+Gipsy life is pretty much what it is represented to be in our own glowing
+pages of fiction.  The late Major Whyte-Melville, in a modern story
+declared to be founded on fact, introduces us to a company of these
+continental wanderers who, with their beautiful Queen, seem to invest the
+scenes from our old friend, ‘The Bohemian Girl,’ with something akin to
+probability.  But there is, of course, a limit to even Mr. Smith’s
+labours.  Hungary is beyond his jurisdiction.  He does not pretend to
+carry his experience of the Gipsies further than the Midlands.
+Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and our neighbouring counties have offered him
+the examples he requires with his new campaign.  The lot of the roamers
+who eke out a living in the adjacent lanes and roadways is, he explains
+to us, as pitiful as anything of the sort well could be.  The tent of the
+Gipsy he finds to be as filthy and as repulsive as the cabin of the
+canal-boat.  Human beings of both sexes and of all ages are huddled
+together without regard to comfort.  As a necessary sequence the women
+and children are the chief sufferers in a social evil of this sort.  The
+men are able to rough it, but the weaker sex and their little charges are
+reduced to the lowest paths of misery.  Children are born, suffer from
+disease, and die in the canvas hovels; and are committed to the dust by
+the roadside.  One old woman told Mr. Smith ‘that she had had sixteen
+children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a
+roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of one of these tents;
+and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.’  The experience of this old crone is akin to that of
+most of her class.  She also tells Mr. Smith that she could not read
+herself, and she did not believe one in twenty could.  Morally, as well
+as from a sanitary point of view, Gipsy life, as it really exists, is a
+social plague-spot, and consequently a social danger.  Especially does
+this contention apply to the children, of whom Mr. Smith estimates that
+there are ten thousand roaming over the face of the country as vagrants
+and vagabonds.  It is to be hoped many months will not be allowed to
+elapse before this difficulty is seriously and successfully grappled
+with.  Mr. Smith’s counsel as to the children is that ‘living in vans and
+tents and under old carts, if they are to be allowed to live in these
+places they should be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats
+Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the compulsory
+clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as
+other children.’  The Duke of Richmond and his department may do much to
+facilitate Mr. Smith’s crusade without temporising with the prejudices of
+red-tapeism.”
+
+_Figaro_ writes August 27th:—“Our old friend having successfully tackled
+the brick-yard children, and the floating waifs and strays of our barge
+population, has now taken the little Gipsies in hand, with a view of
+bringing them under the supervision of the School Board system now
+general in this country.  He is a bold and energetic man, but we are
+bound to say we doubt a little whether he will be able to tame the
+offspring of the merry Zingara, and pass them all through the regulation
+educational standard.  Should he succeed, we shall be thenceforth
+surprised at nothing, but be quite prepared to hear that Mr. Smith has
+become chairman of a society for changing the spots of the leopard, or
+honorary director of an association for changing the Ethiopian’s skin!”
+
+The following letter from the Rev. J. Finch, a rural dean, appeared in
+the _Standard_, August 30th:—“The following facts may not be without some
+interest to those who have read the letters which have recently appeared
+in the pages of the _Standard_ respecting Gipsies.  During the thirty
+years I have been rector of this parish, members of the Boswell family
+have been almost constantly resident here.  I buried the head of the
+family in 1874, who died at the age of 87.  He was a regular attendant at
+the parish church, and failed not to bow his head reverently when he
+entered within the House of God.  His burial was attended by several sons
+resident, as Gipsies, in the Midland counties, and a headstone marks the
+grave where his body rests.  I never saw, or heard, any harm of the man.
+He was a quiet and inoffensive man, and worked industriously as a tinman
+within a short time of his death.  If he had rather a sharp eye for a
+little gift, that is a trait of character by no means confined to
+Gipsies.  One of his daughters was married here to a member of the
+Boswell tribe, and another, who rejoiced in the name of Britannia, I
+buried in her father’s grave two years ago.  After his death she and her
+mother removed to an adjoining parish, where she was confirmed by Bishop
+Selwyn in 1876.  Regular as was the old man at church, I never could
+persuade his wife to come.  In 1859 I baptized, privately, an infant of
+the same tribe, whose parents were travelling through the parish, and
+whose mother was named Elvira.  Great was the admiration of my domestics
+at the sight of the beautiful lace which ornamented the robe in which the
+child was brought to my house.  Clearly there are Gipsies, and those of a
+well-known tribe, glad to receive the ministrations of the Church.”
+
+I next turned my steps towards London, having heard that Gipsies were to
+be found in the outskirts of this Babylon.  I set off early one morning
+in quest of them from my lodgings, not knowing whither; but my earliest
+association came to my relief.  Knowing that Gipsies are generally to be
+found in the neighbourhood of brick-yards, I took the ’bus to Notting
+Hill, and after asking the policeman, for neither clergyman or other
+ministers could tell me where they were to be found, I wended my way to
+Wormwood Scrubs, and the following letter, which appeared in the _Daily
+News_, September 6th of last year, is the outcome of that “run out,” and
+is as follows:—“It has been the custom for years—I might almost say
+centuries—when speaking of the Gipsies, to introduce in one form or other
+during the conversation either ‘the King of the Gipsies,’ ‘the Queen,’ or
+some other member of ‘the Royal Family.’  It may surprise many of your
+readers who cling to the romantic side of a Gipsy’s life, and shut their
+eyes to the fearful amount of ignorance, wretchedness, and misery there
+is amongst them, to say that this extraordinary being is nothing but a
+mythological jack-o’-th’-lantern, phantom of the brain, illusion, the
+creation of lying tongues practising the art of deception among some of
+the ‘green horns’ in the country lanes, or on the village greens.  It is
+true there are some ‘horse-leeches’ among the Gipsies who have got fat
+out of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the British public,
+who delight in calling them either ‘the King,’ ‘Queen,’ ‘Prince,’ or
+‘Princess.’  It is true also that there are vast numbers of the Gipsies
+who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a
+sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any
+little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in
+the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that
+either the ‘king,’ ‘queen,’ or some member of the ‘royal family’ is being
+married or visiting them; and nothing pleases the poor, ignorant Gipsies
+better than to get the bystanders, with mouths open, to believe their
+tales and lies.  I should think that there is scarcely a county in
+England but what a Gipsy king’s or queen’s wedding has not taken place
+there within the last twenty years.  There was one in Bedfordshire not
+long since; another at Epping Forest; and the last I heard of this
+wonderful airy being was that he had taken up his head-quarters at the
+Royal Hotel, Liverpool, and a carriage with eight wheels and six piebald
+horses had been presented to him as a wedding present from the Gipsies.
+Gipsy ‘kings,’ ‘queens,’ and ‘princes,’ their marriages and deaths, are
+innumerable among the ‘royal family.’  It is equally believing in
+moonshine and air-bubbles to believe that the Gipsies never speak of
+their dead.  There is a beautiful headstone put in a little churchyard
+about two and a half miles from Barnet in memory of the Brinkly family,
+and it is carefully looked after by members of the family; one of the
+Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell Cemetery; and such
+silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty Gipsies as ‘dazzlers,’
+to enable them more readily to practise the art of lying and deception
+upon their gullible listeners.  Then again, with reference to the Gipsies
+having a religion of their own.  There is not a word of truth in this
+imaginative notion prevalent in the minds or some who have been trying to
+study their habits.  Excepting the language of some of the old-fashioned
+real Gipsies, and a few other little peculiarities, any one studying the
+real hard facts of a Gipsy’s life with reference to the amount of
+ignorance, and everything that is bad among them, will come to the
+conclusion that there is much among them to compare very unfavourably
+with the most neglected in our back streets and slums.  Of course, there
+are some good among them, as with other ‘ragamuffin’ ramblers.  The
+following particulars, related to me by a well-known Gipsy woman in the
+neighbourhood of ‘Wormwood Scrubs’ and the ‘North Pole,’ remarkable for
+her truthfulness, honesty, and uprightness, will tend to show that my
+previous statement as regards the amount of ignorance prevalent among the
+poor Gipsy children has not been over-stated.  She has had six brothers
+and one sister, all born in a tent, and only one of the eight could read
+a little.  She has had nine children born in a tent, four of whom are
+alive, and only one could read and write a little.  She has seventeen
+grandchildren, and only two of them can read and write a little, and
+thinks this a fair average of other Gipsy children.  She tells me that
+she got a most fat living for more than twenty years by telling lies and
+fortunes to servant-girls, old maids, and young men, mostly out of a book
+of which she could not read a sentence, or tell a letter.  She said she
+had heard that I had taken up the cause of the poor Gipsy children to get
+them educated, and, with hands uplifted and tears in her eyes, which left
+no doubt of her meaning, said, ‘I do hope from the bottom of my heart
+that God will bless and prosper you in the work till a law is passed, and
+the poor Gipsy children are brought under the School Board, and their
+parents compelled to send them to school as other people are.  The poor
+Gipsy children are poor, ignorant things, I can assure you.’  She also
+said ‘Does the Queen wish all our poor Gipsy children to be educated?’  I
+told her that the Queen took special interest in the children of the
+working-classes, and was always pleased to hear of their welfare.  Again,
+with tears trickling down her face, she said, ‘I do thank the Lord for
+such a good Queen, and for such a noble-hearted woman.  I do bless her.
+Do Thou, ‘Lord, bless her!’  After some further conversation, and taking
+dinner with her in her humble way in the van, she said she hoped I would
+not be insulted if she offered me, as from a poor Gipsy woman, a shilling
+to help me in the work of getting a law passed to compel the Gipsies to
+send their children to school.  I took the shilling, and, after making
+her a present of a copy of the new edition of my ‘Cry of the Children
+from the Brick-yards of England,’ which she wrapped in a beautiful white
+cloth, and after a shake of the hand, we parted, hoping to meet again on
+some future day.”
+
+The foregoing letter brought forth the following letter from Mr. Daniel
+Gorrie, and appeared in the _Daily News_ under date September 13th, as
+under:—“Mr. George Smith, Coalville, Leicester, whose letter on the above
+subject appears in your impression to-day, succeeded so well in his
+efforts on behalf of the poor slave-children of the Midland brick-yards,
+that it is to be hoped he will attain equal success in drawing attention
+to the pitiful condition of the Gipsy children, who are allowed to grow
+up as ignorant as savages that never saw the face nor heard the voice of
+a Christian missionary.  In one of the late Thomas Aird’s poems, entitled
+‘A Summer Day,’ there are some lines which, with your permission, I
+should like to quote, that are in perfect accord with Mr. Smith’s wise
+and kindly suggestion.  The lines are these:—
+
+    “‘In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
+    Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped;
+    And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.
+    By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood
+    Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
+    Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire.
+    Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws
+    And meek provisions of this ancient State.
+    Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
+    To let so many of her sons grow up
+    In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
+    True, we are jealous, free, and hate constraint
+    And every cognisance, o’er private life;
+    Yet, not to name a higher principle,
+    ’Twere but an institute of wise police
+    That every child, neglected of its own,
+    State claimed should be, State seized and taught and trained
+    To social duty and to Christian life.
+    Our liberties have limbs, manifold;
+    So let the national will, which makes restraint
+    Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
+    Power-arm the State to do the large design.’
+
+“The above lines, I may add, were written by the poet (in losing whom Mr.
+Thomas Carlyle lost one of his oldest and most valued friends) many, many
+years before the Education Acts now in force came into existence.  As
+many parents might not like the idea of Gipsy children attending the same
+Board schools as their own, would it not be possible to establish special
+schools in those parts of the Midland counties where Gipsies ‘most do
+congregate’?”
+
+To which I replied as under, in the _Daily News_ bearing date September
+13th:—“In reply to Mr. Gorrie’s letter which appears in your issue of
+this morning, I consider that it would be unwise and impracticable to
+build separate schools for either the brick-yard, canal-boat, Gipsy, or
+other children moving about the country, in tents, vans, &c., for their
+use solely; especially would it be so in the case of Gipsy children and
+roadside arabs.  What I have been and am still aiming at is the education
+of these children, not by isolating them from other
+working-classes—colliers, potters, ironworkers, factory hands, tradesmen,
+&c.—but by bringing them in daily contact with the children of these
+parents, and also under some of the influences of our little missionary
+civilisers who are brought up and receiving some of their education in
+drawing-rooms, and whose parents cannot afford to send them to
+boarding-schools, colleges, &c., and have to content themselves by having
+their children educated at either the national, British, or Board
+schools.  I confess that it is not pleasant to hear that our children
+have picked up vulgar words at school; and it requires patience, care,
+and watchfulness on the part of parents to counteract some of the
+downward tendencies resulting from an uneven mixing of children brought
+up and educated under such influences.  Better by far put up with these
+little ills than others we know not of, the outcome of ignorance.  On the
+other hand, it is pleasing to note how glad the parents of Gipsy,
+canal-boat, and brick-yard children are when their children pick up ‘fine
+words’ and become more ‘gentlerified’ by mixing with children higher up
+the social scale.  Bad habits, words, and actions are generally picked up
+between school times.  It would be well for us to rub down class feeling
+among children as much as possible as regards their education.  The
+children of brick-makers, canal-boatmen, and Gipsies are of us and with
+us, and must be taken hold of, educated, and elevated in things
+pertaining to their future welfare.  The ‘turning up of the nose,’ by
+those whose duty, education, and privilege should have taught them better
+things, at these poor children has had more to do in bringing about their
+pitiable and ignorant condition than can be imagined.  The Canal Boats
+Act, if wisely carried out, will before long bring about the education of
+the canal-boat children; and in order to bring the Gipsy children, show
+children, and other roadside arabs under the Education Acts, I am seeking
+to have all movable habitations, _i.e._, tents, vans, shows, &c., in
+which the families live who are earning a living by travelling from place
+to place, registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the
+parents compelled ‘by hook or by crook’ to send their children to school
+at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it national,
+British, or Board school.  The education of these children should be
+brought about at all risks and inconveniences, or we may expect a blacker
+page in the social history of this country opening to our view than we
+have seen for many a long day.”
+
+The following leading article upon Gipsies and other tramps of a similar
+class appeared in the _Standard_, September 10th, 1879, and as it relates
+to the subject I have in hand I quote it in full:—“Not only in his
+‘Uncommercial Traveller,’ but in many other scattered passages of his
+works, Dickens, who for many years lived in Kent, has described the
+intolerable nuisance inflicted by tramps upon residents in the home
+counties, and has sketched the natural history of the sturdy vagabond who
+infests our roads and highways from early spring to late autumn, with a
+minuteness and power of detail worthy of a Burton.  The subject of
+vagabondage is not, however, confined in its interest to the Metropolis
+and its adjacent parts.  In the United States the habitual beggar has
+become as serious a nuisance, and, indeed, source of positive danger, as
+he was once amongst ourselves; and in the State of Pennsylvania more
+especially it has been found necessary to pass what may be described as
+an Habitual Vagrants Act for his suppression.  That the terms of this
+enactment should be excessively severe is hardly matter of astonishment,
+when we bear in mind the fate of little Charley Ross.  Early in the year
+1874 a couple of men who were travelling up and down the country in a
+waggon stole from the home of his parents in Germantown, Pennsylvania, a
+boy of some seven years named Charley Ross.  They then sent letters
+demanding a large sum of money for his restoration.  The ransom
+increased, until no less than twenty thousand dollars was insisted upon.
+While the parents, on the one hand, were attempting to raise the money,
+and while the police were endeavouring to arrest the kidnappers, all
+negotiations fell through.  The two men believed to have been concerned
+in the abduction were shot down in the act of committing a burglary on
+Rhode Island, and from that day to this the fate of Charley Ross has
+remained a mystery.  Under these circumstances, public opinion has
+naturally run high, and it has been provided that any habitual tramp
+making his way from place to place, without earning an honest livelihood,
+shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve
+months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission, who carry
+fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure either persons or
+property, shall be put to work in the common penitentiary for a period of
+three years.  Pennsylvania in this is but reverting to the old law of
+England in the Tudor days.  In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were
+whipped at the cart’s tail, without distinction of either sex or age.
+The whipping-post, together with the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament
+of every parish green, and it was not until the year 1791 that the
+whipping of women was expressly forbidden by statute.  There were other
+enactments even more severe.  By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and
+marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines, wandering about
+the realm, were held _ipso facto_ guilty of felony, and hundreds of such
+offenders were publicly executed.  Another act of the same kind was
+directed against Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen
+who had been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if
+he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale’s ‘Pleas of the Crown’ we
+learn that at one Suffolk Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were
+executed on the strength of this barbarous act, and without any other
+reason or cause whatever.
+
+“The ancient severity of our Statute Book has long since been modified,
+and the worst that can now befall ‘idle persons and vagabonds, such as
+wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and
+ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come ne
+whither they go,’ is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions
+of the Vagrant Act.  Under this comprehensive statute are swept together
+as into one common net a vast variety of petty offenders, of whom some
+are deemed ‘idle and disorderly persons,’ other ‘rogues and vagabonds,’
+and others again ‘incorrigible rogues.’  Under one or other of these
+heads are unlicensed hawkers or pedlars; persons wandering abroad to beg
+or causing any child to beg; persons lodging in any outhouse or in the
+open air, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a
+good account of themselves; persons playing or betting in the public
+street; and notorious thieves loitering about with intent to commit a
+felony.  At the present period of the year the country in the
+neighbourhood not of the Metropolis alone, but of all large towns, is
+filled with offenders of this kind.  Indeed, the sturdy tramp renders the
+country to a very great extent unsafe for ladies who have ventured to go
+about without protection.  Ostensibly he is a vendor of combs, or
+bootlaces, or buttons, or is in quest of a hop-picking job, or is a
+discharged soldier or sailor, or a labourer out of employment.  But
+whatever may be his pretence, his mode of procedure is more or less the
+same.  If he can come upon a roadside cottage left in the charge of a
+woman, or possibly only of a young girl, he will demand food and money,
+and if the demand be not instantly complied with will never hesitate at
+violence.  Indeed, when we remember how many horrible outrages have
+within the last few years been committed by ruffians of this kind, it is
+quite easy to understand the severity necessary in less civilised times.
+Only recently the Spaniard Garcia murdered an entire family in Wales; and
+some few years ago, at Denham, near Uxbridge, a small household was
+butchered for the sake of a few shillings and such little plunder as the
+humble cottage afforded.  And although grave crimes of this kind are
+happily rare, and tend to become rarer, petty violence is far from
+uncommon.  Many ladies resident in the country can tell how they have
+been beset upon the highway by sturdy tramps of forbidding aspect, to
+whom, in despair, they have given alms to an amount which practically
+made the solicitation an act of brigandage.  The farmer’s wife and the
+bailiff tell us how haystacks are converted into temporary
+lodging-houses, chickens stolen, and outbuildings plundered.  Only too
+often the rogues are in direct league with the worst offenders in London.
+Whitechapel supplies a large contingent of the Kentish hop-pickers, and
+the ‘traveller’ who is ostensibly in search of a haymaking or hopping job
+is, as often as not, spying out the land, and planning profitable
+burglaries to be carried out in winter with the aid of his colleagues.
+
+“There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is picturesque.  A
+romantic imagination pictures him as a sort of peripatetic philosopher,
+with more of Jacques in him than of Autolycus; living in constant
+communion with Nature; sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the
+scantiest fare; slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging
+to be allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as purposeless
+as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as destitute of all worldly
+ends and aims as are the very violets of the hedge-row.  Æsthetic
+enthusiasm of this kind is apt to be severely checked by the prosaic
+realities of actual existence.  The tramp, like the noble savage, is a
+relic of uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to dispense.
+There is no appreciation of the country about him; no love of Nature for
+its own sake.  In winter he becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he
+almost always proves himself turbulent and disorderly.  As soon as it
+becomes warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a
+thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from ‘the Union’
+and takes to ‘the roads.’  From town to town he begs or steals his way,
+safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest workhouse
+must always provide him with gratuitous board and lodging.  Work of any
+kind, although he vigorously pretends to be in ‘want of a job,’ is
+utterly abhorrent to him.  Home county farmers, led by that unerring
+instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the
+tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the _bonâ-fide_
+‘harvester,’ in quest of honest employment.  The tramp, indeed, is the
+sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the ‘beach-comber,’ who is
+the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers.  In almost every
+port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose
+pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who
+are, in reality, living from hand to mouth.  Captains know only too well
+that the true ‘beach-comber’ is always incompetent, often physically
+unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous.  When his other resources
+fail, he throws himself upon the nearest consul of the nation to which he
+may claim to belong, and a very considerable sum is yearly wasted in
+providing such ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert
+is the land of their birth.  Harbour-masters and port authorities
+generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind somewhat
+summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers are ill-advised if
+they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as
+little mercy as possible.  Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply
+regards as weakness.  He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions
+of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage.  As
+it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads.
+Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine
+Gipsies.  He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will
+always regard him with contempt, as a mere migratory gaol bird, who knows
+no tongue of the roads beyond the cant or ‘kennick’ of thieves—a
+Whitechapel _argot_, familiarity with which at once tells its own tale.
+Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient to keep the nuisance in
+check, if only it be resolutely administered.  The tramp, however, trades
+upon spurious sympathy.  There will always be weak-minded folk to pity
+the poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for
+sleeping under a haystack—forgetting that this interesting offender is,
+as a rule, no better than a common thief at large, who will steal
+whatever he can lay his hands on, and who makes our lanes and pleasant
+country byways unpleasant, if not actually dangerous.”
+
+The foregoing article upon Gipsies and tramps brought from a
+correspondent in the _Standard_, under date September 12th, the following
+letter:—“I have just been reading the article in your paper on the
+subject of tramps.  If you could stand at my gate for one day, you would
+be astonished to see the number of tramps passing through our village,
+which is on the high road between two of the principal towns in South
+Yorkshire; and the same may be said of any place in England situated on
+the main road, or what was formerly the coach road.  We seldom meet
+tramps in town, except towards evening, when they come in for the casual
+ward.  They spend their day in the country, passing from one town to
+another, and to those who reside near the high road, as I do, they are an
+intolerable nuisance.  A tramp in a ten mile journey, which occupies him
+all day, will frequently make 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day, besides being
+supplied with food, and the more miserable and wretched he can make
+himself appear, the more sympathy he will get, and if he is lucky enough
+to meet a benevolent old lady out for her afternoon drive he will get 6d.
+or 1s. from her.  She will say ‘Poor man,’ and then go home thinking how
+she has helped ‘that poor, wretched man’ on his way.  Tramps are a class
+of people who never have worked, and who never will, except it be in
+prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they will
+continue to be, as you say in your article, ‘A blot upon the country and
+an eyesore on our roads.’
+
+“I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a tramp is to threaten
+him with the police, and I am quite sure if every householder would make
+a rule never to relieve tramps with money, and only those who are
+crippled, with food, the number would soon be decreased.  If people have
+any old clothes or spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon
+find in their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity
+than the highway tramp.  I do not recommend anybody to find a tramp even
+temporary employment, unless they can stand over him and then see the man
+safe off the premises, and even then he may come again at night as a
+burglar; but I am sure work could be found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our
+corporations or on the highways, where, under proper supervision, these
+idle vagabonds would be made to earn an honest living.  You will find
+that nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character,
+and although they may say they ‘want work,’ they really do not mean it.
+Not long ago I caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from
+a little girl who was taking it to her father at his work.  ‘Poor man! he
+must have been very hungry,’ I fancy I hear the benevolent old lady
+saying.  Of course, during the last year we have had many men ‘on the
+road’ who are really in search of work, but I always tell them that there
+is as much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a
+situation in view they should not go tramping from town to town.  Many of
+them have no characters to produce, and I expect when they find
+‘tramping’ is such a pleasant and easy mode of living they will join the
+ranks and become roadsters also.”
+
+In _May’s Aldershot Advertiser_, September 13th, 1879, the following is a
+leading article upon the condition of Gipsies:—“The incoming of September
+reminds us that in the hop districts this is the season of advent of
+those British nomads—the Gipsies, the only class for whom there is so
+little legislation, or with whose actions and habits, lawless as they
+are, the agents of the law so seldom interfere.  The miners of the Black
+Country owe the suppression of juvenile labour and the short time law to
+the long exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler.  The
+brickmaker may no longer debase and ruin, both morally and physically,
+his child of the tender age of nine or ten years, by turning it—boy or
+girl—into the brick-yard to toil, shoeless and ragged, at carrying heavy
+lumps on its head.  The canal population—they who are born and die in the
+circumscribed hole at the end of a barge, dignified by the name of
+‘cabin,’ are just now receiving the special attention of Mr. Smith, of
+Coalville, and certainly, excepting the section of whom I am writing,
+there is not to be found in privileged England a people so utterly
+debased and regardless of the characteristics of civilised life.  The
+Factory Act prevents the employing of boys or girls under a certain age,
+and secures for those who are legally employed a sufficient time for
+recreation.  But who cares for, or thinks about, the wandering Romany?
+True, Police-Constable Argus receives authority by which he, _sans
+cérémonie_, commands them to ‘move on,’ should he come across any by the
+roadside in his diurnal or nocturnal perambulations.  But it often occurs
+that the object for which they ‘camped’ in the spot has been
+accomplished.  The farmer’s hedge has been made to supply them with fuel
+for warmth and for culinary purposes; his field has been trespassed upon,
+and fodder stolen for their overworked and cruelly-treated quadrupeds;
+so, the ‘move on’ simply means a little inconvenience resulting from
+their having to transfer their paraphernalia to another ‘camp ground’ not
+far off.  They also enjoy certain immunities which are withheld from
+other classes.  Excepting that some of them pay for a hawker’s licence,
+they roam about as they list, untaxed and uncontrolled, though the
+earnings of most of them amount to a considerable sum every year; as they
+are free from the conventional rule which requires the house-dwelling
+population, often at great inconvenience, to ‘keep up appearances,’ it
+often happens that the wearer of the most tattered garments earns the
+most money.  They can and do live sparingly, and spend lavishly.  The
+labour which they choose is the most remunerative kind.  Ploughing or
+stone-breaking is not the employment, which the Gipsy usually seeks!  He
+takes the cream and leaves the skimmed milk for the cottier, and having
+done all there is to do of the kind he chooses, he is off to some other
+money-making industry.  A Gipsy will make four harvests in one year;
+first he goes ‘up the country,’ as he calls going into Middlesex, for
+‘peas-hacking.’  That over, he goes into Sussex
+(Chichester—’wheat-fagging’ or tying), and on that being done, returns
+toward Hampshire—North Hants—to ‘fag’ or tie, and that being done he
+enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a ‘bin’ in one of the
+gardens).  Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the
+following fact:—Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of
+age, and two women, earned on a farm in one harvest, no less than £42.
+After that, they went hop-picking, and, in answer to my question, ‘How
+much will they earn there?’ the farmer, who is a hop-grower, said, ‘More
+than they have here.’  These operations were performed in less than a
+quarter of the year.  In the places through which they pass to their work
+they sell what they can, and at night pitch their tent or draw their van
+on some common or waste land, buy no corn for their horses, nor spend any
+money for coal or wood.  If they locate themselves on the margin of a
+wood, and make a prolonged sojourn, the uproar, the screams, the cries of
+‘murder’ heard from their rendezvous
+
+    “‘Make night hideous.’
+
+All this, and more, they do with impunity.  ‘It is only the Gipsies
+quarrelling.’  No inspector of nuisances pays them a visit; the
+tax-gatherer knows not their whereabouts; the rate-collector troubles
+them not with any ‘demand note;’ their children are not provided with
+proper and necessary education, yet no school attendance officer serves
+them with a summons.  Their existence is not known officially, saving the
+time a census is taken, when, at the _expense of the house-dwellers_, a
+registry is made of them.  Not a farthing do they contribute to the
+government, imperial or local, though many of them are in a position to
+do it, and can, without inconvenience, find from £40 to £80; or £100 for
+a new-travelling van when they want one.  Overcrowding and numerous
+indecencies exist in galore among them, yet no representative of the
+Board of Health troubles himself about the number of cubic feet of air
+per individual there may be in their tent or van.  Is this neglect,
+indifference, obliviousness, or do the authorities believe that the
+impurities and unsanitary exhalements are sufficiently oxidised to
+prevent any disease?  It is worthy of remark that they are not liable to
+the epidemics which afflict others.  The loss of a pony from a common
+simultaneously with their exodus is a suspicious fact occasionally.  They
+live in defiance of social, moral, civil, and natural law, a disgrace to
+the legislature.—J. W. B.”
+
+In the _Hand and Heart_, September 19th of last year, the editor says,
+with reference to our roadside arabs:—“Mr. George Smith, of Coalville,
+whose efforts to better the condition of the wretched canal population
+have met deserved success, draws attention to the state of another
+neglected class.  Parliament, he says, which has lately been reforming so
+many things, would have done well to consider the case of the Gipsies,
+‘our roadside arabs.’  Of the idleness, ignorance, heathenism, and
+general misery prevailing among these strange people he gives some
+curious instances.  One old man, whose acquaintance Mr. Smith made,
+calculates that ‘there are about 250 families of Gipsies in ten of the
+Midland counties, and thinks that a similar proportion will be found in
+the rest of the United Kingdom.  He has seen as many as ten tents of
+Gipsies within a distance of five miles.  He thinks there will be an
+average of five children in each tent.  He has seen as many as ten or
+twelve children in some tents, and not many of them able to read or
+write.  His child of six months old—with his wife ill at the same time in
+the tent—sickened, died, and was “laid out” by him, and it was also
+buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at
+Barrow-upon-Soar, last January.  When the poor thing died he had not
+sixpence in his pocket.’  An old woman bore similar testimony.  ‘She said
+that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of
+them being born in a roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of
+one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at
+Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch.  This poor woman knows about three
+hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern
+counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling
+in Lincolnshire at the present time.  She said she could not read
+herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in twenty can.  She has travelled
+all her life.  Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is
+the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent.’  Mr.
+Smith’s conclusion (which will not be disputed) is that ‘to have between
+three and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children
+classed in the Census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the
+country, in ignorance and evil training that carries peril with it, is
+not a pleasant look-out for the future.’  He contends that ‘if these poor
+children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed
+to live in these places, they should be registered in a manner analogous
+to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under
+the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised
+and civilised as other children.’”
+
+The _Illustrated London News_, October 4th, says:—“Among the papers to be
+read at Manchester is one on the condition of the Gipsy children and
+roadside ‘arabs’ in our midst, by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville,
+Leicester.  Here, indeed, is a gentleman who is certainly neither a
+dealer in crotchets nor a rider of hobbies.  Mr. Smith has done admirable
+service on behalf of the poor children on board our barges and
+canal-boats, and the even more pitiable boys and girls in our
+brick-fields; and to his philanthropic exertions are mainly due the
+recent amendments in the Factory Acts regulating the labour of young
+children.  He has now taken the case of the juvenile ‘Romanies’ in hand;
+and I wish him well in his benevolent crusade.  Mr. Smith has obligingly
+sent me a proof of his address, from which I gather that, owing to a
+superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and
+the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the
+enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any
+idea of the number of Bohemians in this country.  The result of Mr.
+Smith’s diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are
+not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy
+and ‘arab’—that is to say, tramp—children roaming about the country
+‘outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.’”
+
+The following leading article, relating to my paper upon “The Condition
+of the Gipsy Children,” appears in the _Daily News_, October 6th:—“At the
+Social Science Congress Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, will to-morrow
+open a fresh campaign of philanthropy.  The philanthropic Alexander is
+seldom in the unhappy condition of his Macedonian original, and generally
+has plenty of worlds remaining ready to be conquered.  Brick-yards and
+canal-boats have not exhausted Mr. Smith’s energies, and the field he has
+now entered upon is wider and perhaps harder to work than either of
+these.  Mr. Smith desires to bring the Gipsy children under the operation
+of the Education Act.  Education and Gipsies seem at first sight to be
+words mutually contradictory.  Amid the mass of imaginative fiction, idle
+speculation, and deliberate forgery that has been set afloat on the
+subject of the Gipsies, one thing has been made tolerably clear, and that
+is the intense aversion which the pure bred Gipsy has to any of the
+restraints of civilised life.  Whether those restraints take the form of
+orderly and cleanly living in houses of brick and of stone, or of
+military service, or of school attendance, is pretty much a matter of
+indifference to him.  Schools, indeed, may be regarded from the Gipsy
+point of view as not merely irksome, but useless institutions.  Our most
+advanced places of technical education do not teach fortune-telling, or
+that interesting branch of the tinker’s art which enables the
+practitioner in mending one hole in a kettle to make two.  Except for
+music the Gipsies do not seem to have much aptitude for the arts; they
+are more or less indifferent to literature; and business, except of
+certain dubious kinds, is a detestable thing to them.  Their vagrant
+habits, on the other hand, enable them, without much difficulty, to evade
+the great commandment which has gone forth, that all the English world
+shall be examined.
+
+“The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy one.  We may pass
+over those degenerate members of the race who have elected to pitch
+permanent tents in the slums and rookeries of great towns, because, in
+the first place, they are degenerate, and in the second, their children
+ought to be within reach of School Board visitors who do their duty
+diligently.  It is only the Gipsy proper who has the opportunity of
+evading this vigilance.  His opportunity is an excellent one, and he
+fully avails himself of it.  Gipsy households, if they can be so called,
+are of the most fluid, not to say intangible character.  The partnerships
+between men and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit
+of aliases and double names make identification still more difficult.  As
+a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and though the hardships to
+which young children are exposed thin it considerably, the proportion of
+children to adults is still very large.  Hawking, their chief ostensible
+occupation, cannot legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and
+until that time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and
+loaf about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices.  Idleness and
+ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent
+things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average
+Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the _ne
+plus ultra_ of both.  It is true that Gipsies do not very often make
+their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the
+cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their
+well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild
+but very definite terrorism which they exercise.  Country residents, when
+a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of
+blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time
+the strangers, if not interfered with, will go.  Interference with them
+is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the ‘red
+cock,’ whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken
+here and a vanished blanket there.  So the Ishmaelites are left pretty
+much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick
+up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of
+undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.
+
+“The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons
+used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany.  Nor, perhaps is any
+country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours.  England is
+every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not
+enclosed are more and more carefully looked after.  Whether in our
+climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question
+not easy to answer.  But even if we admit that it might have been merry
+in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in
+ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day.  There is no
+good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty
+sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and
+at considerable risk, is difficult.  The cheapness of modern manufactures
+has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind
+having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw
+them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled.
+Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled
+with by the Gorgio and his laws.  The _raison d’être_ of the vagabond
+Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes on the
+likelihood of his practices becoming more and more undisguisedly criminal
+is obvious.  The best way to prevent this is, of course, to catch him
+young and educate him.  A century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of
+the race might have made this difficult, if not impossible.  But it is
+clear that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during
+their four centuries of residence in England, other influences have been
+sufficient to work upon them.  If they can live in towns at all, they can
+live in them after the manner of civilised townsmen.  A Gipsy at school
+suggests odd ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate
+some day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that promising
+South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took off his trousers
+(as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from his feet), and began
+vigorously to kill colonists.  But it is by no means certain that this
+would be the case.  The old order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any
+rate, become something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance.
+It has ceased to be even picturesque.”
+
+The following is a copy of my paper upon the “Condition of Gipsy
+Children,” as read by me before the Social Science Congress, held at
+Manchester on October 7th, 1879.  Although it was at the “fag end” of the
+session, and the last paper but two, it was evident the announcement in
+the papers that my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a
+little interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began
+to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr. Haviland, it
+was manifest I was to be honoured with a large audience, so much so,
+that, before I had proceeded very far with it, the hall was nearly full
+of merchant princes—who could afford to leave their bags of gold and
+cotton—and ladies and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale
+of neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called
+“Gipsies’ children.”  Dr. Gladstone, of the London School Board, opened
+the discussion and said that he could, from his own observation and
+knowledge of the persons I had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my
+remarks.  Dr. Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other
+gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous feeling
+of those present that something should be done to remedy this sad state
+of things; and the chairman said that the result of my labours with
+regard to the Gipsies would be that something would be done in the way of
+legislation.  The paper caused some excitement in the country, and was
+copied lengthily into many of the daily papers, including the _Leicester
+Daily Post_, _Leicester Daily Mercury_, _Nottingham Guardian_,
+_Nottingham Journal_, _Sunday School Chronicle_, _Record_, and others
+nearly in full, and was read as follows:—
+
+“As it is not in my power to open out a painful subject in the flowery
+language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in musical sounds of the
+highest pitch of refinement, culture, and sentiment, I purpose following
+out very briefly the same course on the present occasion as I adopted on
+the three times I have had the honour to address the Social Science
+Congress with reference to the brick-yard and canal-boat children—viz.,
+that of attempting to place a few serious, hard, broad dark facts in a
+plain, practical, common-sense view, so as to permeate your nature till
+they have reached your hearts and consciences, and compelled you to
+extend the hand of sympathy and help to rescue my young clients from the
+dreadful and perilous condition into which they have fallen through long
+years of neglect.
+
+       [Picture: A Farmer’s Pig that does not like a Gipsy’s Tent]
+
+“Owing to a superstitious regard and dislike the Gipsies had towards the
+Census, and their endeavours to evade being taken, no correct number has
+been arrived at; and it is only by guess work and conjecture we can form
+any idea of the number of Gipsies there are in this country.  The Census
+puts the number at between 4,000 and 5,000.  A gentleman who has lived
+and moved among them many years writes me to say that there cannot be
+less than 2,000 in the neighbourhood of London, whose Paradises are in
+the neighbourhood of Wormwood Scrubs, Notting Hill Pottery, New Found
+Out, Kensal Green, Battersea, Dulwich Common, Lordship Lane, Mitcham
+Common, Barnes Common, Epping Forest, Cherry Island, and like places.  A
+gentleman told me some time since that he gave a tea to over 150 Gipsies
+residing in the neighbourhood of Kensal Green.  A Gipsy woman who has
+moved about all her life says she knows about 300 families in ten of the
+Midland counties.  Another Gipsy, in a different part of England, tells
+me a similar story, and says the same proportion will be borne out all
+over the country.  Of hawkers, auctioneers, showmen, and others who live
+in caravans with their families, there would be, at a rough calculation,
+not less than 3,000 children; taking these things along with others, and
+the number given in the Census, it may be fairly assumed that I am under
+the mark when I state that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and
+women, and 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and other children moving about the
+country outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.
+
+“Some few Gipsies who have arrived at what they consider the highest
+state of a respectable and civilised life, reside in houses which, in 99
+cases out of 100, are in the lowest and most degraded part of the towns,
+among the scum and offscouring of all nations, and like locusts they
+leave a blight behind them wherever they have been.  Others have their
+tents and vans, and there are many others who I have tents only.  A tent
+as a rule is about 7ft. 6in. wide, 16ft. long, and 4ft. 6in. high at the
+top.  They are covered with pieces of old cloth, sacking, &c., to keep
+the rain and snow out; the opening to allow the Gipsies to go in and out
+of their tent is covered with a kind of coverlet.  The fire by which they
+cook their meals is placed in a kind of tin bucket pierced with holes,
+and stands on the damp ground.  Some of the smoke or sulphur arising from
+the sticks or coke finds its way through an opening at the top of the
+tent about 2ft. in diameter.  The other part of the smoke helps to keep
+their faces and hands the proper Gipsy colour.  Their beds consist of a
+layer of straw upon the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the
+case may be.  An old soapbox or tea-chest serves as a chest of drawers,
+drawing-room table, and clothes-box.  In these places children are born,
+live, and die; men, women, grown-up sons and daughters, lie huddled
+together in such a state as would shock the modesty of South African
+savages, to whom we send missionaries to show them the blessings of
+Christianity.  As in other cases where idleness and filth abounds, what
+little washing they do is generally done on the Saturday afternoons; but
+this is a business they do not indulge in too often.  They are not
+overdone with cooking utensils, and the knives and forks they principally
+use are of the kind Adam used, and sensitive when applied to hot water.
+They take their meals and do their washing squatting upon the ground like
+tailors and Zulus.  Lying, begging, thieving, cheating, and every other
+abominable, low, cunning craft that ignorance and idleness can devise,
+they practise.  In some instances these things are carried out to such a
+pitch as to render them more like imbeciles than human beings endowed
+with reason.  Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances
+used only as a ‘blind;’ while the women and children go about the country
+begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their heathenish tents
+sufficient to keep the family.  The poor women are the slaves and tools
+for the whole family, and can be seen very often with a child upon their
+backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.
+Upon the shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for
+the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens.  Many of the women enjoy their
+short pipes quite as much as the men.
+
+“Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various
+parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are
+married.  No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even ‘jumping
+the broomstick,’ as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a
+respectable Gipsy woman, ‘they go together, take each other’s words, and
+there is an end of it.’  I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real
+respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy,
+who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as
+men and wives are married.  When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used,
+she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, ‘we are
+either like devils or like lambs.’  In the case of some of the adult
+Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place.
+There is some good among them as with others.  A Gipsy in Wiltshire has
+built himself a house at the cost of £600.  Considerable difficulty is
+experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by two
+names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children.
+Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting
+of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and
+the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their
+dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them—except in rare cases—they
+are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training, without being
+taught how to get an honest living.  No ray of hope enters their breast,
+their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as the food
+comes, no matter by whom or how it comes so that they get it.  In many
+instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs.  The real old-fashioned
+Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised—if such a thing could be—by
+allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps, vagabonds,
+‘rodneys,’ and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight from the
+‘stone cup’ and settle among them as they are camping on the ditch banks;
+the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot of dirty
+ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children, have been
+encouraged by servant girls and farmers—by supplying their wants with
+eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to game—to locate
+in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip from the farmer to
+pass on to his neighbours.  Children born under such circumstances,
+unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a class of most
+dangerous characters.  Very much, up to the present, the wants of the
+women and children have been supplied through gulling the large-hearted
+and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with, and the result
+has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their way into
+gaols.  This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably their
+offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do not
+like the idea of having their stacks fired and property destroyed, and
+have given the Gipsies a wide berth.  Gipsies, as a rule, have very large
+families, generally between eight and sixteen children are born in their
+tents.  Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground they suffer
+much from chest and throat complaints.  Large numbers of the children die
+young before they are ‘broken’ in.’  And it is a ‘breaking in’ in a
+tremendous sense, fraught with fearful consequences.  With regard to
+their education, the following cases, selected from different parts of
+the country, may be fairly taken as representative of the entire Gipsy
+community.  Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had nine sons and
+daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen grandchildren, and none
+of them can read or write; and he also thinks that about half the Gipsy
+men and women living as husbands and wives are unmarried.  Mrs. Simpson,
+a Gipsy woman and a Christian, says she has six sons and daughters and
+sixteen grandchildren, and only two can read and write a little.  Mrs.
+Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters.  Mr. Eastwood, a
+Christian and a Gipsy, has eight brothers and sisters, many among them
+have large families, making a total of adults and children of about fifty
+of all ages, and there is scarcely one among them who can tell a letter
+or read a sentence; in addition to this number they have between them
+from 130 to 150 first and second cousins, among whom there are not more
+than two who can read or write, and that but very little indeed, and Mr.
+Eastwood thinks this proportion will apply to other Gipsies.  Mrs.
+Trayleer has six brothers and sisters, all Gipsies, and not one can read
+or write.  A Gipsy woman, whose head-quarters are near Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
+has fifteen brothers and sisters, some of whom have large families.  She
+herself has fifteen sons and daughters alive, some of whom are married.
+But of the whole of these brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews,
+grandchildren, &c., numbering not less than 100 of all ages, not more
+than three or four can read or write, and they who can but very
+imperfectly.  Mrs. Matthews has a family of seven children, nearly all
+grown-up, and not one out of the whole of these can read or write; thus
+it will be seen that I shall be under the mark when I state that not five
+per cent. of the Gipsies, &c., travelling about the country in tents and
+vans can either read or write; and I have not found one Gipsy but what
+thinks it would be a good thing if their tents and vans were registered,
+and the children compelled to go to school—in fact, many of them are
+anxious for such a thing to be brought about.  In the case of the
+brick-yard and canal-boat children, they were over-worked as well as
+ignorant.  In the case of the Gipsy children, these children and roadside
+arabs, for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are
+indulging in practices that are fast working their own destruction and
+those they are brought into contact with, and a great deal of this may
+lay at the door of flattery, twaddle, petting, and fear.
+
+“The plan I would adopt to remedy this sad state of things is to apply
+the principles of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 to all movable
+habitations—_i.e._, I would have all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneers’
+vans, and like places used as dwellings registered and numbered, and
+under proper sanitary arrangements and supervision of the sanitary
+inspectors and School Board officers in every town and village.  With
+regard to the education of the children when once the tent or van is
+registered and numbered, the children, whether travelling as Gipsies,
+auctioneers, &c., are mostly idle during the day; consequently, a book
+similar to the half-time book, in which their names and attendance at
+school could be entered, they could take from place to place as they
+travel about, and it could be endorsed by the schoolmaster showing that
+the child was attending school.  The education obtained in this way would
+not be of the highest order; but through the kindness of the
+schoolmaster—for which extra trouble he should be compensated, as he
+ought to be under the Canal Boats Act—and the vigilance of the School
+Board visitor, a plain, practical, and sound education could be imparted
+to, and obtained by, these poor little Gipsy children and roadside arabs,
+who, if we do our duty, will be qualified to fill the places of those of
+our best artisans who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes
+abroad.”
+
+The following is a leading article in the _Birmingham Daily Mail_,
+October 8th:—“Mr. George Smith, whose exertions on behalf of the canal
+population and the children employed in brick-yards have been accompanied
+with so much success, is now turning his attention to the education of
+the Gipsies.  He read a paper on this subject at the Social Science
+Congress, yesterday, suggesting that the same plan of registration which
+had proved advantageous in the case of the canal-boatmen and their
+families should be adopted for the more nomadic class who roam from place
+to place, with no settled home and no local habitation.  The Gipsies are
+a strange race, with a romantic history, and their vagabond life is
+surrounded with enough of the mysterious to give them at all times a
+special and curious interest.  In the days of our infancy we are
+frightened with tales of their child-thieving propensities, and even when
+years and reason have asserted their influence we are apt to regard with
+a survival of our childish awe the wandering ‘diviners and wicked
+heathens’ who roam about the country, living in a mysterious aloofness
+from their fellow-men.  Scores of theories have been propounded as to the
+origin of the Gipsy race, whence they sprang, and how they came to be so
+largely scattered over three of the four quarters of the globe.  Opinion,
+following in the wake of the learned Rudiger, has finally settled down to
+the view that they came from India, but whether they are the Tshandalas
+referred to in the laws of Menou, or kinsmen of the Bazeegars of
+Calcutta, or are descended from the robbers of the Indus, or are
+identical with the Nuts and Djatts of Northern India, has not been
+ascertained with any degree of certainty.  The Gyptologists are not yet
+agreed upon the ancestry of this ancient but obscure race, and possibly
+they never will be.  We know, however, that the Gipsies have wandered up
+and down Europe since the eleventh century, if not from a still earlier
+period, and that they have preserved their Bohemian characteristics,
+their language—which is a sort of daughter of the old Sanscrit—their
+traditions, and the mysteries of their religion during a long career of
+restless movement and frequent persecution.  And they have kept, too,
+their indolent, and not too creditable habits.  Early in the twelfth
+century an Austrian monk described them as ‘Ishmaelites and braziers, who
+go peddling through the wide world, having neither house, nor home,
+cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving mankind, but not
+openly.’  That description would hold good at the present day.  The
+Gipsies are still a lazy, thieving set of rogues, who get their living by
+robbing hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and ‘snapping up unconsidered
+trifles’ like Autolycus of old.  Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of
+magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the
+special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the
+modern Zingaris.  Without education, and without industry, they transmit
+their vagrant habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all
+the vices of a lawless and nomadic life.
+
+“It is very easy to give a romantic and even a sentimental colouring to
+the wandering Romany.  The ‘greenwood home,’ with its freedom from all
+the restraints of a conventional state of society, is not without its
+attractive side—in books and in ballads.  Minor poets have told us that
+‘the Gipsy’s life is a joyous life,’ and plays and operas have been
+written to illustrate the superiority of vagabondage over civilisation.
+But the pretty Gitana of the stage is altogether a different sort of
+being from the brown-faced, elf-locked, and tawdrily dressed female who
+haunts back entries with the ostensible object of selling clothes-pegs,
+but with the real motive of picking up whatever may be lying in her way.
+There is but small chance of Bohemian Girls finding themselves in
+drawing-rooms nowadays.  The last experiment of the kind was made by the
+writer of a charming book on the Gipsies, who was so fascinated by one of
+their number that he married her; but the wild, restless spirit was
+untameable, and the divorce court proved that the supposed precept of
+fidelity, which is said to guide the conduct of Gipsy wives, is not
+without its exceptions.  The Gipsies have nothing in common with our
+conventional ways and habits, and whether it is possible ever to remove
+the barrier that separates them from civilisation is a question which
+only experiment can satisfactorily answer.  Mr. Smith’s scheme is not the
+first, by many, that has been made to improve the conditions of Gipsy
+life.  Nearly half a century ago the Rev. Mr. Crabb, of Southampton,
+formed a society with the object of amalgamating the Gipsies with the
+general population, but the scheme was comparatively futile.  Still, past
+failure is no reason why a new attempt should not be made.  Mr. Smith
+says there cannot be less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000
+to 20,000 Gipsy children moving about the country, outside the
+educational laws and the pale of civilisation, and not five per cent. of
+them can either read or write.  Their mode of life is such as ‘would
+shock the modesty of South African savages,’ for men, women, and grown-up
+sons and daughters lie huddled together, and in many cases they ‘live
+like pigs and die like dogs.’  There is certainly room enough here for
+education, and education is the only thing that is likely to have any
+practical results.
+
+“It is proposed that the principles of the Canal Boats Act shall be
+applied to all movable habitations; that is, that all tents, shows,
+caravans, auctioneers’ vans, and like places used as dwellings, shall be
+registered and numbered, and put under proper sanitary supervision.  Mr.
+Smith points out that when once a tent or van had been registered and
+numbered, it could be furnished with a book similar to a half-time book,
+in which the names of the children having first been entered, the
+attendances at school could be endorsed by the schoolmaster—for which
+extra trouble he should be compensated—as the children travelled about
+from place to place.  By this means something tangible would be done to
+prevent the roadside waifs from growing up in the ignorance which is the
+parent of idleness.  Why should these ten or fifteen thousand little
+nomads be allowed to remain in the neglected condition which has
+characterised their strange race for centuries?  It is time that the
+spell was broken.  There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth
+perpetuating; there is no sentimental halo around its history which it
+would be cruel to dispel.  In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected
+to harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more enlightened
+times to deal with them on a humaner plan.  It is only by the expanding
+influence of education that the little minds of their children can gain a
+necessary experience of the utility and dignity of honest labour.  When
+they have received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to
+emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break
+away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many
+generations of them in thrall.  Mr. Smith’s idea is worthy the attention
+of legislators.  It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is
+a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war
+upon the unoffending barbarian abroad.  The instincts and habits which
+have been transmitted from father to son for hundreds of years are not,
+of course, to be eradicated in a day, or even in a generation; but the
+time will, perhaps, eventually come when the Gipsies will cease to exist
+as a separate and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general
+population of the country.  Whether that absorption takes place sooner or
+later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the young ‘Arabs’ of the
+tents the rudiments of an education which will hereafter be helpful to
+them if they are desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and
+of earning an industrious livelihood.  Their dread of fixed and
+continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy with the
+conditions of industrial life may teach them that civilisation has some
+compensations to offer for the sacrifice of their roaming propensities,
+and for taking away from them their ‘free mountains, their plains and
+woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds’ which are the companions of
+their free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives.”
+
+The _Weekly Dispatch_, in a leading article, October 13th, says:—“Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, has an eye for the nomads of the country.
+His name must already be unfavourably known throughout most of the canal
+barges of the United Kingdom.  If he is not the Croquemitaine of every
+floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought to be,
+for it was mainly he who thrust a half-time book into the hands of the
+bargee and compelled him, by the Canal Boats Act of 1877, to soap his
+infants’ faces and put primers in their way.  With Smith of Coalville,
+therefore, it may be expected that each juvenile of the wharves and locks
+now associates his most unhappy moments.  The half-time book of the act
+comes between him and the blessed state of his previous ignorance.
+Registered and numbered, supervised and inspected, he has been put on the
+road to know things that must necessarily disillusionise him of the black
+enchantments of life on the water highway.  It is allowable to hope,
+however, that having recovered from the first discomforts of civilising
+soap and primers, he will yet live to appreciate Mr. Smith’s name as one
+associated with kindly intent and generous aspirations in his behalf.  A
+generation of bargemen who had a less uncompromising vocabulary of oaths,
+who could beguile some of the tedium of their voyaging with reading, and
+who in other important respects showed the influences of half-time, would
+be a smiling reward of philanthropy and an important addition to our
+civilisation.  That Mr. Smith anticipates some such reward is evident
+from the eagerness with which he has been pushing the principle in
+another quarter.  At the Social Science Congress he has just propounded a
+scheme of educational annexation for Gipsy children similar in every
+respect to that applied to the occupants of the canal-boats.  That is, he
+would have every tent and van numbered and furnished with a half-time
+book, and he would ordain it as the duty of School Board visitors to see
+that the Gipsies render their children amenable to the terms of the act
+to the extent of their wandering ability, under threat of the usual
+penalties.  The prospect which he foresees from such treatment is that a
+body of wanderers numbering not much below 20,000 will be rescued from a
+position which, he says, would at present shock South African savages,
+and will thus be brought in to honest industry and ‘qualified to fill the
+places of our best artisans, who are leaving the country to seek their
+fortunes abroad.’  It is impossible not to wish Mr. Smith’s scheme well,
+especially as he contends that the Gipsies themselves are not averse to
+having their children educated; but it is equally impossible to be
+sanguine as to results.  The true Gipsy, who is not to be confounded with
+the desultory hawker of English origin, has many arteries of untameable
+blood within him.  He has never as yet shown the slightest concern about
+the English phases of civilisation which Mr. Smith would like to press
+upon his notice.  Such ideas as those of God, immortality, and marriage
+are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and
+thine.  He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book
+and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke
+to be cracked with impunity at the expense of the rural School Boards.”
+
+   [Picture: Gipsies’ Winter Quarters near Latimer Road, Notting Hill]
+
+The _Sportsman_ of October 16th, 1879, has the following notice:—“Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of ‘our
+canal-boat population’ are well known, has lately turned his attention to
+the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to
+procuring at least a modicum of education for their children.  He says
+that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to
+write their names.  By certain proceedings which took place at
+Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of
+the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much.  At all
+events, they occasionally manifest an ability to ‘take a stave’ out of
+the rest of the community.  At the court in question a Gipsy woman named
+Emma Barney was brought to task for ‘imposing by subtle craft to extort
+money’ from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver.  It seems that
+Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that Emma Barney—not an
+inappropriate name, by the way—said she could cure these by means of a
+certain herb, the name of which she would divulge ‘for a consideration.’
+Before doing so, however, she required Richard’s coat and waistcoat, and
+some silver to ‘steam in hot water,’ after which the name of the herb
+would be given—on the following day.  It is needless to say that the
+coat, waistcoat, and silver did not return to the Oliver home, and that
+the pimples did not depart from the Oliver face.  The ‘Gipsy’s home’ for
+the next two months will be in the county gaol.  It is a curious
+reflection, however, that such strange credulity as that displayed by the
+Bournemouth shopkeeper in this case can be found in the present year of
+grace, with its gigantic machinery for educating the masses.”
+
+The following leading article, taken from the _Daily Telegraph_, under
+date October 17th of last year, will show that crime is far from abating
+among the classes of the Gipsy fraternity:—“The melancholy truth that
+there exists a ‘breed’ of criminals in all societies was well illustrated
+at Exeter this week.  Sir John Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon
+Quarter Sessions, in charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the
+calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years.
+There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is
+twenty-five, taking the last five years.  Sir John could assign no
+particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the
+prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it.
+But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an
+examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five
+prisoners twenty had been previously convicted.  Such a percentage goes
+far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to a certain
+degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only enhances the immense
+importance of national education, by which alone society can hope to
+conquer the predatory tendency in certain baser blood, and to supply it
+with the means and the instincts of industry.  In justice, however, to
+the existing generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such
+serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by released
+prisoners in living honestly.  A rat will not steal where traps are set
+if it can only find food in the open, and some of these twice-captured
+vermin of our community might tell a piteous tale of the obstacles that
+lie in the way of honesty.”
+
+The _Weekly Times_, under date October 26th, 1879, has the following
+article upon the Gipsies near London.  The locality described is not one
+hundred miles from Mary’s Place and Notting Hill Potteries.  The writer
+goes on to say that “There are at the present time upwards of two
+thousand people—men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy
+tribe—camped in the outlying districts of London.  They are settled upon
+waste places of every kind.  Bits of ground that will ere long be
+occupied by houses, waste corners that seem to be of no good for
+anything, yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of ‘common’ over
+which no authority claims any rights; or if there are rights, the
+authority is too obscure to interfere with such poor settlers as Gipsies,
+who will move away again before an authoritative opinion can be
+pronounced upon any question affecting them.  The Gipsies, in the winter,
+certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the metropolis.
+They do not cause rents to rise.  They are satisfied to put up their tent
+where a Londoner would only accommodate his pig or his dog, and they
+certainly do not affect the balance of labour, few of them being ever
+guilty of robbing a man of an honest day’s work.  Yet, with all their
+failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take their part
+in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account of their hard lot,
+and the scanty measure with which the good things of this life have been,
+and still are, meted out to them.  Constrained by an irresistible force
+to keep ever moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree
+of cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit.  As the
+approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest possible
+number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ the whole of his
+time profitably, and those who only follow an outdoor life for the
+pleasures it yields naturally gravitate towards the shelter of large
+towns in which to spend the winter months of every year.  So when the
+cold winds begin to blow, and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to
+town, and settle upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused
+yards, and eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where
+their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before them.  The young
+men get a day’s work where they can; the young women hawk wool mats,
+laces, or other women’s vanities; while the more skilful go round with
+rope mats, and every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes
+and canes.  The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or tinker pots
+and pans; and, if a fine day or a pleasure fair calls forth all the
+useful mouths and hands from their tents and caravans, the babies will
+take care of themselves in the straw which makes the pony’s bed until
+some member of the camp returns home in the evening.  So the winter
+months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to call,
+these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is acquainted with, go
+forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or on the commons of the
+country, pass their summer, earning a precarious subsistance—honestly if
+they can—content with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel
+the free air of heaven blowing about them night and day, while the sun
+paints their cheeks the colour of the ancient Egyptians.  Our Gipsies
+have always been a favourite study with ethnological folk; poets have
+sung their wild, free life, and painters have taken them as types of the
+happy, if the careless; while philanthropists have occasionally gone
+amongst them, and told pitiful tales of their degradation, ignorance, and
+misery.  It was not from any feeling of romance or pity that we were
+induced the other day to accept an invitation from Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, to spend a few hours amongst some of these people.  Mr. George
+Smith’s life has been devoted to the amelioration of the condition of
+many very poor and almost entirely neglected classes of the community,
+and it was pleasant to have the opportunity of going with such a
+simple-hearted hero amongst those in whom he takes a deep interest.
+Having devoted many years of his life to the poor brick-yard children,
+and afterwards to the children labouring in canal-boats, he has found one
+more class still left outside every Act of Parliament, and beyond every
+chance of being helped in the right way to earn an honest living and
+become industrious members of society.  These are the Gipsies and their
+children, who have been let alone so severely by all so-called
+right-thinking men and women that there is great danger of their becoming
+a sore evil in our midst.  Unable to read or write—their powers of
+thought thereby cramped—with no one to look after them, separated from
+the people in whose midst they live, there can be little wonder that they
+should grow up with certain loose notions about right and wrong, and a
+manner of life the reverse of that which prevails amongst Christian
+people; but, now that Mr. George Smith has got his eyes and his heart
+fixed upon them, there will surely be something done which, in the near
+future, will redeem these people from many of the disadvantages under
+which they labour, and add to the body corporate a tribe possessed of
+many amiable characteristics.  Mr. Smith never takes up more than one
+thing at a time, and upon the accomplishment of it he concentrates all
+his energies.  This attribute is the one which has enabled him to carry
+to successful conclusions the acts for the relief of the brick-yard and
+the canal-boat children; but while he is about a work he becomes
+thoroughly possessed by his subject, and the most important event that
+may happen for the country, or for the world, loses all value in his eyes
+unless it bears directly upon the accomplishment of the object in hand.
+Thus it happened that, from the time we sallied out together in search of
+a Gipsy camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of
+nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but what had
+some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of life.  The Zulus were to
+be pitied because theirs was a sort of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies’ tents
+were nothing more than kraals.  All his stories were of what Gipsies he
+had met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in the
+train were only noticeable because they looked like some Gipsy man or
+woman whom he had met elsewhere.  We had a short ride by rail, and a
+tramp through a densely-populated district, and then we came to the
+camping-ground we wanted.  It was a spacious yard, entered through a
+gate, and surrounded with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure.
+There were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was
+Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants were at home.  Those who were
+absent were a few children able to go to Sunday-school, whither they went
+of their own free will and with the approval of their parents.  The
+kraals were not all constructed on the same pattern—two were circular in
+form and the third was square.  This was on the right hand at entering,
+and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a calf, who had many
+years before gone the way of all beef—into a butcher’s shop.  There were
+tiles on the low roof—in places—but plenty of openings were left for the
+rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in the bucket to find a
+way out if it chose.  The floor was common earth, and very uneven in
+places.  Alice, the mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty, with
+a face the colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of work.
+As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of the loss of her
+spectacles, without which she solemnly declared she could not read a
+line.  She left the spectacles one day when she was going ‘hopping,’
+hidden under a tile above her head, and when she returned the case was
+there, but the spectacles were gone.  She carried her licence to hawk in
+her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily beg the
+gift of a pair of new ones.  Her husband, a white-haired old man, with a
+look of innocent wonder in his face, sat on a lump of wood, warming his
+hands over the fire.  He said little—his wife scarcely allowing an
+opportunity for any one else to speak—but seemed to consider that he was
+a fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife.  There was a handsome
+young woman sitting in the only chair in the place, daughter of the old
+couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed made of indescribable
+things in one portion of the cabin, where the tiles in the roof showed no
+openings to the sky.  His wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a
+baby—their first-born—on the edge of the bed.  The wood walls were
+covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd things, fastened
+in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned with a few pots and pans
+used in cooking.  Here, for six or seven winters, this family had
+resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most severe
+winters.  Nor could they be made to admit that a cottage would be more
+comfortable; that hut had served them well enough so many years, and
+would be good enough as long as they lived.  Besides, said Alice, the
+rent was a consideration, and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week.  This
+woman was the mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living.
+Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of two
+young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed us as to
+the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind of remembrance to
+be left with them.  But we did not accept their invitation to walk up,
+but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by
+another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young
+man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch
+beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we
+heard, high jinks were going on with some children.  At the sound of a
+tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen,
+who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in.  We looked up in
+amazement; the girl’s face appeared like an apparition—so fair, so
+beautiful, so like some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused
+and puzzled.  In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen that face
+before in several of the choicest canvases that have hung in recent years
+upon the walls of the Academy; we had met with the fairest Gipsy model
+that ever stood before the students of the Academy, the favourite alike
+of the young artist and the head of his profession.  It can only fall to
+the lot of a few to see Annie, the Gipsy model; but the curious may look
+upon her counterpart, only of heroic size, in Clytie, at the British
+Museum.  Annie has a face of exquisite Grecian form, and a hand so
+delicate that it has been painted more than once in the ‘portrait of a
+titled lady.’  When she was a very little girl, she told us, hawking
+laces in a basket one day, a gentleman met her at the West-end who was a
+painter, and from that day to the present Annie has earned a living—and
+at times of great distress maintained all the family—by the fees she
+received as a model.  Her mother had had nine children, of whom eight
+were living; and three of the family are constantly employed as models.
+Annie is one, the young fellow who was watched over by the bantam was
+another, and a boy of four was the third.  The father is of pure Gipsy
+blood, but the mother is an Oxfordshire woman, and neither of them
+possess any striking characteristic in their faces; yet all their girls
+are singularly beautiful, and their sons handsome fellows.  They have got
+a reputation for beauty now, and ladies have, but without success, tried
+to negotiate for the possession of the youngest.  Never before had we
+seen such fair faces, such dainty limbs, such exquisite eyes, as were
+possessed by the Gipsy occupants of that caravan.  Annie was as modest
+and gentle-voiced and mannered as she was beautiful; and there came a
+flush of trouble over her fair face as she told us that not being able to
+read or write had ‘been against’ her all her life.  There was more
+refinement about Annie and her mother than we had discovered amongst
+others with whom we had conversed.  Thus, Annie, speaking of her
+grandfather, laid great emphasis on the assertion that he was a fine man.
+He lived to be 104, she said, and walked as upright as a young man to his
+death.  He went about crying ‘chairs to mend,’ in that very locality, up
+to within a short time of his death, and all the old ladies employed him
+because he was so handsome.  She was playing with a baby girl as she
+talked with us, and the child fixed her black eyes upon her sister’s
+face, and crooned with baby pleasure.  ‘What is baby’s name,’ we asked?
+‘Comfort,’ replied Annie.  ‘We were hopping one year’ said the mother,
+‘and there was a young woman in the party I took to very much, and her
+name was Comfort.  Coming away from the hop grounds, the caravans had to
+cross a river, and while we were in the water one day the river suddenly
+rose, the caravans were upset, and eleven were drowned, Comfort amongst
+the number.  So I christened baby after her in remembrance.’  All the
+family were neatly dressed, and once, when Annie opened the cupboard door
+for an instant, we caught sight of a dish of small currant puddings.”
+
+A visit to a batch of Gipsy wigwams, Wardlow Street, Garrett Lane,
+Wandsworth, induced me to send the following letter to the London and
+country daily papers, and it appeared in the _Daily Chronicle_ and _Daily
+News_, November 20th, as under:—“The following touching incident may
+slightly show the thorough heartfelt desire there is—but lacking the
+power—among the Gipsies to be partakers of some of the sanitary and
+educational advantages the Gorgios or Gentiles are the recipients of.  A
+few days since I wended my way to a large number of Gipsies located in
+tents, huts, and vans near Wandsworth Common, to behold the pitiable
+spectacle of some sixty half-naked, poor Gipsy children, and thirty Gipsy
+men and women, living in a state of indescribable ignorance, dirt, filth,
+and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, making their beds upon peg
+shavings and straw, and divested of the last tinge of romantical
+nonsense, which is little better in this case—used as a deal of it
+is—than paper pasted upon the windows, to hide from public view the mass
+of human corruption which has been festering in our midst for centuries,
+breeding all kinds of sin and impurities, except in the eyes of those who
+see beautiful colours and delights in the aroma of stagnant pools and
+beauty in the sparkling hues of the gutter, and revel in adding tints and
+pictures to the life and death of a weasel, lending enchantment to the
+life of a vagabond, and admire the non-intellectual development of beings
+many of whom are only one step from that of animals, if I may judge from
+the amount of good the 20,000 Gipsies have accomplished in the world
+during the last three or four centuries.  Connected with this encampment
+not more than four or five of the poor creatures could read a sentence or
+write a letter.  In creeping almost upon ‘all-fours,’ into one of the
+tents, I came across a real, antiquated, live, good kind of Gipsy woman
+named Britannia Lee, who boasted that she was a Lee of the fourth
+generation; and in sitting down upon a seat that brought my knees upon a
+level with my chin, I entered into conversation with the family about the
+objects of my inquiries—of which they said they had heard all about—viz.,
+to get all the Gipsy tents, vans, and other movable habitations in the
+country registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the
+children compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily
+located, and to receive an education which will in some degree help to
+get these poor unfortunate people out of the heartrending and desponding
+condition into which they have been allowed to sink.  Although Mrs. Lee
+was ill and poor, her face beamed with gladness to find that I was trying
+in my humble way to do the Gipsy children good; and in a kind of maternal
+feeling she said she should be pleased to show her deep interest in my
+work, and asked me if I would accept all the money she had in the world,
+viz., one penny and two farthings?  With much persuasion and hesitation,
+and under fear of offending her, I accepted them, which I purpose keeping
+as a token of a woman’s desire to do something towards improving her
+‘kith and kin.’  She said that Providence would see that she was no loser
+for the mite she had given to me.  He once sent her, in her extremity, a
+shilling in the middle of a potato, which she found when cooking.  With
+many expressions of ‘God bless you in your work among the children!  You
+will be rewarded some day for all your time, trouble, and expense,’ we
+parted.”
+
+The London correspondent of the _Croydon Chronicle_ writes as under, on
+November 22nd, touching a visit we both made to a number of poor Gipsy
+children squatting about upon Mitcham Common.  Among other things he
+says:—“I have had a day in your neighbourhood with George Smith, of
+Coalville.  He is visiting all the Gipsy grounds he can find and reach,
+for the purpose of gaining information as to the condition of the swarms
+of children who live in squalor and ignorance under tents.  He is of
+opinion that he will be able to get them into schools, and do as much for
+them generally as he has done for the brick-field and canal children; and
+I have no doubt myself that he will succeed.  Well, the other day he
+asked me to have a run round with him, and we went to Mitcham Common to
+see some of the families there.  He told me that one of the Gipsy women
+had been confined, and that she wanted him to give the child a name.  He
+did not know what to call it, so we had to put our heads together and
+settle the matter.  After a great deal of careful deliberation he decided
+that when we reached the common the child should be called ‘Deliverance.’
+I have been told that this sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and
+perhaps it would have done as well for one as for the other.  The tents
+were much of a character—some kind of stitched-together rags thrown over
+sticks.  Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was not particularly
+cold, and the first tent we came to had been opened at the top.  We
+looked over (these tents are only about five feet high), and beheld six
+children, the eldest being a girl of about eight or ten.  The father was
+anywhere to suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking.  These
+children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle of them, were
+making clothes-pegs.  The process seemed simple.  The sticks are chopped
+into the necessary lengths and put into a pan of hot water.  This I
+suppose swells the wood and loosens the bark.  A child on the other side
+takes out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its
+teeth.  Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so the work goes
+on.  When the day is done they look for the mother coming home from
+hawking with anything she may have picked up.  When they have devoured
+such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down where they have
+worked and as they are, and go to sleep.  It is a wonderful and
+mysterious arrangement of Providence that they can sleep.  They have only
+a rag between them and the snow.  A good wind would blow their homes over
+the trees.  I do not wish to make any particularly violent remarks, but I
+should like some of the comfortable clergymen of your neighbourhood, when
+they have done buying their toys and presents for young friends at
+Christmas, to walk to Mitcham Common and see how the children are there.
+They would then find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the
+work of the Master.  One tent is very much like another.  We visited
+about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the child.  We stayed in
+this tent for about ten minutes.  It was inhabited by two families,
+numbering in all about twenty.  I talked a little time with the woman
+lying on the ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me.  I do
+not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but ‘Deliverance’ will do for
+either one or the other.  She asked me to write the name on a piece of
+paper, and I did so.  With a few words, as jolly as we could make them,
+we crawled out, thanks and blessings following George Smith, as they
+always do.”
+
+[Picture: A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and
+                     in which “Deliverance” was born]
+
+Leading article in the _Primitive Methodist_, November 27th:—“Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, is endeavouring to do a work for the children of
+Gipsies similar to that he has done for the children employed in
+brick-yards and the children of canal-boatmen—that is, bring them under
+some sort of supervision, so that they may secure at least a small share
+in the educational advantages of the country.  Recently he published an
+account of a visit to an encampment of the Gipsies near Wandsworth
+Common, and it is evident that these wanderers without any settled place
+of abode look on his efforts with some considerable approval.  The
+encampment was made up of a number of tents, huts, and vans, and
+contained some sixty half-naked poor Gipsy children and thirty Gipsy men
+and women, living in an indescribable state of ignorance, dirt, filth,
+and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, or otherwise making their
+beds upon peg shavings and straw; and it turned out upon inquiry that not
+more than four of these poor creatures could read a sentence or write a
+letter.  They are, however, not indisposed to be subject to regulations
+that will contribute to their partial education, if to nothing more.  In
+passing from one of these miserable habitations to another, Mr. Smith
+found an old Gipsy woman proud of her name and descent, for she was a
+Lee, and a Lee of the fourth generation.  To this old woman he explained
+his purpose, sitting on a low seat under the cover of the tent with his
+knees on a level with his chin.  He wanted, he said, ‘to get all the
+Gipsy tents and vans, and other movable habitations in the country,
+registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the children
+compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily located, and
+to receive an education which will in some degree help to get them out of
+the low, heartrending condition into which they have been allowed to
+sink.’  Mrs. Lee listened with pleasure to this narration of Mr. Smith’s
+purpose, and, though in great poverty, desired to aid this good work.
+Her stock of cash amounted to three-halfpence; but this she insisted upon
+giving, so that she might contribute a little, at any rate, towards the
+improvement of her people.  We hope Mr. Smith may succeed in his work,
+and succeed speedily, so that these Gipsy children, who are trained up to
+a vagabond life, may have a chance of learning something better.  And
+evidently, from Mr. Smith’s experience, there is no hostility to such a
+measure as he wishes to have made law among the Gipsies themselves.”
+
+Owing to my letters, papers, articles and paragraphs, and efforts in
+other directions during the last several months, the Gipsy subject might
+now be fairly considered to have made good headway, consequently the
+proprietor of the _Illustrated London News_, without any difficulty, was
+induced—in fact, with pleasure—to have a series of sketches of Gipsy life
+in his journal, the first appearing November 29th, connected with which
+was the following notice, and in which he says:—“Our illustrations, from
+a sketch taken by one of our artists in the neighbourhood of Latimer
+Road, Notting Hill, which is not far from Wormwood Scrubs, show the
+habits of living folk who are to be found as well in the outskirts of
+London, where there are many chances of picking up a stray bit of
+irregular gain, as in more rural parts of the country.  The figure of a
+gentleman introduced into this sketch, who appears to be conversing with
+the Gipsies in their waggon encampment, is that of Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester, the well-known benevolent promoter of social reform
+and legislative protection for the long-neglected class of people
+employed on canal-barges, whose families, often living on board these
+vessels, are sadly in want of domestic comfort and of education for the
+children.”  The editor also inserted my Congress paper fully.  The
+following week another sketch of Gipsy life appeared in the same journal,
+connected with which were the following remarks:—“Another sketch of the
+wild and squalid habits of life still retained by vagrant parties or
+clans of this singular race of people, often met with in the
+neighbourhood of suburban villages and other places around London, will
+be found in our journal.  We may again direct the reader’s attention to
+the account of them which was contributed by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester, to the late Social Science Congress at Manchester,
+and which was reprinted in our last week’s publication.  That well-known
+advocate of social reform and legal protection for the neglected vagrant
+classes of our population reckons the total number of Gipsies in this
+country at three or four thousand men and women and ten thousand
+children.  He is now seeking to have all movable habitations—_i.e._,
+tents, vans, shows, &c.—in which the families live who are earning a
+living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in
+the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled to send their children
+to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it
+National, British, or Board school.  The following is Mr. Smith’s note
+upon what was to be seen in the Gipsies’ tent on Mitcham Common:—
+
+“‘Inside this tent—with no other home—there were two men, their wives,
+and about fourteen children of all ages: two or three of these were
+almost men and women.  The wife of one of the men had been confined of a
+baby the day before I called—her bed consisting of a layer of straw upon
+the damp ground.  Such was the wretched and miserable condition they were
+in that I could not do otherwise than help the poor woman, and gave her a
+little money.  But, in her feelings of gratitude to me for this simple
+act of kindness, she said she would name the baby anything I would like
+to chose; and, knowing that Gipsies are fond of outlandish names, I was
+in a difficulty.  After turning the thing over in my mind for a few
+hours, I could think of nothing but “Deliverance.”  This seemed to please
+the poor woman very much; and the poor child is named Deliverance G---.
+Strange to say, the next older child is named “Moses.”’”
+
+On December 13th, an additional sketch, showing the inside of a van, was
+given, to which were added the following remarks:—“Another sketch of the
+singular habits and rather deplorable condition of these vagrant people,
+who hang about, as the parasites of civilisation, close on the suburban
+outskirts of our wealthy metropolis, is presented by our artist,
+following those which have appeared in the last two weeks.  Mr. G. Smith,
+of Coalville, Leicester, having taken in hand the question of providing
+due supervision and police regulation for the Gipsies, with compulsory
+education for their children, we readily dedicate these local
+illustrations to the furtherance of his good work.  The ugliest place we
+know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn, is not
+Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old Ford, at the East-end;
+but it is the tract of land, half torn up for brick-field clay, half
+consisting of fields laid waste in expectation of the house-builder,
+which lies just outside of Shepherd’s Bush and Notting Hill.  There it is
+that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour’s walk
+of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility
+and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond
+the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley’s avenue of universal shopping.
+It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few
+serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of
+the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of
+every savage tribe in South and West Africa and Central Asia.  The
+encampment is usually formed of two or three vans and a rude cabin or a
+tent, placed on some piece of waste ground, for which the Gipsy party
+have to pay a few shillings a week of rent.  This may be situated at the
+back of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom or
+parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet inhabitants.
+The interior of one of the vans, furnished as a dwelling-room, which is
+shown in our artist’s sketch, does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith
+informs us that these receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly
+overcrowded.  Besides a man, his wife, and their own children, the little
+ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there will be several adult persons
+taken in as lodgers.  The total number of Gipsies now estimated to be
+living in the metropolitan district is not less than 2,000.  Among these
+are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or ‘losels’ from
+the more settled classes of our people.  It would seem to be the duty of
+somebody at the Home Office, for the sake of public health and good
+order, to call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to
+look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life.”
+
+On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were given in the
+_Illustrated London News_.  1. Tent at Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3.
+Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting Hill; 4. A Bachelor’s Bedroom, Mitcham
+Common; 5. Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney
+Wick; 7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes.  “A few additional sketches,
+continuing those of this subject which have appeared in our journal, are
+engraved for the present number.  It is estimated by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester, who has recently been exploring the queer outcast
+world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2,000 people
+called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu
+Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the neighbourhood of
+London.  They are not all thieves, not even all beggars and impostors,
+and they escape the law of vagrancy by paying a few shillings of weekly
+rent for pitching their tents or booths, and standing their waggons or
+wheeled cabins, on pieces of waste ground.  The western side of Notting
+Hill, where the railway passenger going to Shepherd’s Bush or Hammersmith
+sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry in the gardens and
+courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered towards Wormwood Scrubs by
+a dismal expanse of brick-fields, might tempt the Gipsies so inclined to
+take a clean shirt or petticoat—certainly not for their own wearing.  But
+we are not aware that the police inspectors and magistrates of that
+district have found such charges more numerous in their official record
+than has been experienced in other quarters of London; and it is possible
+that honest men and women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may
+exist among this odd fragment of our motley population.  It is for the
+sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of
+the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their
+parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr.
+George Smith has brought this subject under public notice.  The Gipsies,
+so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct
+the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active
+nuisance than the Italian organ-grinders in our city streets, whose
+tormenting presence we are content to suffer, to the sore interruption
+both of our daily work and our repose.  But it is expedient that there
+should be an Act of Parliament, if the Home Secretary has not already
+sufficient legal powers, to establish compulsory registration of the
+travelling Gipsy families, and a strict licensing system, with constant
+police supervision, for their temporary encampments, while their children
+should be looked after by the local School Board.  These measures,
+combined with judicious offers of industrial help for the adults and
+industrial training for the juniors, with the special exercise of
+Poor-Law Guardian administration, and some parochial or missionary
+religious efforts, might put an end to vagabond Gipsy life in England
+before the commencement of the twentieth century, or within one
+generation.  We hope to see the matter discussed in the House of Lords or
+the House of Commons during the ensuing session; for it actually concerns
+the moral and social welfare of more than thirty thousand people in our
+own country, which is an interest quite as considerable as that we have
+in Natal or the Transvaal, among Zulus and Basutos, and the rest of
+Kaffirdom.  The sketches we now present in illustration of this subject
+are designed to show the squalid and savage aspect of Gipsy habitations
+in the suburban districts, at Hackney and Hackney Wick, north-east of
+London; where the marsh-meadows of the river Lea, unsuitable for
+building-land, seem to forbid the extension of town streets and blocks of
+brick or stuccoed terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and
+Hainault Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on
+summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English kings
+and queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an hour’s walk, of
+which the fashionable West-ender knoweth nought.  There lurks the free
+and fearless Gipsy scamp, if scamp he truly be, with his squaw and his
+piccaninnies, in a wigwam hastily constructed of hoops and poles and
+blankets, or perhaps, if he be the wealthy sheikh of his wild Bedouin
+tribe, in a caravan drawn from place to place by some lost and strayed
+plough-horse, the lawful owner of which is a farmer in Northamptonshire.
+Far be it from us to say or suspect that the Gipsy stole the horse;
+‘convey, the wise it call;’ and if horse or donkey, dog, or pig, or cow,
+if cock and hen, duck or turkey, be permitted to escape from field or
+farmyard, these fascinated creatures will sometimes follow the merry
+troop of ‘Romany Rye’ quite of their own accord, such is the magic of
+Egyptian craft and the innate superiority of an Oriental race.  These
+Gipsies, Zingari, Bohemians, whatever they be called in the kingdoms of
+Europe, are masters of a secret science of mysterious acquisition, as
+remote from proved crime of theft or fraud as from the ways of earning or
+winning by ordinary industry and trade.  There is many a rich and
+splendid establishment at the West-end supported by a different
+application of the same mysterious craft.  Solicitors and stockbrokers
+may have seen it in action.  It is that of silently appropriating what no
+other person may be quite prepared to claim.”
+
+The following remarks appeared in the December number of _The
+Quiver_:—“Mr. George Smith, who has earned a much-respected and worthy
+name by his interest in and persevering efforts for the well-being of our
+canal population, is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children
+and roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and rural
+districts of the land.  By securing the registration of canal-boats as
+human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of poor little outcasts
+within the pale of society and the beneficent influence of the various
+educational machineries of the age.  By bringing the multitudinous tents,
+vans, shows, and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar
+arrangements, he hopes to put civilisation, education, and Christianity
+within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left
+to grow up in ignorance and degradation.  These vagrant juveniles are
+growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal
+classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the
+nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law
+which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity
+to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in
+a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to
+secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come.  It is
+evidently high time that something should be done, otherwise we must
+sooner or later be faced with more serious difficulties than even now
+exist.  Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist;
+and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will win all
+needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a life of crime and
+vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected little ones will be crowned
+with success.
+
+    “‘The glories of our mortal state
+       Are shadows, not substantial things;
+    There is no armour against fate—
+       Death lays its icy hands on kings:
+          Sceptre and crown
+          Must tumble down,
+          And in the dust be equal made
+    With the poor crooked scythe and spade:
+    Only the actions of the just
+    Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.’—_Shirley_.”
+
+The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy children’s
+homes, as it appeared in the _Daily News_, _Daily Chronicle_, and other
+London and country daily papers, December 2nd:—“Amongst some of the
+sorrowful features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more
+loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision than the wretched
+little rag and stick hovels, scarcely large enough to hold a
+costermonger’s wheelbarrow, in which the poor Gipsy women and children
+are born, pig, and die—aye, and men too, if they can be called Gipsies,
+with three-fourths, excepting the faintest cheering tint, of the blood of
+English scamps and vagabonds in their reins, and the remainder consisting
+of the blood of the vilest rascals from India and other nations.  A real
+Gipsy of the old type, of which there are but few, will tell you a lie
+and look straight at you with a chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now
+will tell you a lie and look a thousand other ways while doing so.  In
+their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain
+facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the
+brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible
+may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to
+become in our midst the men and women of the future.  Outside their
+hovels or sack huts, poetically called ‘tents’ and ‘encampments,’ but in
+reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed
+lies,—sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, paint immorality
+with Asiatic ideas, notions, and hues, and put a pleasant and cheerful
+aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be seen
+thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant and wretched Gipsy
+children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness.  Inside their
+sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all
+ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a
+bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than
+a manure-heap, in fact sometimes completely rotten, and as a Gipsy woman
+told me last week, ‘it is not fit to be handled with the hands.’  In
+noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye-disease, I am
+told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the coke
+fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times also
+causes the children to turn pale and sickly.  The sulphur affects the men
+and women in various ways, sometimes causing a kind of stupor to come
+over them.  I have noticed farther that many of the adults are much
+pitted with small-pox.  It is a wonder to me that there is not more
+disease among them than there appears to be, considering that they are
+huddled together, regardless of sex or age, in the midst of a damp
+atmosphere rising out of the ground, and impregnated with the sulphur of
+their coke fires.  Probably their flitting habits prevent detection.  My
+plan to improve their condition is not by prosecuting them and breaking
+up their tents and vans and turning them into the roads pell-mell, but to
+bring their habitations under the sanitary officers and their children
+under the schoolmaster in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, and
+it has the approval of these wandering herds.  The process will be slow
+but effective, and without much inconvenience.  Unless something be done
+for them in the way I have indicated, they will drift into a state
+similar to Darwin’s forefathers and prove to the world that civilisation
+and Christianity are a failure.”
+
+The following article appears in the _Christian World_, December 19th, by
+Christopher Crayon (J. Ewing Ritchie), in which he says:—“The other day I
+was witness to a spectacle which made me feel a doubt as to whether I was
+living in the nineteenth century.  I was, as it were, within the shadow
+of that mighty London where Royalty resides, where the richest Church in
+Christendom rejoices in its Abbey and Cathedral, and its hundreds of
+churches, where an enlightened and energetic Dissent has not only planted
+its temples in every district, but has sent forth its missionary agents
+into every land, where the fierce light of public opinion, aided by a
+Press which never slumbers, is a terror to them that do evil, and a
+praise to them that do well; a city which we love to boast heads the
+onward march of man; and yet the scene before me was as intensely that of
+savage life, as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and savage life destitute
+of all that lends it picturesque attractions, or ideal charms.  I was
+standing in the midst of some twenty tents and vans, inhabited by that
+wandering race of whose origin we know so little, and of whose future we
+know less.  The snow was on the ground, there was frost in the very air.
+Within a few yards was a great Board school; close by were factories and
+workshops, and the other concomitants of organised industrial life.  Yet
+in that small area the Gipsies held undisputed sway.  In or about London
+there are, it is calculated, some two thousand of these dwellers in
+tents.  In all England there are some twenty thousand of these sons of
+Ishmael, with hands against every one, or, perhaps to put it more truly,
+with every one’s hands against them.  In summer-time their lot is by no
+means to be envied; in winter their state is deplorable indeed.
+
+“We entered, Mr. George Smith and I, and were received as friends.  Had I
+gone by myself, I question whether my reception would have been a
+pleasant one.  As Gipsies pay no taxes, they can keep any number of dogs,
+and these dogs have a way of sniffing and snarling, anything but
+agreeable to an unbidden guest.  The poor people complained to me no one
+ever came to see them.  I should be surprised if any one did; but Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, is no common man, and having secured fair
+play for the poor children of the brick-fields—he himself was brought up
+in a brick-yard—and for the poor, and sadly-neglected, inmates of the
+canal-boats, he has now turned his attention to the Gipsies.  His idea
+is—and it is a good one—that an Act of Parliament should be passed for
+their benefit—something similar to that he has been the means of carrying
+for the canal and brick-field children.  In a paper read before the
+Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all tents,
+shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places used as dwellings
+should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary
+arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers, in
+every town and village.  Thus in every district the children would have
+their names and attendance registered in a book, which they could take
+with them from place to place, and when endorsed by the schoolmaster, it
+would show that the children were attending school.  In carrying out this
+idea, it is a pity that Mr. Smith should have to bear all the burden.  As
+it is, he has suffered greatly in his pocket by his philanthropic effort.
+. . .
+
+“It is no joke going into a Gipsy yard, and it is still less so when you
+go down on your hands and knees, and crawl into the Gipsy’s wigwam; but
+the worst of it is, when you have done so, there is little to see after
+all.  In the middle, on a few bricks, is a stove or fireplace of some
+kind.  On the ground is a floor of wood-chips, or straw, or shavings, and
+on this squat some two or three big, burly men, who make linen-pegs and
+skewers, and mend chairs and various articles, the tribe, as they wander
+along, seek to sell.  The women are away, for it is they who bring the
+grist to the mill, as they tell fortunes, or sell their wares, or follow
+their doubtful trade; but the place swarms with children; and it was
+wonderful to see with what avidity they stretched out the dirtiest little
+hand imaginable as Mr. Smith prepared to distribute some sweets he had
+brought with him for that purpose.  As we entered, all the vans were shut
+up, and the tents only were occupied, the vans being apparently deserted
+but presently a door was opened half-way, and out popped a little Gipsy
+head, with sparkling eyes and curly hair; and then another door opened,
+and a similar spectacle was to be seen.  Let us look into the van, about
+the size of a tiny cabin, and chock full, in the first place, with a
+cooking-stove; and then with shelves, with curtains and some kind of
+bedding, apparently not very clean, on which the family repose.  It is a
+piteous life, even at the best, in that van; even when the cooking pot is
+filled with something more savoury than cabbages or potatoes; the usual
+fare; but the children seem happy, nevertheless, in their dirty rags, and
+with their luxurious heads of curly hair.  All of them are as ignorant as
+Hottentots, and lead a life horrible to think of.  I only saw one woman
+in the camp, and I only saw her by uncovering the top and looking into
+the tent in which she resides.  She is terribly poor, she says, and
+pleads earnestly for a few coppers; and I can well believe she wants
+them, for in this England of ours, and especially in the outskirts of
+London, the Gipsy is not a little out of place.  Around us are some
+strapping girls, one with a wonderfully sweet smile on her face, who, if
+they could be trained to domestic service, would have a far happier life
+than they can ever hope to lead.  The cold and wet seem to affect them
+not, nor the poor diet, nor the smoke and bad air of their cabins, in
+which they crowd, while the men lazily work, and the mothers are far
+away.  The leading lady in this camp is absent on business; but she is a
+firm adherent of Mr. George Smith, and wishes to see the children
+educated; and as she is a Lee, and as a Lee in Gipsy annals take the same
+rank as a Norfolk Howard in aristocratic circles, that says a good deal;
+but, then, if you educate a Gipsy girl, she will want to have her hands
+and face, at any rate, clean; and a Gipsy boy, when he learns to read,
+will feel that he is born for a nobler end than to dwell in a stinking
+wigwam, to lead a lawless life, to herd with questionable characters, and
+to pick up a precarious existence at fairs and races; and our poets and
+novelists and artists will not like that.  However, just now, by means of
+letters in the newspapers, and engravings in the illustrated journals, a
+good deal of attention is paid to the Gipsies, and if they can be
+reclaimed and turned into decent men and women a good many farmers’ wives
+will sleep comfortably at night, especially when geese and turkeys are
+being fattened for Christmas fare; and a desirable impulse will be given
+to the trade in soap.”
+
+                 [Picture: A Gipsy girl washing clothes]
+
+In the _Sunday School Chronicle_, December 19th, the kind-hearted editor
+makes the following allusions:—“Mr. George Smith stirs every feeling of
+pity and compassion in our hearts by his descriptions of the Gipsy
+Children’s Homes.  It is one of the curious things of English life that
+the distinct Gipsy race should dwell among us, and, neither socially nor
+politically, nor religiously, do we take any notice of them.  No portion
+of our population may so earnestly plead, ‘No man careth for our souls.’
+The chief interest of them, to many of us, is that they are used to give
+point, and plot, to novels.  But can nothing be done for the Gipsy
+_children_?  Christian enterprise is seldom found wanting when a sphere
+is suggested for it; and those who live in the neighbourhood of Gipsy
+haunts should be especially concerned for their well-being.  What must
+the children be, morally and religiously, who _bide_, we cannot say
+_dwell_, in such homes as Mr. George Smith describes?
+
+“‘In their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the
+plain facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the
+brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible
+may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to
+become in our midst the men and women of the future.  Outside their
+hovels or sack huts, poetically called “tents” and “encampments,” but in
+reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed lies,
+sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, and put a pleasant and
+cheerful aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be
+seen thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant, and wretched Gipsy
+children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness.  Inside their
+sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all
+ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a
+bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than
+a manure-heap, in fact sometimes it is completely rotten, and as a Gipsy
+woman told me last week, “it is not fit to be handled with the hands.”
+In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye disease, I
+am told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the
+coke fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times
+also causes the children to turn pale and sickly.’”
+
+The following brief account of the Hungarian Gipsies of the present day,
+as seen by a writer under the initials “A. C.,” who visited the Unitarian
+Synod in Hungary last summer, is taken from the _Unitarian Herald_,
+bearing date January 9th, 1880, and in which the author says:—“Not far
+from Rugonfalva we came on a colony of exceedingly squalid Gipsies,
+living in huts which a respectable Zulu would utterly despise.  Their
+appearance reminded me of Cowper’s graphic sketch, which I am tempted to
+quote:—
+
+    “‘I see a column of slow-rising smoke
+    O’ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
+    A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
+    Their miserable meal.  A kettle, flung
+    Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
+    Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog,
+    Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined
+    From his accustomed perch.  Hard-faring race,
+    They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
+    Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched
+    The spark of life.  The sportive wind blows wide
+    Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
+    The vellum of the livery they claim.’
+
+“Transylvania is one great museum of human as well as natural products,
+and this singular race forms an interesting element of its motley
+population.  It is supposed that the tribe found its way to Hungary in
+the beginning of the fifteenth century, having fled from Central Asia or
+India during the Mongol reign of terror.  About the close of last century
+Pastor Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting
+England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him very well.
+There are now about eighty thousand of them in Transylvania, but
+three-fourths of this number have settled homes, and caste distinctions
+are so strong that the higher grades would not drink from a cup used by
+one of their half-savage brethren.  On reaching the mansion of Mr.
+Jakabházi, at Siménfalva, who employs about one hundred and forty
+civilised Gipsies on his estate, we had an opportunity after dinner of
+seeing them return in a long procession from the fields.  Some of the
+women carried small brown babies, that appeared able to find footing
+anywhere on their mothers’ shoulders, backs, or breasts.  These labourers
+are almost entirely paid in food and other necessaries, and if kindly
+treated are very honourable towards their master, and generally adopt his
+religion.  When smarting under any grievance, they, on the contrary,
+sometimes change their faith _en masse_, and when conciliated undergo as
+speedy a re-conversion.  The women are, as a rule, very fond of
+ornaments, and the men are, above all things, proud of a horse or a pair
+of scarlet breeches.  Of late years they have in a few districts began to
+intermarry with the Wallachs, and the sharp distinction between them and
+the other races in Hungary will, no doubt, gradually disappear.”
+
+The _Weekly Times_ again takes up the subject, and the following appears
+on January 9th, 1880:—“We made a second expedition, with Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, on Sunday, in search of a Gipsy encampment; and
+though the way was long and tedious, and we were both lamed with walking
+before we returned at night, yet we had not gone one step out of our way.
+There is no encampment of these ancient and interesting people in the
+neighbourhood of the hundred odd square miles which composes the site of
+the metropolis, with which Mr. Smith is not acquainted, and to which we
+verily believe he could lead a friend if he was blindfolded.  The way we
+went must remain somewhat of a secret, because the Gipsies do not care to
+see many visitors on the only day of the week which is one of absolute
+rest to them.  All that we shall disclose about the way is, that we
+skirted Mount Nod, and for a short distance looked upon the face of an
+ancient river, then up-hill we clambered for many longish miles, until we
+turned out of a certain lane into the encampment.  There was a rude
+picturesqueness in the gaping of the vans and tents.  In the foreground
+were the vans, to the rear the cloth kraals, with their smoky coverings
+stretched over poles; from a hole in the centre the smoke ascended,
+furnishing evidence that the open brazier was burning within.  The vans
+protected the approach to the camp, just in the same way that artillery
+are planted to keep the road to a military encampment.  Mr. Smith’s face
+seemed to be well known to these strange people, and we no sooner
+appeared in sight than the swinging door of every van was edged with
+faces, and forth from the strange kraals there crept child and woman,
+youth and dog, to say a kindly word, or bark a welcome to the visitors.
+But for the Gipsies’ welcome we might have had an unpleasant reception
+from the dogs.  They were evidently dubious as to our character, their
+training inclining them to bite, if they get a chance, any leg wearing
+black cloth, but to give the ragged-trousered visitors a fawning welcome;
+so they sniffed again and again, and growled, until driven away by the
+voices of their owners.  Perchance, during the remainder of the day, they
+were revolving in their intelligent minds how it had come to pass that
+the black cloth legs were received with evident marks of favour.  Nor
+were they able to settle the point easily, for whenever we happened to
+look round the encampment during the afternoon, from the raised door-way
+of a kraal where we happened to be couched, we noticed the eyes of one or
+other of the four-footed guardians fixed intently on us.  There were
+about twenty vans and tents in all; and each paid one shilling a week to
+the ground landlord.  That money, with whatever else was required for
+food, was obtained by hawking at this season of the year, and trade was
+very bad.  Winter must be a fearful experience for these children of the
+air, and the field, the summer sun, the wild flowers, and the fruits of
+harvest.  Such rains as have descended, such snows as have been falling,
+such cold winds as have been blowing, must discount fearfully the joys of
+the three happier seasons of the year.
+
+“Invitations to stoop and enter any ‘tent’ were freely tendered, and
+‘peeps’ were indulged in with regard to a few.  In one, a closed cauldron
+covered the brazier fire, and two men and a dog watched with unceasing
+vigilance.  We tried to make friends here, but failed.  There was a
+steamy exudation from the cauldron which filled the air with fragrance,
+and our curiosity overcame our prudence, but with no satisfactory result.
+‘A stew,’ we suggested.  ‘Yes! it was summut stewing.’  ‘Couldn’t we
+guess what it was?’  ‘Not soon,’ was the reply; ‘a few bones and a potato
+or two; perhaps a bit of something green.  At such hard times they were
+mostly glad to get anything.’  But nothing more could be gleaned, and the
+two men and the dog never lost sight of the cauldron while the visitors
+remained.  In a few cases the tents were pegged down all round, and
+across the top, upon a stout line, there hung a few articles fresh from
+the wash.  The pegged cloth indicated that the female occupants were
+within, but ‘not at home,’ nor would they be visible until the wind had
+dried the garments that fluttered overhead.  We tarried, and were made
+quite at home in another kraal, where we gleaned many interesting
+particulars of Gipsy life; and here we held a sort of smoking _levée_,
+and were honoured by the company of many distinguished residents in camp.
+We lay upon a bed of straw, which covered the whole of the interior, save
+a little space filled with the brazier, in which a fire of coke was
+burning; above was a hole, out of which the smoke passed.  The straw had
+been stamped into consistency by the feet of the family; there was no
+odour from it, and in that particular was an improvement on the rush and
+straw floors in the English houses of which Erasmus made such great
+complaint.  There was no chair, stool, or box on which to sit, and all of
+us reclined Eastern fashion in the posture that was most convenient.  The
+owner of the kraal and his wife were very interesting people: the
+mother’s hair descended by little steps from the crown of her head, until
+it stuck out like a bush, in a line with the nape of her neck, a dense
+dead-black mass of hair.  She had been a model for painters many a time,
+she said, before small-pox marked her; and, since, the back of her head
+had often been drawn to fit somebody else’s face.
+
+“‘When I come again what shall I bring you?’ said Mr. Smith, in most
+reckless fashion, to the Egyptian Queen.  ‘Well,’ said she, without a
+moment’s hesitation, ‘if there is one thing more than another that I do
+want, it’s a silk handkercher for my head—a real Bandana.’  The request
+was characteristic.  Of the tales we heard one or two were curious, one
+positively laughable, and one related to a deed of blood.  Mr. Smith,
+going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy woman, to whom he told the object
+of his visiting the Gipsies, and what he hoped to accomplish for the
+children, and she forwith handed him a money gift.  On more than one
+occasion a well-polished silver coin of small value, a penny, or a
+farthing has been quietly put into Mr. Smith’s hands, in furtherance of
+his work, by some poor Gipsy woman.  The story which made us laugh was of
+a Gipsy marriage.  It is one of the unwritten laws of Gipsy life that the
+wife works while the husband idles about the tent.  The wife hawks with
+the basket or the cart and sells, while the husband loiters about the
+encampment or cooks the evening meal.  But one young Gipsy fell in love
+with an Irish girl named Kathleen, and from the day of their marriage Tom
+never had an idle moment.  In vain did he plead the usages of Gipsy
+married life.  Kathleen was deaf to all such modes of argument, and drove
+her husband forth from tent and encampment, by voice or by stake, until
+she completely cured him of his idleness, and she remained mistress of
+the field.  Whenever a young Gipsy is supposed to be courting a stranger,
+the fate of Tom at the hands of Kathleen is told him as a warning.
+During the afternoon we were continually exhorted to see ‘Granny’ before
+we left.  Every one spoke of her with respect, and when we were about to
+leave, Patience offered to show us ‘Granny’s tent.’  Repentance joined
+her sister, and before we were up and out of the tent opening, we saw
+Patience at a tent not far off; she dived head and shoulders through an
+opening she made, and then appeared to be pulling vigorously.  Her
+activity was soon explained.  We thrust our heads through the opening,
+and were face to face with a shrivelled-faced old woman, whose cheeks
+were like discoloured parchment, and whose hands and arms appeared to be
+mere bones.  But her eye was bright, and her tongue proved her to be in
+possession of most of her faculties.  She could not stand or walk, nor
+could she sit up for many minutes at a time, and the action of Patience
+was caused by her hastily seizing the old woman by her arms as she lay on
+her straw floor, and dragging her into a sitting position.  If the old
+dame had been asleep, Patience had thoroughly aroused her.  She greeted
+us with Gipsy courtesy, and told us she was ‘fourscore and six years of
+age.’  Her name, in answer to our query, she said was ‘Sinfire Smith.’
+‘Why, that’s the same as mine,’ said Mr. Smith.  ‘O, likely,’ said
+Sinfire, ‘the Smiths is a long family.’  For four score and six years
+poor Sinfire has led a Gipsy life, and though her house now is only a
+tent, and her bed and bedding straw, she made no moan, and there was
+nothing she wished to have.”
+
+    “Farewell, farewell! so rest there, blade!
+    Entomb me where our chiefs are laid;
+    But, hark, methinks I hear the drum,
+    I would that holy man were come.”—HARRIS.
+
+    “What sound is that as of one knocking gently?
+    Yet who would enter here at hour so late?
+    Arise! draw back the bolt—unclose the portal.
+    What figure standeth there before the gate?
+
+    “He bears to thee sweet messages from Heaven,
+    Whispers of love from dear ones folded there,
+    And tells thee that a place for thee is waiting,
+    That thou shalt join them in their home so fair.”
+
+                                                A. F. B.—“Sunday at Home.”
+
+
+
+
+Part III.
+The Treatment the Gipsies have received in this Country.
+
+
+The social history and improvements of our own country seem to have gone
+by irregular leaps and bounds.  The Parliament, like the _Times_, follows
+upon the heels of public opinion in all measures concerning the welfare
+of the nation; and it is well it should be so.  An Englishman will be led
+by a child; but it requires a strong hand and a sharp whip to drive him.
+One hundred and forty years ago the Wesleys and Whitfield caused a
+commotion in the religious world.  Upwards of a century ago the first
+canal in this country was opened for the conveyance of goods upon our
+silent highways, and trade began in earnest to show signs of life and
+activity.  A century ago Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, opened his first
+Sunday-school—the beginning of a system ever widening and expanding,
+carrying with it blessings incomprehensible to finite minds, and only to
+be revealed in another world.  Nearly a century ago Raper’s translation
+of Grellmann’s “Dissertation on the Gipsies” was published, and which
+caused no little stir at the time, being the first work of any kind worth
+notice that had appeared.  Seventy years ago an interesting
+correspondence took place in the _Christian Observer_ upon the condition
+of the Gipsies, and various lines of missionary action were suggested;
+but no plan was adopted, and all words blown to the wind.  Then, as now,
+people would look at the Gipsies in their pitiable condition, and with a
+shrug of the shoulders would say, “Poor things,” and away they would go
+to their mansions, doff their warm winter clothing, put on their
+needleworked slippers, stretch their legs before a blazing fire in the
+drawing-room, and call “John” to bring a box of the best cigars, the
+champagne, dry sherry, and crusted port, and then noddle off to sleep.
+Sixty-four years ago Hoyland’s “Historical Survey of the Gipsies” made
+its appearance, a work that caught the fire and spirit of Grellmann’s,
+the object of both being to stir up the missionary zeal of this country
+in the cause of the Gipsies.  Fifty years ago James Crabb began his
+missionary work among the Gipsies at Southampton, and for a while did
+well; but in course of time, owing to the Gipsies moving about, as in the
+case of “Our Canal Population,” the work dwindled down and down, till
+there is not a vestige of this good man’s efforts to be seen.  About the
+same time that Crabb was at work among the Gipsies missionary efforts
+were put in motion to improve the canal-boatmen, and mission stations
+were established at Newark, Stoke-on-Trent, Aylesbury, Oxford,
+Birmingham, and other places, but fared the same fate as the missionary
+effort of Crabb and others among the Gipsies.  Fifty years ago railways
+were opened, which gave an impetus to trade never experienced before.
+Fifty years ago the preaching of Bourne and Clowes was causing
+considerable excitement in the country.  Nearly fifty years ago witnessed
+the passing of the Reform Bill, and the Factory Act received the Royal
+signature.  Forty years have passed away since George Borrow’s missionary
+efforts among the Gipsies were prominently before the public, which, sad
+to say, shared the fate of Crabb’s, Hoyland’s, Roberts’, and Raper’s.
+From that day till now, except the spasmodic efforts of a clergyman here
+and there, or some other kind-hearted friend, these 20,000 poor slighted
+outcasts have been left to themselves to sink or swim as they thought
+well.  The only man, except the dramatist and novelist, who has seemed to
+notice them has been the policeman, and his vigilant eye and staff have
+been used to drive them from their camping-ground from time to time, and
+thus—if possible—made their lives more miserable, and created within them
+deeper-seated revenge, owing to the way in which they are carrying out
+the Enclosures Act.  All missionary efforts put forth to improve the
+condition of the factory operative and canal-boatmen, previous to the
+passing of the Factory Act, nearly fifty years since, and the Canal Boats
+Act of 1877, were fruitless and unprofitable.  The passing of the Factory
+Act has done more for the children in one year than all the missionaries
+in the kingdom could have done in their lifetime.  Similar results are
+the outcome of the Brickyard Act of 1871, as touching the welfare of the
+children.  And so in like manner it will be with the Canal Boats Act when
+properly carried out, the canal-boat children of to-day, in fifty years
+hence, will be equal to other working classes.  From the days of Hoyland,
+and Borrow, and Crabb, down to the present time, but little seems to have
+been done for the Gipsies.  With Crabb died all real interest in the
+welfare of these poor unfortunate people.  The difficulties he had
+encountered seemed to have had a deterrent effect upon others.
+Missionary zeal, without moral force of law and the schoolmaster, will
+accomplish but little for the Gipsies at our doors; and it may be said
+with special emphasis as regards the improvement of the Gipsy children.
+From the days of the relentless, cruel, and merciless persecution the
+Gipsies received under the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, down to
+the present time, nothing has been done by law to reclaim these Indian
+outcasts and Asiatic emigrants.  The case of the Gipsies shows us plainly
+that hunting the women and children with bloodhounds, and dragging the
+Gipsy leaders to the gallows, will neither stamp them out nor improve
+their character and habits; and, on the other hand, it appears that the
+love-like gentleness, child-like simplicity, and religious fervour of the
+circumscribed influence of Crabb and others, about this time, did but
+little for these poor, little, dark-eyed, wandering brethren of ours from
+afar.  The next agents that appeared upon the scene to try to elevate the
+Gipsies into something like a respectable position in society were the
+dramatists and novelists.  These flickering lights of the night have met
+with no better success, in fact, their efforts, in the way they have been
+put forth, have, as a rule, exhibited Gipsy life in a variety of false
+colours and shades, which exhibition has turned out to be a failure in
+accomplishing the object the authors had in view, other than to fill
+their coffers and mislead the public as to the real character of a Gipsy
+vagabond’s life; and thus it will be seen, I think, that the Gipsies and
+their children of to-day present to us the miserable failure, of bitter
+persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the efforts of
+Christianity alone at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and more
+recently the novelist and dramatist as a means in themselves, separately,
+to effect a reformation in the habits and character of the Gipsy children
+and their parents.
+
+If the Gipsy and other tramping, travelling “rob rats” of to-day are to
+become honest, industrious, and useful citizens of the future, it must be
+by the influence of the schoolmaster and the sanitary officer, coming to
+a great extent as they do between the fitful and uncertain efforts of the
+missionary, the relentless hands of persecution, the policeman, and the
+stage.
+
+From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down to the
+time when Raper’s translation of Grellmann’s work appeared in 1787, a
+period of 272 years, nothing seems to have been done to improve the
+Gipsies, except to pass laws for their extermination.  The earliest
+notice of the Gipsies in our own country was published in a quarto volume
+in the year 1612, the object of which was to expose the system of
+fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which reference is
+made to the Gipsies as follows:—“This kind of people about a hundred
+years ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the
+southerne parts.  And this, as I am imformed and can gather, was their
+beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country (belike not for their
+good conditions) arrived heere in England, who for quaint tricks and
+devices, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in
+great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined with
+them, and in time learned their crafty cosening.  The speech which they
+used was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen conversing
+at least learned their language.  These people continuing about the
+country and practising their cosening art, purchased themselves great
+credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry and telling of
+fortunes; insomuch they pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of
+money, silver spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they
+could make.”  And he goes on to say, “But what numbers were executed on
+these statutes you would wonder; yet, notwithstanding, all would not
+prevaile, but they wandered as before uppe and downe and meeting once a
+year at a place appointed; sometimes at the Peake’s Hole in Derbyshire,
+and other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath.”  The annual gathering of the
+Gipsies and others of the same class, who make Leicestershire,
+Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and neighbouring counties,
+their head-quarters, takes place at the well-known Bolton Fair, held
+about Whitsuntide, on the borders of Leicestershire, a village situated
+in a kind of triangle, between Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and
+Derbyshire.  Spellman speaks of the Gipsies about this time as
+follows:—“The worst kind of wanderers and impostors springing up on the
+Continent, but yet rapidly spreading themselves through Britain and other
+parts of Europe, disfigured by their swarthiness, sun-burnt, filthy in
+their clothing and indecent in all their customs.”  Under these
+circumstances it is not to be wondered at, in these dark ages, that some
+steps should be taken to stop these lawless desperadoes and vagabonds
+from contaminating our English labourers’ and servant girls with their
+loose ideas of labour, cleanliness, honesty, morality, truthfulness, and
+religion.  It was soon manifest what kind of strange people had begun to
+flock to our shores to make their domiciles among us, as will be seen in
+a description given of them in an Act of Parliament passed in the
+twenty-second year of the reign of Henry VIII., being only about seven
+years after their landing in Scotland, and to which I have referred
+before.  In the tenth chapter of the said act they are described as—“An
+outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no crafte nor feat
+of merchandise; who have come into this realm and gone from shire to
+shire and place to place in great company, and used great subtle and
+crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand that by
+palmistry they could tell the men’s and women’s fortunes, and so many
+times by crafte and subtlety have deceived the people of their money, and
+also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.  Wherefore all
+are directed to avoid the realm and not to return under pain of
+imprisonment and forfeitures of their goods and chattels; and on their
+trials for any felonies which they may have committed they shall not be
+entitled to a jury.”  As if this was not sufficient or as if it had not
+the desired effect the authors anticipated viz., in preventing other
+Gipsies flocking to our shores or driving those away from us who were
+already in our midst another act was passed in the twenty-seventh year of
+the same reign, more severe than the previous act, and part of it runs as
+follows:—“Whereas certain outlandish people, who do not profess any
+crafte or trade, whereby to maintain themselves, but go about in great
+numbers from place to pace using insidious underhand means to impose on
+His Majesty’s subjects, making them believe that they understand the art
+of foretelling to men and women their good and evil fortunes by looking
+in their hands, whereby they frequently defraud people of their money;
+likewise are guilty of thefts and highway robberies; it is hereby ordered
+that the said vagrants, commonly called Egyptians, in case they remain
+one month in the kingdom, shall be proceeded against as thieves and
+rascals, and at the importation of such Egyptians (the importer) shall
+forfeit £40 for every trespass.”
+
+The fine of £40 being inflicted at that time, which means a large sum at
+the present day, carries something more with it than the thefts committed
+by the Gipsies.  It is evident that the Gipsies had wheedled themselves
+into the graces and favours of some portion of the aristocracy by their
+crafts and deception.  If the Gipsy offences had been committed against
+the labouring population it would have been the height of absurdity for
+Parliament to have inflicted a fine of some hundreds of pounds upon the
+working man of the poorer classes.  It has occurred to me that the
+question of Popery may have been one of the causes of their persecution;
+and it is not unlikely that wealthy Roman Catholics may have had
+something to do with their importation into this country.  The fact is,
+before the Gipsies left the Continent for England they were Roman
+Catholic pilgrims, and going about the country doing the work of the Pope
+to some extent, and this may have been one of the objects of those who
+were opposed to the Protestant tendencies of Henry VIII. in causing them
+to come over to England.  At this time our own country was in a very
+disturbed state, religiously, and no people were so suitable to work in
+the dark and carry messages from place to place as the Gipsies,
+especially if by so doing they could make plenty of plunder out of it;
+and this idea I have hinted at before as one of their leading
+characteristics.  It should not be overlooked that telegraphs, railways,
+stagecoaches, and canals had not been established at this time,
+consequently for the Gipsies to be moving about the country from village
+to village under a cloak, as they appeared to the higher powers, was
+sufficient to make them the subjects of bitter persecution.  For the
+Gipsies to have openly avowed that they were Roman Catholics before
+landing upon our shores, would in all probability have defeated the
+object of those who induced—if induced—them to come over to Britain.  At
+any rate, we may, I think, fairly assume that this feature of their
+character, an addition to their fortune-telling proclivities, may have
+been one of the causes of their persecution, and in this view I am to
+some extent supported by circumstances.
+
+During the reign of Henry VIII. a number of Gipsies were sent back to
+France, and in the book of receipts and payments of the thirty-fifth of
+the same reign the following entries are made:—“Nett payments, 1st Sept.,
+36 of Henry VIII.  Item, to Tho. Warner, Sergeant of the Admyraltie, 10th
+Sept., for victuals prepared for a shippe appointed to convey certaine
+Egupeians, 58s.  Item, to the same Tho. Warner, to the use of John Bowles
+for freight of said shippe, £6 5s.  0d.  Item, to Robt. ap Rice, Esq.,
+Shriff of Huntingdon, for the charge of the Egupeians at a special gailo
+delivery, and the bringing of them to be carreied over the sees; over and
+besides the sum of £4 5s. 0d. groming of seventeen horses sold at five
+shillings the peice as apperythe by a particular book, £17 17s. 7d.
+Item, to Will. Wever, appointed to have the charge of the conduct of the
+said Egupeians to Callis, £5.”
+
+In 1426 a first-rate horse was worth about £1 6s. 8d., and a colt 4s. 6d.
+Twenty-two years later the hay of an acre of land was worth about £5.
+
+There were several acts passed relating to the Gipsies during the reign
+of Philip and Mary, and fifth of Elizabeth, by which it states—“If any
+person, being fourteen years old, whether natural born subject or
+stranger, who had been seen in the fellowship of such persons, or had
+disguised himself like them, or should remain with them one month at once
+or several times, it should be felony without the benefit of the clergy.”
+Wraxall, in his “History of France,” vol. ii., page 32, in referring to
+the act of Elizabeth, in 1653, states that in her reign the Gipsies
+throughout England were supposed to exceed 10,000.  About the year 1586
+complaints were again made of the increase of vagabonds and loitering
+persons.
+
+The following order is copied from the Harleian MSS. in the British
+Museum:—“Orders, rules, and directions, concluded, appointed, and agreed
+upon by us the Justices of Peace within the county of Suffolk, assembled
+at our general session of peace, holden at Bury, the 22nd daie of Aprill,
+in the 31st yeare of the raigne of our Souraigne Lady the Queen’s
+Majestie, for the punishing and suppressinge of roags, vacabonds, idle
+loyterings, and lewde persons, which doe or shall hereafter wander and
+goe aboute within the hundreths of Thingo cum Bury, Blackborne,
+Thedwardstree, Cosford, Babings, Risbridge, Lackford, and the hundreth of
+Exninge, in the said county of Suffolk, contrary to the law in that case
+made and provided.
+
+“Whereas at the Parliament beganne and holden at Westminster, the 8th
+daie of Maye, in the 14th yeare of the raigne of the Queen’s Majesty that
+nowe is, one Acte was made intytuled, ‘An Acte for the punishment of
+Vacabonds and for releife of the Pooere and Impotent’; and whereas at a
+Session of the Parliament, holden by prorogacon at Westminster, the eight
+daie of February, in the 28th yeare of Her Majesties raigne, an other
+Acte was made and intytuled, ‘An Act for settinge of the Poore to work
+and for the avoydinge of idleness’; by virtue of which severall Acts
+certeyne provisions and remedies have been ordeyned and established, as
+well for the suppressinge and punishinge of all roags, vacabonds, sturdy
+roags, idle and loyteringe persons; as also for the reliefe and setting
+on worke of the aged and impotente persons within this realm, and
+authoritie gyven to justices of peace, in their several charges and
+commissions, to see that the said Acts and Statuts be putte in due
+execution, to the glorie of Allmightie God and the benefite of the Common
+Welth.
+
+“And whereas also yt appeareth by dayly experience that the numbr of
+idle, vaggraunte, loyteringe sturdy roags, masterless men, lewde and yll
+disposed persons are exceedingly encreased and multiplied, committinge
+many grevious and outerageous disorders and offences, tendinge to the
+great . . . of Allmightie God, the contempt of Her Majesties laws, and to
+the great charge, trouble, and disquiet of the Common Welth:
+
+“We, the Justices of Peace above speciefied, assembled and mett together
+at our general sessions above-named for remedie of theis and such lyke
+enormitities which hereafter shall happen to arrise or growe within the
+hundreths and lymits aforesaid, doe by theis presents order, decree, and
+ordeyne That there shall be builded or provided a convenient house, which
+shall be called the House of Correction, and that the same be establishd
+within the towne of Bury, within the hundreth of Thingoe aforesaid: And
+that all persons offendinge or lyvinge contrary to the tenor of the said
+twoe Acts, within the hundreths and lymitts aforesaid, shall be, by the
+warrante of any Justice of Peace dwellinge in the same hundreths or
+lymitts, committed thether, and there be received, punished, sett to
+worke, and orderd in such sorte and accordinge to the directions,
+provisions, and limitations hereafter in theis presents declard and
+specified.
+
+“Fyrst—That yt maie appeare what persons arre apprehended, committed, and
+brought to the House of Correction, it is ordered and appointed, that all
+and every person and persons which shall be found and taken within the
+hundreths and lymitts aforesaid above the age of 14 yeares, and shall
+take upon them to be procters or procuraters goinge aboute without
+sufficiente lycense from the Queen’s Majestie; all idle persons goinge
+aboute usinge subtiltie and unlawfull games or plaie; all such as faynt
+themselves to have knowledge in physiognomeye, palmestrie, or other
+absurd sciences; all tellers of destinies, deaths, or fortunes, and such
+lyke fantasticall imaginations.”
+
+In Scotland, the Gipsies, and other vagrants of the same class, were
+dealt with equally as severely under Mary Queen of Scots as they were
+under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth in England.  In an act passed in 1579 I
+find the following relating to Gipsies and vagabonds:—“That sik as make
+themselves fules and ar bairdes, or uther sik like runners about, being
+apprehended, sall be put into the Kinge’s Waird, or irones, sa lang as
+they have ony gudes of their owin to live on, and fra they have not
+quhair upon to live of thir owin that their eares be nayled to the trone
+or to an uther tree, and thir eares cutted off and banished the countrie;
+and gif thereafter they be found againe, that they be hanged.
+
+“And that it may be knowen quwhat maner of persones ar meaned to be idle
+and strong begares, and vagabounds, and worthy of the punischment before
+specified, it is declared: That all idle persones ganging about in any
+countrie of this realm, using subtil craftie and unlawful playes, as
+juglarie, fast-and-lous, and sik uthers; the idle people calling
+themselves _Egyptians_, or any uther, that feinzies themselves to have a
+knowledge or charming prophecie, or other abused sciences, quairby they
+perswade peopil that they can tell thir weirds, deaths, and fortunes, and
+sik uther phantastical imaginations,” &c., &c.
+
+Another law was passed in Scotland in 1609, not less severe than the one
+passed in 1579, called Scottish Acts, and in which I find the
+following:—“Sorcerers, common thieves, commonly called Egyptians, were
+directed to pass forth of the kingdom, under pain of death as common,
+notorious, and condemned thieves.”  This was persecution with vengeance,
+and no mistake; and it was under this kind of treatment, severe as it
+was, the Gipsies continued to grow and prosper in carrying out their
+nefarious practices.  The case of these poor miserable wretches, midnight
+prowlers, with eyes and hearts and bending steps determined upon mischief
+and evil-doing, presents to us the spectacle of justice untempered with
+mercy.  The phial filled with revenge, malice, spite, hatred,
+extermination and blood—without the milk of human kindness, the honey of
+love, water from the crystal fountain, and the tincture of Gethsemane’s
+garden being added to take away the nauseousness of it—being handed these
+poor deluding witches and wretches to drink to the last dregs, failed to
+get rid of social and national grievances.  The hanging of thirteen
+Gipsies at one of the Suffolk Assizes a few years before the Restoration
+carried with it none of the seeds of a reformation in their character and
+habits, nor did it lessen the number of these wandering prowlers, for we
+find that from the landing of a few hundred of Gipsies from France in
+1514, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the number had
+increased to something like 15,000.  The number who had been hung, died
+in prison, suffered starvation, and the fewness of those who were
+Christians, and gone to heaven, during the period of over 250 years, and
+prior to the noble efforts of Raper, Sir Joseph Banks, Hoyland, Crabb,
+Borrow, and others, is fearful to contemplate.  Hoyland tells us that in
+his day, “not one Gipsy in a thousand could read or write.”
+
+Efforts put forth to exterminate these Asiatic heathens, babble-mongers,
+and bush-ranging thieves, were not confined to England alone.  King
+Ferdinand of Spain was the first to set the persecuting machine at work
+to grind them to powder, and passed an edict in the year 1492 for their
+extermination, which only drove them into hiding-places, to come out,
+with their mouths watering, in greater numbers, for fresh acts of
+violence and plunder.  At the King’s death, the Emperor Charles V.
+persecuted them afresh, but with no success, and the consequence was they
+were left alone in Spain to pursue their course of robbery and crime for
+more than 200 years.  In France an edict was passed by Francis I.  At a
+Council of the State of Orleans an order was sent to all Governors to
+drive the Gipsies out of the country with fire and the sword.  Under this
+edict they still increased, and a new order was issued in 1612 for their
+extermination.  In 1572 they were driven from the territories of Milan
+and Parma, and earlier than this date they were driven beyond the
+Venetian jurisdiction.
+
+    “It is the sound of fetters—sound of work
+    Is not so dismal.  Hark! they pass along.
+    I know it is those Gipsy prisoners;
+    I saw them, heard their chains.  O! terrible
+    To be in chains.”
+
+In Denmark they were not allowed to pass about the country unmolested,
+and every magistrate was ordered to take them into custody.  A very sharp
+and severe order came out for their expulsion from Sweden in the year
+1662.  Sixty-one years later a second order was published by the Diet;
+and in 1727 additional stringent measures were added to the foregoing
+edicts.  Under pain of death they were excluded from the Netherlands by
+Charles V., and in 1582 by the United Provinces.  Germany seems to have
+led the van in passing laws for their extermination.  At the Augsburg
+Diet in 1500, Maximillian I. had the following edict drawn
+up:—“Respecting those people who call themselves Gipsies roving up and
+down the country.  By public edict to all ranks of the empire, according
+to the obligations under which they are bound to us and the Holy Empire,
+it is strictly ordered that in future they do not permit the said Gipsies
+(since there is authentic evidence of their being spies, scouts, and
+conveyers of intelligence, betraying the Christians to the Turks) to pass
+or remain within their territories, nor to trade or traffic, neither to
+grant them protection nor convoy, and that the said Gipsies do withdraw
+themselves before Easter next ensuing from the German Dominions, entirely
+quit them, nor suffer themselves to be found therein.  As in case they
+should transgress after this time, and receive injury from any person,
+they shall have no redress, nor shall such persons be thought to have
+committed any crime.”  Grellmann says the same affair occupied the Diet
+in 1530, 1544, 1548, and 1551, and was also enforced in the stringent
+police regulations of Frankfort in 1577, and he goes on to say that with
+the exception of Hungary and Transylvania, they were similarly proscribed
+in every civilised state.  I think it will be seen by the foregoing
+German edict that there is some foundation for the supposition I have
+brought forward earlier, viz., that the persecution of the Gipsies in
+this country was not so much on account of their thieving deeds, plunder,
+and other abominations, as their connection with the emissaries of the
+Pope of Rome, and in the secrecy of their movements in going from village
+to village, undermining the foundation of the State, law, and order,
+civil and religious liberty.  The only bright spot and cheerful tint upon
+this sorrowful picture of persecution which took place in our own country
+during these dark ages was the appearance of the Star of Elstow, John
+Bunyan, the Bedfordshire tinker, whose life and death forcibly
+illustrates the last words of Jesus upon the Cross, “Father, forgive
+them, they know not what they do.”
+
+    “’Twere ill to banish hope and let the mind
+    Drift like a feather.  I have had my share
+    Of what the world calls trial.  Once a fire
+    Came in the darkness, when the city lay
+    In a still sea of slumber, stretching out
+    Great lurid arms which stained the firmament;
+    And when I woke the room was full of sparks,
+    And red tongues smote the lattice.  Then a hand
+    Came through the sulphur, taking hold of mine,
+    And the next moment there were shouts of joy.
+    Ah! I was but a child and my first care
+    Was for my mother.”—HARRIS (the Cornish poet).
+
+Towards the end of the eighteenth century it became evident that edicts
+and persecutions were not going to stamp out the Gipsies in this country,
+for instead of them decreasing in numbers they kept increasing; at this
+time there were supposed to be about 18,000 in the country.  The
+following sad case, showing the malicious spirits of the Gipsies, and the
+relentless hand of the hangman, seemed to have had the effect of bringing
+the authorities to bay.  They had begun to put their “considering caps”
+on, and were in a fix as to the next move, and it was time they had.
+They had never thought of tempering justice with mercy.  A century ago,
+1780, a number of young Gipsies were arrested at Northampton, upon what
+charge it does not appear.  It should be noted that Northamptonshire at
+this time was a favourite round for the Gipsy fraternity as well as the
+adjoining counties.  This, it seems, excited the feelings of the Gipsies
+in the county, and they sought to obtain the release of the young Gipsies
+who were in custody, but were not successful in their application to the
+magistrate; the consequence was—true to their instincts—the spirit of
+revenge manifested itself to such a degree that the Gipsies threatened to
+set fire to the town, and would, in all probability have carried it out
+had not a number of them been brought to the gallows for these threats.
+With this case the hands of persecution began to hang down, for it was
+evident that persecution _alone_ would neither improve these Gipsies nor
+yet drive them out of the country.  The tide of events now changed.  Law,
+rigid, stern justice alone could do no good with them, and consequently
+handed them over to the minister of love and mercy.  This step was a
+bound to the opposite extreme, and as we go along we shall see that the
+efforts put forth in this direction alone met with but little more
+success than under the former treatment.  Seven years after the foregoing
+executions Grellmann’s work upon the Gipsies appeared, which caused a
+considerable commotion among the religious communities, following, as it
+did, the universal feeling aroused in the welfare of the children of this
+country by the establishment of Sunday-schools throughout the length and
+breadth of the land to teach the children of the working-classes reading
+and writing and the fundamental principles of Christianity.  After
+repeated efforts put forth by a number of Christian gentlemen, and the
+interest caused by the publication of Grellmann’s book, the work of
+reforming the Gipsies by purely religious and philanthropic action began
+to lag behind; the result was, as in the case of persecution, no good was
+observable, and the Gipsies were allowed to go again on their way to
+destruction.  The next step was one in the right direction, viz., that of
+trying to improve the Gipsies by the means of the schoolmaster; although
+humble and feeble in its plan of operation, yet if we look to the agency
+put forth and its results, the Sunday-school teacher must have felt
+encouraged in his work as he plodded on Sunday after Sunday.
+
+It may be said of Thomas Howard as it was said of the poor widow of old,
+he “hath done more than them all.”  The following account of this
+cheerful, encouraging, and interesting gathering is taken from Hoyland,
+in which he says:—“The first account he received of any of them was from
+Thomas Howard, proprietor of a glass and china shop, No. 50, Fetter Lane,
+Fleet Street.  This person, who preached among the Calvinists, said that
+in the winter of 1811 he had assisted in the establishment of a
+Sunday-school in Windwill Street, Acre Lane, near Clapham.  It was under
+the patronage of a single gentlewoman, of the name of Wilkinson, and
+principally intended for the neglected and forlorn children of
+brick-makers and the most abject poor.”  At the present day Gipsies
+generally locate in the neighbourhood of brick-yards and low, swampy
+marshes, or by the side of rivers or canals.  It was begun on a small
+scale, but increased till the number of scholars amounted to forty.
+
+“During the winter a family of Gipsies, of the name of Cooper, obtained
+lodgings at a house opposite the school.  Trinity Cooper, a daughter of
+the Gipsy family, who was about thirteen years of age, applied to be
+instructed at the school; but in consequence of the obloquy affixed to
+that description of persons she was repeatedly refused.  She nevertheless
+persevered in her importunity, till she obtained admission for herself
+and two of her brothers.  Thomas Howard says, surrounded as he was by
+ragged children, without shoes and stockings, the first lesson he taught
+them was silence and submission.  They acquired habits of subordination
+and became tractable and docile; and of all his scholars there were not
+any more attentive and affectionate than these; and when the Gipsies
+broke up in the spring, to make their usual excursions, the children
+expressed much regret at leaving school.  This account was confirmed by
+Thomas Jackson, of Brixton Row, minister of Stockwell Chapel, who
+said:—Since the above experiment, several Gipsies had been admitted to a
+Sabbath-school under the direction of his congregation.  At their
+introduction, he compared them to birds when first put into the cage,
+which flew against the sides of it, having no idea of restraint; but by a
+steady, even care over them, and the influence of the example of other
+children, they soon become settled and fell into their ranks.”  The next
+step taken to let daylight upon the Gipsy and his dark doings in the dark
+ages was by means of letters to the Press, and what surprises me is that
+this step, the most important of all, was not taken before.
+
+In a letter addressed to the _Christian Observer_, vol. vii., p. 91, in
+the year about 1809, “Nil” writes:—“As the divine spirit of Christianity
+deems no object, however uncouth or insignificant, beneath her notice, I
+venture to apply to you on behalf of a race, the outcasts of society, of
+whose pitiable condition, among the many forms of human misery which have
+engaged your efforts, I do not recollect to have seen any notice in the
+pages of your excellent miscellany.  I allude to the deplorable state of
+the Gipsies, on whose behalf I beg leave to solicit your good offices
+with the public.  Lying at our very doors, they seem to have a peculiar
+claim on our compassion.  In the midst of a highly refined state of
+society, they are but little removed from savage life.  In this happy
+country, where the light of Christianity shines with its purest lustre,
+they are still strangers to its cheering influence.  I have not heard
+even of any efforts which have been made either by individuals or
+societies for their improvement.”  “Fraternicus,” writing to the same
+Journal, vol. vii., and in the same year, says:—“It is painful to reflect
+how many thousands of these unhappy creatures have, since the light of
+Christianity has shone on this island, gone into eternity ignorant of the
+ways of salvation;” and goes on to say that, “there is an awful
+responsibility attached to this neglect,” and recommends the appointment
+of missionaries to the work; and finishes his appeal as
+follows:—“Christians of various denominations, perhaps may, through the
+divine providence, be the means of exciting effectual attention to the
+spiritual wants of this deplorable set of beings; and the same
+benevolence which induced you to exert your talents and influence on
+behalf of the oppressed negroes may again be successfully employed in
+ameliorating the condition of a numerous class of our fellow-creatures.”
+“H.” wrote to the _Christian Observer_, and said he hoped “to see the day
+when the nation, which has at length done justice to the poor negroes,
+will be equally zealous to do their duty in this instance,” and he
+offered to subscribe “twenty pounds per annum towards so good an object.”
+“Minimus,” another writer to the same paper, with reference to missionary
+enterprise, says:—“The soil which it is proposed to cultivate is
+remarkably barren and unpropitious; of course, a plentiful harvest must
+not be soon expected;” and finishes his letter by saying, “Let us arise
+and build; let us begin; there is no fear of progress and help.”  “H.,” a
+clergyman, writes again and says:—“Surely, when our charity is flowing in
+so wide a channel, conveying the blessings of the Gospel to the most
+distant quarters of the globe, we shall not hesitate to water this one
+barren and neglected field in our own land.  My attention was drawn to
+the state of this miserable class of human beings by the letter of
+‘Fraternicus,’ and looking upon it as a reproach to our country;” and
+ends his letter with a short prayer, as follows: “It is my earnest prayer
+to God that this may not be one of these projects which are only talked
+of and never begun; but that it may tend to the glory of His name and to
+the bringing back of these poor lost sheep to the fold of their
+Redeemer.”  “J. P.” writes to the same Journal, April 28, 1810, in which
+he says:—“Circumstances lead to think that were encouragement given to
+them the Gipsies would be inclined to live in towns and villages like
+other people; and would in another generation become civilised, and with
+the pains which are now taken to educate the poor, and to diffuse the
+Scriptures and the knowledge of Christ, would become a part of the
+regular fold.  It would require much patient continuance in well doing in
+those who attempted it, and they must be prepared, perhaps, to meet with
+some untowardness and much disappointment.”  “Fraternicus” sums up the
+correspondence by suggesting a plan of taking the school to the Gipsies
+instead of taking the Gipsies to the schools:—“If the compulsory
+education of the Gipsies had taken place a century ago, and their tents
+brought under some sort of sanitary inspection, what a change by this
+time would have taken place in their habits,” &c.; and he further
+says:—“By degrees they might be brought to attend divine worship; and if
+in the parish of a pious clergyman he would probably embrace the
+opportunity of teaching them.  Much might be done by a pious schoolmaster
+and schoolmistress, by whom the girls might be taught different kinds of
+work, knitting, sewing, &c.  Should these suggestions be deemed worthy of
+your insertion, they might, perhaps, awaken the attention of some
+benevolent persons, whose superior talents and experience in the ways of
+beneficence would enable them to perfect and carry into execution a plan
+for the effectual benefit of these unhappy portioners of our kind.”
+
+“Junius,” in the _Northampton Mercury_, under date June 27th, 1814,
+writes:—“When we consider the immense sums raised for every probable
+means of doing good which have hitherto been made public, we cannot doubt
+if a proper method should be proposed for the relief and ameliorating the
+state of these people it would meet with deserved encouragement.  Suppose
+that legislature should think this not unworthy its notice, and as a part
+of the great family they ought not to be overlooked.”  Another
+correspondent to the same Journal, “A Friend of Religion,” writes under
+date July 21st, 1815, urging the necessity of some means being adopted
+for their improvement, and remarks as follows:—“Thousands of our
+fellow-creatures would be raised from depravity and wretchedness to a
+state of comfort; the private property of individuals be much more
+secure, and the public materially benefited.”
+
+Instead of putting into practice measures for their improvement, and the
+State taking hold of them by the hand as children belonging to us, and
+with us, and for whom our first care ought to have been, we have said in
+anger—
+
+             “‘Heathen dog!
+    Begone, begone! you shall have nothing here.’
+    The Indian turned; then facing Collingrew,
+    In accents low and musical, he said:
+    ‘But I am very hungry; it is long
+    Since I have eaten.  Only give me a crust,
+    A bone, to cheer me on my weary way.’
+    Then answered he, with fury and a frown:
+    ‘Go!  Get you gone! you red-skinned heathen hound!
+    I’ve nothing for you.  Get you gone, I say!’”
+
+                                               HARRIS, “Wayside Pictures.”
+
+During the summer of 1814, Mr. John Hoyland, of Sheffield, set to work in
+earnest to try to improve the condition of the Gipsies, and for that
+purpose he visited, in conjuction with Mr. Allen, solicitor at Higham
+Ferners, many parts of Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties; and he
+also sent out a circular to most of the sheriffs in England with a number
+of questions upon it relating to their numbers, condition, &c., and the
+following are a few of the answers sent in reply:—1. All Gipsies suppose
+the first of them came from Egypt.  2. They cannot form any idea of the
+number in England.  5. The more common names are Smith, Cooper, Draper,
+Taylor, Boswell, Lee, Lovell, Leversedge, Allen, Mansfield, Glover,
+Williams, Carew, Martin, Stanley, Buckley, Plunkett, and Corrie.  6 and
+7. The gangs in different towns have not any connection or organisation.
+8. In the county of Herts it is computed there may be sixty families,
+having many children.  Whether they are quite so numerous in
+Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire the answers are not
+sufficiently definite to determine.  In Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire,
+Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, greater numbers are calculated
+upon.  9. More than half their numbers follow no business; others are
+dealers in horses and asses, &c., &c.  10. Children are brought up in the
+habits of their parents, particular to music and dancing, and are of
+dissolute conduct.  11. The women mostly carry baskets with trinkets and
+small wares, and tell fortunes.  13. In most counties there are
+particular situations to which they are partial.  15, 16, and 17. Do not
+know of any person that can write the language, or of any written
+specimen of it.  19. Those who profess any religion represent it to be
+that of the country in which they reside; but their description of it
+seldom goes beyond repeating the Lord’s Prayer, and only a few of them
+are capable of that.  20. They marry, for the most part, by pledging to
+each other, without any ceremony.  21. They do not teach their children
+religion.  22 and 23. Not _one in a thousand can read_.  Most of these
+answers were confirmed by Riley Smith, who, during many years, was
+accounted the chief of the Gipsies in Northamptonshire.  Mr. John Forster
+and Mr. William Carrington, respectable merchants of Biggleswade, and who
+knew Riley Smith well, corroborated his statements.  After Hoyland had
+published his book no one stepped into the breach, with flag in hand, to
+take up the cry; and for several years—except the efforts of a clergyman
+here and there—the interest in the cause of the Gipsies dwindled down,
+and became gradually and miserably less, and the consequence was the
+Gipsies have not improved an iota during the three centuries they have
+been in our midst.  As they were, so they are, and likely to remain
+unless brought under State control.
+
+                “On the winds
+    A voice came murmuring, ‘We must work and wait’;
+    And every echo in the far-off fen
+    Took up the utterance: ‘We must work and wait.’
+    Her spirit felt it, ‘We must work and wait.’”
+
+                                                                   HARRIS.
+
+No one heeded the warning.  No one listened to the cries of the poor
+Gipsy children as they glided into eternity.  No one put out their hands
+to save them as they kept disappearing from the gaze of the bystanders,
+among whom were artificial Christians, statesmen, and philanthropists.
+All was as still as death, and the poor black wretches passed away.
+
+Whether His Majesty George III. had ever read Grellmann’s or Hoyland’s
+works on Gipsies has not been shown.  The following interesting account
+will show that royal personages are not deaf to the cries of suffering
+humanity, be it in a Gipsy’s wigwam, a cottage, or palace.  It is taken
+from a missionary magazine for June, 1823, and in all probability the
+circumstance took place not many years prior to this date, and is as
+follows:—“A king of England of happy memory, who loved his people and his
+God better than kings in general are wont to do, occasionally took the
+exercise of hunting.  Being out one day for this purpose, the chase lay
+through the shrubs of the forest.  The stag had been hard run; and, to
+escape the dogs, had crossed the river in a deep part.  As the dogs could
+not be brought to follow, it became necessary, in order to come up with
+it, to make a circuitous route along the banks of the river, through some
+thick and troublesome underwood.  The roughness of the ground, the long
+grass and frequent thickets, gave opportunity for the sportsmen to
+separate from each other, each one endeavouring to make the best and
+speediest route he could.  Before they had reached the end of the forest
+the king’s horse manifested signs of fatigue and uneasiness, so much so
+that his Majesty resolved upon yielding the pleasures of the chase to
+those of compassion for his horse.  With this view he turned down the
+first avenue in the forest and determined on riding gently to the oaks,
+there to wait for some of his attendants.  His Majesty had only proceeded
+a few yards when, instead of the cry of the hounds, he fancied he heard
+the cry of human distress.  As he rode forward he heard it more
+distinctly.  ‘Oh, my mother! my mother!  God pity and bless my poor
+mother!’  The curiosity and kindness of the king led him instantly to the
+spot.  It was a little green plot on one side of the forest, where was
+spread on the grass, under a branching oak, a little pallet, half covered
+with a kind of tent, and a basket or two, with some packs, lay on the
+ground at a few paces distant from the tent.  Near to the root of the
+tree he observed a little swarthy girl, about eight years of age, on her
+knees, praying, while her little black eyes ran down with tears.
+Distress of any kind was always relieved by his Majesty, for he had a
+heart which melted at ‘human woe’; nor was it unaffected on this
+occasion.  And now he inquired, ‘What, my child, is the cause of your
+weeping?  For what do you pray?’  The little creature at first started,
+then rose from her knees, and pointing to the tent, said, ‘Oh, sir! my
+dying mother!’  ‘What?’ said his Majesty, dismounting, and fastening his
+horse up to the branches of the oak, ‘what, my child? tell me all about
+it.’  The little creature now led the king to the tent; there lay, partly
+covered, a middle-aged female Gipsy in the last stages of a decline, and
+in the last moments of life.  She turned her dying eyes expressively to
+the royal visitor, then looked up to heaven; but not a word did she
+utter; the organs of speech had ceased their office! _the silver cord was
+loosed_, _and the wheel broken at the cistern_.  The little girl then
+wept aloud, and, stooping down, wiped the dying sweat from her mother’s
+face.  The king, much affected, asked the child her name, and of her
+family; and how long her mother had been ill.  Just at that moment
+another Gipsy girl, much older, came, out of breath, to the spot.  She
+had been at the town of W---, and had brought some medicine for her dying
+mother.  Observing a stranger, she modestly curtsied, and, hastening to
+her mother, knelt down by her side, kissed her pallid lips, and burst
+into tears.  ‘What, my dear child,’ said his Majesty, ‘can be done for
+you?’  ‘Oh, sir!’ she replied, ‘my dying mother wanted a religious person
+to teach her and to pray with her before she died.  I ran all the way
+before it was light this morning to W---, and asked for a minister, _but
+no one could I get to come with me to pray with my dear mother_!’  The
+dying woman seemed sensible of what her daughter was saying, and her
+countenance was much agitated.  The air was again rent with the cries of
+the distressed daughters.  The king, full of kindness, instantly
+endeavoured to comfort them.  He said, ‘I am a minister, and God has sent
+me to instruct and comfort your mother.’  He then sat down on a pack by
+the side of the pallet, and, taking the hand of the dying Gipsy,
+discoursed on the demerit of sin and the nature of redemption.  He then
+pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour.  While the king was
+doing this the poor creature seemed to gather consolation and hope; her
+eyes sparkled with brightness, and her countenance became animated.  She
+looked up; she smiled; but it was the last smile; it was the glimmering
+of expiring nature.  As the expression of peace, however, remained strong
+in her countenance, it was not till some little time had elapsed that
+they perceived the struggling spirit had left mortality.
+
+“It was at this moment that some of his Majesty’s attendants, who had
+missed him at the chase, and who had been riding through the forest in
+search of him, rode up, and found the king comforting the afflicted
+Gipsies.  It was an affecting sight, and worthy of everlasting record in
+the annals of kings.
+
+“His Majesty now rose up, put some gold into the hands of the afflicted
+girls, promised them his protection, and bade them look to heaven.  He
+then wiped the tears from his eyes and mounted his horse.  His
+attendants, greatly affected, stood in silent admiration.  Lord L--- was
+now going to speak, when his Majesty, turning to the Gipsies, and
+pointing to the breathless corpse, and to the weeping girls, said, with
+strong emotion, ‘Who, my lord, who, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto
+these?’”
+
+    “Hark!  Don’t you hear the rumbling of its wheels?
+    Nearer it comes and nearer!  Oh, what light!
+    The tent is full; ’tis glory everywhere!
+    Dear Jesus, I am coming!  Then she fell—
+    As falls a meteor when the skies are clear.”
+
+After this solemn but interesting event nothing further seems to have
+been done by either Christian or philanthropist towards wiping out this
+national disgrace, and the Gipsies were left to follow the bent of their
+evil propensities for several years, till Mr. Crabb’s reading of Hoyland
+and witnessing the sentence of death passed upon a Gipsy at Winchester,
+in 1827, for horse-stealing.
+
+Mr. Crabb happened to enter just as the judge was passing sentence of
+death on two unhappy men.  To one he held out the hope of mercy; but to
+the other, a poor Gipsy, who was convicted of horse-stealing, he said, no
+hope could be given.  The young man, for he was but a youth, immediately
+fell on his knees, and with uplifted hands and eyes, apparently
+unconscious of any persons being present but the judge and himself,
+addressed him as follows: “Oh, my Lord, save my life!”  The judge
+replied, “No; you can have no mercy in this world: I and my brother
+judges have come to the determination to execute horse-stealers,
+especially Gipsies, because of the increase of the crime.”  The
+suppliant, still on his knees, entreated—“Do, my Lord Judge, save my
+life! do, for God’s sake, for my wife’s sake, for my baby’s sake!”  “No,”
+replied the judge, “I cannot; you should have thought of your wife and
+children before.”  He then ordered him to be taken away, and the poor
+fellow was rudely dragged from his earthly judge.  It is hoped, as a
+penitent sinner, he obtained the more needful mercy of God, through the
+abounding grace of Christ.  After this scene Mr. Crabb could not remain
+in court.  As he returned he found the mournful intelligence had been
+communicated to some Gipsies who had been waiting without, anxious to
+learn the fate of their companion.  They seemed distracted.
+
+On the outside of the court, seated on the ground, appeared an old woman
+and a very young one, and with them two children, the eldest three years
+and the other an infant but fourteen days old.  The former sat by its
+mother’s side, alike unconscious of her bitter agonies and of her
+father’s despair.  The old woman held the infant tenderly in her arms,
+and endeavoured to comfort its weeping mother, soon to be a widow under
+circumstances the most melancholy.  “My dear, don’t cry,” said she;
+“remember you have this dear little baby.”  Impelled by the sympathies of
+pity and a sense of duty, Mr. Crabb spoke to them on the evil of sin, and
+expressed his hope that the melancholy event would prove a warning to
+them, and to all their people.  The poor man was executed about a
+fortnight after his condemnation.
+
+Mr. Crabb being full of fire and zeal, set to work in right good earnest,
+and succeeded in forming a committee at Southampton to bring about a
+reformation among the Gipsies.  He also enlisted the sympathy of other
+earnest Christians in the work, and for a time, while the sun shone,
+received encouraging signs of success, in fact, according to his little
+work published in 1831, his labours were attended with blessed results
+among the adult portion of the Gipsies.  Owing to the wandering habits of
+the Gipsies, discouragements, and his own death, the work, so far as any
+organisation was concerned, came to an end.  No Elisha came forward to
+catch his mantle, the consequence was the Gipsies were left again to work
+out their own destruction according to their own inclinations and tastes,
+as they deemed best, plainly showing that voluntary efforts are very
+little better than a shadow, vanishing smoke, and spent steam, to
+illuminate, elevate, warm, cheer, and encourage the wandering, dark-eyed
+vagabonds roving about in our midst into paths of usefulness, honesty,
+and sobriety.
+
+Thus far in this part I have feebly endeavoured to show that rigid,
+stern, inflexible law and justice on the one hand, and meek, quiet, mild,
+human love and mercy on the other hand, have separately failed in the
+object the promoters had in view.  Justice tried to exterminate the
+Gipsy; mercy tried to win them over.  Of the two processes I would much
+prefer that of mercy.  It is more pleasant to human nature to be under
+its influence, and more in the character of an Englishman to deal out
+mercy.  The next efforts put forth to reform these renegades was by means
+of fiction, romance, and poetry.  Some writers, in their praiseworthy
+endeavours to make up a medicine to improve the condition of the Gipsies,
+have neutralised its effects by adding too much honey and spice to it.
+Others, who have mistaken the emaciated condition of the Gipsy, have been
+dosing him with cordials entirely, to such a degree, that he—Romany
+_chal_—imagines he is right in everything he says and does, and he ought
+to have perfect liberty to go anywhere or do anything.  Some have
+attempted to paint him white, and in doing so have worked up the
+blackness from underneath, and presented to us a character which excites
+a feeling in our notions—a kind of go-between, akin to sympathy and
+disgust.  Not a few have thrown round the Gipsy an enchanting, bewitching
+halo, which an inspection has proved nothing less than a delusion and a
+snare.  Others have tried to improve this field of thistles and sour
+docks by throwing a handful of daisy seeds among them.  It requires
+something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and bring him
+to land.  Scents and perfumes in a death-bed chamber only last for a
+short time.  A bottle of rose-water thrown into a room where
+decomposition is at work upon a body will not restore life.  Scattering
+flowers upon a cesspool of iniquity will not purify it.  A fictitious
+rope composed of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy
+children.  To put artificially-coloured feathers upon the head of a Gipsy
+child dressed in rags and shreds, with his body literally teeming with
+vermin and filth, will not make him presentable at court or a fit subject
+for a drawing-room.  To dress the Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy
+with the violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the
+repulsive aspect of his features.  The first storm of persecution brings
+him out again in his true colour.  The forked light of imagination thrown
+across the heavens on a dark night is not the best to reveal the
+character of a Gipsy and set him upon the highways for usefulness and
+heaven.  The dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various
+characters in his endeavour to improve his condition.  After the fine
+colours have been doffed, music finished, applause ceased, curtain
+dropped, and scene ended, he has been a black, swarthy, idle, thieving,
+lying, blackguard of a Gipsy still.  Applause, fine colours, and dazzling
+lights have not altered his nature.  Bad he is, and bad he will remain,
+unless we follow out the advice of the good old book, “Train up a child
+in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
+
+Would to God the voice of the little Gipsy girl would begin to ring in
+our ears, when she spoke with finger pointed and tears in her eyes:—
+
+    “There is a cabin half-way down the cliff,
+    You see it from this arch-stone; there we live,
+    And there you’ll find my mother.  Poverty
+    Weeps on the woven rushes, and long grass
+    Rent from the hollows is our only bed.
+    I have no father here; he ran away;
+    Perhaps he’s dead, perhaps he’s living yet,
+    And may come back again and kiss his child;
+    For every day, and morn, and even star,
+    I pray for him with face upturned to heaven,
+    ‘O blessed Saviour, send my father home!’”
+
+The word “Gipsy” seems to have a magic thread running through it,
+beginning at the tip end of “G” and ending with the tail end of “y.”
+Geese have tried to gobble it, ducks swallow it, hens scratched after it,
+peacocks pecked it, dandy cocks crowed over it, foxes have hid it, dogs
+have fought for it, cats have sworn and spit over it, pigs have tried to
+gulp it as the daintiest morsel, parrots have chatted about it, hawks,
+eagles, jackdaws, magpies, ravens, and crows have tried to carry it away
+as a precious jewel, and in the end all have put it down as a thing they
+could neither carry nor swallow; and after all, when it has been stripped
+of its dowdy colours, what has it been?  Only a “scamp,” in many cases,
+reared and fostered among thieves, pickpockets, and blackguards, in our
+back slums and sink gutters.  Strip the 20,000 men, women, and children
+of the word “Gipsy,” moving about our country under the artificial and
+unreal association connected with Gipsy life, so-called, of the “red
+cloaks,” “silver buttons,” “pretty little feet,” “small hands,”
+“bewitching eyes,” “long black hair,” in nine cases out of ten in name
+only, and you, at a glance, see the class of people you have been
+neglecting, consequently sending to ruin and misery through fear on the
+one hand and lavishing smiles on the other.
+
+In all ages there have been people silly enough to be led away by sights,
+sounds, colours, and unrealities, to follow a course of life for which
+they are not suited, either by education, position, or tastes.  No one
+acts the part of a butterfly among school-boys better than the black-eyed
+Gipsy girl has done among “fast-goers,” swells, and fops.  In ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred she has trotted them out to perfection and then
+left them in the lurch, and those, when they have come to their senses,
+and had their eyes opened to the stern facts of a Gipsy’s life, have said
+to themselves, “What fools we have been, to be sure,” and they would have
+given any amount to have undone the past.  The praise, flattery, and
+looks bestowed upon the “bewitching deceivers,” when they have been
+labouring under the sense of infatuation and fascination instead of
+reason, has made them in the presence of friends hang down their heads
+like a willow, and to escape, if possible, the company of their “old
+chums” by all sorts of manœuvres.  Hubert Petalengro—a gentleman, and a
+rich member of a long family—conceived the idea, after falling madly in
+love with a dark-eyed beauty, so-called, of turning Gipsy and tasting for
+himself—not in fiction and romance—the charms of tent life, as he
+thought, in reality passing through the “first,” “second,” and “third
+degrees.”  At first, it was ideal and fascinating enough in all
+conscience; it was a pity Brother Petalengro did not have a foretaste of
+it by spending a month in a Gipsy’s tent in the depth of winter, with no
+balance at his banker’s, and compelled to wear Gipsy clothing, and make
+pegs and skewers for his Sunday broth; gather sticks for the fire, and
+sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and peeping through
+the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his back, surrounded by
+Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, cursing each other under
+the maddening influence of brandy and disappointment.  To make himself
+and his damsel comfortable on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold,
+flask with brandy, buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of
+foxes’ heads—and I suppose tails too—waterproof covering for the tent,
+and waterproof sheets and a number of blankets to lay on the damp grass
+to prevent their tender bodies being overtaken with rheumatics, and he
+also lays in a stock of potted meats and other dainties; makes all
+“square” with Esmeralda and her two brothers and the donkeys; takes first
+and second-class tickets for the whole of them to Hull—the Balaams
+excepted (it is not on record that they spoke to him on his journey);
+provides Esmeralda with dresses and petticoats—not too long to hide her
+pretty ankles, red stockings, and her lovely little foot—gold and diamond
+rings, violin, tambourine, the guitar, Wellington boots, and starts upon
+his trip to Norway in the midst of summer beauty.  Many times he must
+have said to himself, “Oh! how delightful.”  “As we journeyed onward, how
+fragrant the wild flowers—those wild flowers can never be forgotten.
+Gipsies like flowers, it is part of their nature.  Esmeralda would pluck
+them, and forming a charming bouquet, interspersed with beautiful wild
+roses, her first thoughts are to pin them in the button-hole of the
+Romany Rye (Gipsy gentleman).  As we journeyed quietly through the
+forest, how delightful its scenes.  Free from all care, we enjoy the
+anticipation of a long and pleasant ramble in Norway’s happy land.  We
+felt contented with all things, and thankful that we should be so
+permitted to roam with our tents and wild children of nature in keeping
+the solitudes we sought.  The rain had soon ceased, tinkle, tinkle went
+the hawk-bells on the collar of our Bura Rawnee as she led the way along
+the romantic Norwegian road.
+
+       [Picture: A Respectable Gipsy and his Family “on the Road”]
+
+    “‘Give the snakes and toads a twist,
+    And banish them for ever,’
+
+sang Zachariah, ever and anon giving similar wild snatches.  Then
+Esmeralda would rocker about being the wife of the Romany Rye (Gipsy
+gentleman) and as she proudly paced along in her heavy boots, she
+pictured in imagery the pleasant life she should lead as her Romany Rye’s
+joovel, monshi, or somi.  She was full of fun, yet there was nothing in
+her fanciful delineations which could offend us.  They were but the foam
+of a crested wave, soon dissipated in the air.  They were the evanescent
+creations of a lively, open-hearted girl—wild notes trilled by the bird
+of the forest.  We came again into the open valley.  Down a meadow gushed
+a small streamlet which splashed from a wooden spout on to the roadside.”
+“The spot where we pitched our tents was near a sort of small natural
+terrace, at the summit of a steep slope above the road, backed by a mossy
+bank, shaded by brushwood and skirting the dense foliage of the dark
+forest of pine and fir, above our camp.”  “We gave two of the peasants
+some brandy and tobacco.”  “Then all our visitors left, except four
+interesting young peasant girls, who still lingered.”  “They had all
+pleasant voices.”  “We listened to them with much pleasure; there was so
+much sweetness and feeling in their melody.  Zachariah made up for his
+brother’s timidity.  Full of fun, what dreadful faces the young Gipsy
+would pull, they were absolutely frightful; then he would twist and turn
+his body into all sorts of serpentine contortions.  If spoken to he would
+suddenly, with a hop, skip, and a jump alight in his tent as if he had
+tumbled from the sky, and, sitting bolt upright, make a hideous face till
+his mouth nearly stretched from ear to ear, while his dark eyes sparkled
+with wild excitement, he would sing—
+
+    “‘Dawdy!  Dawdy! dit a kei
+    Rockerony, fake your bosh!’
+
+“At one time a woman brought an exceedingly fat child for us to look at,
+and she wanted Esmeralda to suckle it, which was, of course, hastily
+declined.  We began to ask ourselves if this was forest seclusion.  Still
+our visitors were kind, good-humoured people, and some drank our brandy,
+and some smoked our English tobacco.  After our tea, at five o’clock, we
+had a pleasant stroll.  Once more we were with Nature.  There we lingered
+till the scenes round us, in their vivid beauty, seemed graven deep in
+our thought.  How graphic are the lines of Moore:—
+
+    “‘The turf shall be my fragrant shrine,
+    My temple, Lord, that arch of Thine,
+    My censor’s breath the mountain airs,
+    And silent thoughts my only prayers.
+
+    “‘My choir shall be the moonlight waves,
+    When murm’ring homeward to their caves,
+    Or when the stillness of the sea
+    Even more of music breathes of Thee!’
+
+How appropriate were the words of the great poet to our feelings.  We
+went and sat down.”  “As we were seated by our camp fire, a tall, old
+man, looking round our tents, came and stood contemplating us at our tea.
+He looked as if he thought we were enjoying a life of happiness.  Nor was
+he wrong.  He viewed us with a pleased and kindly expression, as he
+seemed half lost in contemplation.  We sent for the flask of brandy.
+Returning to our tents we put on our Napoleon boots and made some
+additions to our toilette.”  Of course, kind Mr. Petalengro would assist
+lovely Esmeralda with hers.  “Whilst we were engaged some women came to
+our tents.  The curiosity of the sex was exemplified, for they were dying
+to look behind the tent partition which screened us from observation.  We
+did not know what they expected to see; one, bolder than the rest, could
+not resist the desire to look behind the scenes, and hastily drew back
+and dropped the curtain, when we said rather sharply, ‘Nei! nei!’
+Esmeralda shortly afterwards appeared in her blue dress and silver
+buttons.  Then we all seated ourselves on a mossy bank, on the side of
+the terrace, with a charming view across the valley of the Logan.  At
+eight o’clock the music commenced.  The sun shone beautifully, and the
+mosquitoes and midges bit right and left with hungry determination.  We
+sat in a line on the soft mossy turf of the grassy slope, sheltered by
+foliage.  Esmeralda and Noah with their tambourines, myself with the
+castanets, and Zachariah with his violin.  Some peasant women and girls
+came up after we had played a short time.  It was a curious scene.  Our
+tents were pleasantly situated on an open patch of green sward,
+surrounded by border thickets, near the sunny bank and the small flat
+terrace.  The rising hills and rugged ravines on the other side of the
+valley all gave a singular and romantic beauty to the lovely view.
+Although our Gipsies played with much spirit until nine o’clock, none of
+the peasants would dance.  At nine o’clock our music ceased, and we all
+retired to our tents with the intention of going to bed.  When we were
+going into our tents, a peasant and several others with him, who had just
+arrived, asked us to play again.  At length, observing several peasant
+girls were much disappointed, we decided to play once more.  It was past
+nine o’clock when we again took up our position on the mossy bank; so we
+danced, and the peasant girls, until nearly ten o’clock.  Once we nearly
+whirled ourself and Esmeralda over the slope into the road below.
+Esmeralda’s dark eyes flashed fire and sparkled with merriment and
+witchery.”
+
+“The bacon and fish at dinner were excellent; we hardly knew which was
+best.  A peasant boy brought us a bundle of sticks for our fire.  The sun
+became exceedingly hot.  Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade
+near our tents.”  “Noah stood in the shade blacking his boots, and
+observed to Esmeralda, ‘I shall not help my wife as Mr. Petalengro does
+you.’  ‘Well,’ said Esmeralda, ‘what is a wife for?’  ‘For!’ retorted
+Noah, sharply, giving his boot an extra brush, ‘why, to wait upon her
+husband.’  ‘And what,’ said Esmeralda, ‘is a husband for?’  ‘What’s a
+husband for!’ exclaimed Noah, with a look of profound pity for his
+sister’s ignorance, ‘why, to eat and drink, and look on.’”  Mr.
+Petalengro goes on to say: “It would seem to us that the more rude energy
+a man has in his composition the more a woman will be made to take her
+position as helpmate.  It is always a mark of great civilisation and the
+effeminacy of a people when women obtain the undue mastery of men.”  And
+he farther goes on to say: “We were just having a romp with Esmeralda and
+her two brothers as we were packing up our things, and a merry laugh,
+when some men appeared at the fence near our camping-ground.  We little
+think,” says Mr. Petalengro, “how much we can do in this world to lighten
+a lonely wayfarer’s heart.”
+
+                  [Picture: A Bachelor Gipsy’s Bedroom]
+
+Esmeralda and Mr. Petalengro tell each other their fortunes.  “Esmeralda
+and myself were sitting in our tents.  Then the thought occurred to her
+that we should tell her fortune.  ‘Your fortune must be a good one,’ said
+we, laughing; ‘let me see your hand and your lines of life.’  We shall
+never forget Esmeralda.  She looked so earnestly as we regarded
+attentively the line of her open hand.”  (Mr. Petalengro does not say
+that tears were to be seen trickling down those lovely cheeks of
+Esmeralda while this fortune-telling, nonsensical farce was being played
+out.)  “Then we took her step by step through some scenes of her supposed
+future.  We did not tell all.  The rest was reserved for another day.
+There was a serious look on her countenance as we ended; but, reader,
+such secrets should not be revealed.  Esmeralda commenced to tell our
+fortunes.  We were interested to know what she would say.  We cast
+ourselves on the waves of fate.  The Gipsy raised her dark eyes from our
+hand as she looked earnestly in the face.  You are a young gentleman of
+good connections.  Many lands you have seen.  But, young man, something
+tells me you are of a wavering disposition.’”  And then charming
+Esmeralda would strike up “The Little Gipsy”—
+
+    “My father’s the King of the Gipsies, that’s true,
+    My mother she learned me some camping to do;
+    With a packel on my back, and they all wish me well,
+    I started up to London some fortunes for to tell.
+
+    “As I was a walking up fair London streets,
+    Two handsome young squires I chanced for to meet,
+    They viewed my brown cheeks, and they liked them so well,
+    They said ‘My little Gipsy girl, can you my fortune tell?’
+
+    “‘Oh yes! kind Sir, give me hold of your hand,
+    For you have got honours, both riches and land;
+    Of all the pretty maidens you must lay aside,
+    For it is the little Gipsy girl that is to be your bride.’
+
+    “He led me o’er the Mils, through valleys deep I’m sure,
+    Where I’d servants for to wait on me, and open me the door;
+    A rich bed of down to lay my head upon—
+    In less than nine months after I could his fortune tell.
+
+    “Once I was a Gipsy girl, but now a squire’s bride,
+    I’ve servants for to wait on me, and in my carriage ride.
+    The bells shall ring so merrily, sweet music they shall play,
+    And will crown the glad tidings of that lucky, lucky day.”
+
+The drawback to this evening’s whirligig farce was that the mosquitoes
+determined to come in for a share.  These little, nipping, biting
+creatures preferred settling upon young blood, full of life and activity,
+existing under artificial circumstances, to the carcase of a dead horse
+lying in the knacker’s yard.  To prevent these little stingers drawing
+the sap of life from the sweet bodies of these pretty, innocent, lovable
+creatures, the Gipsies acted a very cruel part in dressing their faces
+over with a brown liquid, called the “tincture of cedar.”  It is not
+stated whether the “tincture of cedar “was made in Shropshire or Lebanon,
+nor whether it was extracted from roses, or a decoction of thistles.
+Alas, alas! how fickle human life is!  How often we say and do things in
+jest and fun which turn out to be stern realities in another form.
+
+“As we looked upon the church and parsonage, surrounded as they were by
+the modern park, with the broad silver lake near, the rising mountains on
+all sides, and the clear blue sky above, our senses seemed entranced with
+the passing beauty of the scene.  It was one of those glimpses of perfect
+nature which casts the anchor deep in memory, and leaves a lasting
+impression of bygone days.”  And then Esmeralda danced as she sang the
+words of her song; the words not in English are her own, for I cannot
+find them even in the slang Romany, and what she meant by her bosh is
+only known to herself.
+
+    “Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,
+    I’ll set me down on yonder hill;
+    And there I’ll cry my fill,
+    And every tear shall turn a mill.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn.
+
+    “Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,
+    I’ll buy me a petticoat and dye it red,
+    And round this world I’ll beg my bread;
+    The lad I love is far away.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn.
+
+    “Shul shul gang along with me,
+    Gang along me, I’ll gang along with you,
+    I’ll buy you a petticoat and dye it in the blue,
+    Sweet William shall kiss you in the rue.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn.”
+
+“We were supremely happy,” says Mr. Petalengro, “in our wandering
+existence.  We contrasted in our semi-consciousness of mind our absence
+from a thousand anxious cares which crowd upon the social position of
+those who take part in an overwrought state of extreme civilisation.  How
+long we should have continued our half-dormant reflections which might
+have added a few more notes upon the philosophy of life, we knew not, but
+we were roused by the rumble of a stolk-jaerre along the road.”
+
+“For the dance no music can be better than that of a Gipsy band; there is
+life and animation in it which carries you away.  If you have danced to
+it yourself, especially in a _czardas,_ {176} then to hear the stirring
+tones without involuntarily springing up is, I assert, an absolute
+impossibility.”  Poor, deluded mortals, I am afraid they will find—
+
+    “Nothing but leaves!
+    Sad memory weaves
+       No veil to hide the past;
+    And as we trace our weary way,
+    Counting each lost and misspent day,
+       Sadly we find at last,
+    Nothing but leaves!”
+
+The converse of all this artificial and misleading Gipsy life is to be
+seen in hard fate and fact at our own doors—“Look on this picture and
+then on that.”
+
+    “There is a land, a sunny land,
+       Whose skies are ever bright;
+    Where evening shadows never fall:
+       The Saviour is its light.”
+
+    “There’s a land that is fairer than day,
+       And by faith we can see it afar;
+    For the Father waits over the way
+       To prepare us a dwelling-place there
+                In the sweet by-and-bye.”
+
+George Borrow, during his labours among the Gipsies of Spain forty years
+ago, did not find much occasion for rollicking fun, merriment, and
+boisterous laughter; his path was not one of roses, over mossy banks,
+among the honeysuckles and daisies, by the side of running rivulets
+warbling over the smooth pebbles; sitting among the primroses, listening
+to the enchanting voices of the thousand forest and valley songsters;
+gazing at the various and beautiful kinds of foliage on the hill-sides as
+the thrilling strains of music pealed forth from the sweet voice of
+Esmeralda and her tambourine.  No, no, no!  George Borrow had to face the
+hard lot of all those who start on the path of usefulness, honour, and
+heaven.  Hard fare, disappointment, opposition, few friends, life in
+danger, his path was rough and covered with stones; his flowers were
+thistles, his songs attended with tears, and sorrow filled his heart.
+But note his object, and mark his end.  In speaking of some of the
+difficulties in his travels, he says:—“My time lay heavily on my hands,
+my only source of amusement consisting in the conversation of the woman
+telling of the wonderful tales of the land of the Moors—prison escapes,
+thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures in which she had been
+engaged.  There was something very wild in her gestures.  She goggled
+frightfully with her eyes.”  And then speaking of the old Gipsy woman
+whom he went to see:—“Here, thrusting her hand into her pocket, she
+discharged a handful of some kind of dust or snuff into the fellow’s
+face.  He stamped and roared, but was for some time held fast by the two
+Gipsy men; he extricated himself, however, and attempted to unsheath a
+knife which he wore in his girdle; but the two young Gipsies flung
+themselves upon him like furies.”
+
+Borrow says, after travelling a long distance by night, and setting out
+again the next morning to travel thirteen leagues:—“Throughout the day a
+drizzling rain was falling, which turned the dust of the roads into mud
+and mire.  Towards evening we reached a moor—a wild place enough, strewn
+with enormous stones and rocks.  The wind had ceased, but a strong wind
+rose and howled at our backs.  The sun went down, and dark night
+presently came over us.  We proceeded for nearly three hours, until we
+heard the barking of dogs, and perceived a light or two in the distance.
+‘That is Trujillo,’ said Antonio, who had not spoken for a long time.  ‘I
+am glad of it,’ I replied; ‘I am so thoroughly tired, I shall sleep
+soundly in Trujillo.’  That is as it may be.  We soon entered the town,
+which appeared dark and gloomy enough.  I followed close behind the
+Gipsy, who led the way, I knew not whither, through dismal streets and
+dark places where cats were squalling.  ‘Here is the house,’ said he at
+last, dismounting before a low, mean hut.  He knocked, but no answer.  He
+knocked again, but no answer.  ‘There can be no difficulty,’ said I,
+‘with respect to what we have to do.  If your friends are gone out, it is
+easy enough to go to a posada.’  ‘You know not what you say,’ replied the
+Gipsy.  ‘I dare not go to the mesuna, nor enter any house in Trujillo
+save this, and this is shut.  Well, there is no remedy; we must move on;
+and, between ourselves, the sooner we leave the place the better.  My own
+brother was garroted at Trujillo.’  He lighted a cigar by means of a
+steel and yesca, sprung on his mule, and proceeded through streets and
+lanes equally dismal as those through which we had already travelled.”
+Mr. Borrow goes on to say:—“I confess I did not much like this decision
+of the Gipsy; I felt very slight inclination to leave the town behind,
+and to venture into unknown places in the dark of the night, amidst rain
+and mist—for the wind had now dropped, and the rain again began to fall
+briskly.  I was, moreover, much fatigued, and wished for nothing better
+than to deposit myself in some comfortable manger, where I might sink to
+sleep lulled by the pleasant sound of horses and mules despatching their
+provender.  I had, however, put myself under the direction of the Gipsy,
+and I was too old a traveller to quarrel with my guide under present
+circumstances.  I therefore followed close to his crupper, our only light
+being the glow emitted from the Gipsy’s cigar.  At last he flung it from
+his mouth into a puddle, and we were then in darkness.  We proceeded in
+this manner for a long time.  The Gipsy was silent.  I myself was equally
+so.  The rain descended more and more.  I sometimes thought I heard
+doleful noises, something like the hooting of owls.  ‘This is a strange
+night to be wandering abroad in,’ I at length said to Antonio, the Gipsy.
+(The Gipsy word for Antonio is ‘Devil.’)  ‘It is, brother,’ said the
+Gipsy; ‘but I would sooner be abroad in such a night, and in such places,
+than in the estaripel of Trujillo.’
+
+“We wandered at least a league further, and now appeared to be near a
+wood, for I could occasionally distinguish the trunks of immense trees.
+Suddenly Antonio stopped his mule.  ‘Look, brother,’ said he, ‘to the
+left, and tell me if you do not see a light; your eyes are sharper than
+mine.’  I did as he commanded me.  At first I could see nothing, but,
+moving a little further on, I plainly saw a large light at some distance,
+seemingly amongst the trees.  ‘Yonder cannot be a lamp or candle,’ said
+I; ‘it is more like the blaze of a fire.’  ‘Very likely,’ said Antonio.
+‘There are no queres (_houses_) in this place; it is doubtless a fire
+made by durotunes (_shepherds_); let us go and join them, for, as you
+say, it is doleful work wandering about at night amidst rain and mire.’
+
+“We dismounted and entered what I now saw was a forest, leading the
+animals cautiously amongst the trees and brushwood.  In about five
+minutes we reached a small open space, at the farther side of which, at
+the foot of a large cork-tree, a fire was burning, and by it stood or sat
+two or three figures.  They had heard our approach, and one of them now
+exclaimed, ‘Quien Vive?’  ‘I know that voice,’ said Antonio, and, leaving
+the horse with me, rapidly advanced towards the fire.  Presently I heard
+an ‘Ola!’ and a laugh, and soon the voice of Antonio summoned me to
+advance.  On reaching the fire, I found two dark lads, and a still darker
+woman of about forty, the latter seated on what appeared to be horse or
+mule furniture.  I likewise saw a horse and two donkeys tethered to the
+neighbouring trees.  It was, in fact, a Gipsy bivouac . . . ‘Come
+forward, brother, and show yourself,’ said Antonio to me; ‘you are
+amongst friends; these are of the Errate, the very people whom I expected
+to find at Trujillo, and in whose house we should have slept.’
+
+“‘And what,’ said I, ‘could have induced them to leave their house in
+Trujillo and come into this dark forest, in the midst of wind and rain,
+to pass the night?’
+
+“‘They come on business of Egypt, brother, doubtless,’ replied Antonio,
+‘and that business is none of ours.  Calla boca!  It is lucky we have
+found them here, else we should have had no supper, and our horses no
+corn.’
+
+“‘My ro is prisoner at the village yonder,’ said the woman, pointing with
+her hand in a particular direction; ‘he is prisoner yonder for choring a
+mailla (_stealing a donkey_); we are come to see what we can do in his
+behalf; and where can we lodge better than in this forest, where there is
+nothing to pay?  It is not the first time, I trow, that Caloré have slept
+at the root of a tree.’
+
+“One of the striplings now gave us barley for our animals in a large bag,
+into which we successively introduced their heads, allowing the famished
+creatures to regale themselves till we conceived that they had satisfied
+their hunger.  There was a puchero simmering at the fire, half-fall of
+bacon, garbanzos, and other provisions; this was emptied into a large
+wooden platter, and out of this Antonio and myself supped; the other
+Gipsies refused to join us, giving us to understand that they had eaten
+before our arrival; they all, however, did justice to the leathern bottle
+of Antonio, which, before his departure from Merida, he had the
+precaution to fill.
+
+“I was by this time completely overcome with fatigue and sleep.  Antonio
+flung me an immense horse-cloth, of which he bore more than one beneath
+the huge cushion on which he rode.  In this I wrapped myself, and placing
+my head upon a bundle, and my feet as near as possible to the fire, I lay
+down.”
+
+How delightful and soul-inspiring it would have been to the weary
+pilgrim, jaded in the cause of the poor Gipsies, if Antonio’s heart had
+been full of religious zeal and fervour, and Hubert Petalengro and
+Esmeralda, their souls filled to overflowing with the love of God, had
+been by the side of the camp-fire, and the trio had struck up with their
+sweet voices, as the good man was drawing his weary legs and cold feet
+together before the embers of the dying Gipsy fire—
+
+       “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
+          Pilgrim through this barren land;
+       I am weak, but Thou art mighty,
+          Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
+    Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.
+
+       “Open now the crystal fountain
+          Whence the healing waters flow;
+       Let the fiery, cloudy pillars,
+          Lead me all my journey through.
+    Strong Deliverer, be Thou still my strength and shield.”
+
+“Antonio and the other Gipsies remained seated by the fire conversing.  I
+listened for a moment to what they said, but I did not perfectly
+understand it, and what I did understand by no means interested me.  The
+rain still drizzled, but I heeded it not, and was soon asleep.
+
+“The sun was just appearing as I awoke.  I made several efforts before I
+could rise from the ground; my limbs were quite stiff, and my hair was
+covered with rime, for the rain had ceased, and a rather severe frost set
+in.  I looked around me, but could see neither Antonio nor the Gipsies;
+the animals of the latter had likewise disappeared, so had the horse
+which I had hitherto rode; the mule, however, of Antonio still remained
+fastened to the tree.  The latter circumstance quieted some apprehensions
+which were beginning to arise in my mind.  ‘They are gone on some
+business of Egypt,’ I said to myself, ‘and will return anon.’  I gathered
+together the embers of the fire, and heaping upon them sticks and
+branches, soon succeeded in calling forth a blaze, beside which I again
+placed the puchero, with what remained of the provision of last night.  I
+waited for a considerable time in expectation of the return of my
+companions, but as they did not appear, I sat down and breakfasted.
+Before I had well finished I heard the noise of a horse approaching
+rapidly, and presently Antonio made his appearance amongst the trees,
+with some agitation in his countenance.  He sprang from the horse, and
+instantly proceeded to untie the mule.  ‘Mount, brother, mount!’ said he,
+pointing to the horse; ‘I went with the Callee and her chabés to the
+village where the ro is in trouble; the chino-baro, however, seized them
+at once with their cattle, and would have laid hands also on me; but I
+set spurs to the grasti, gave him the bridle, and was soon far away.
+Mount, brother, mount, or we shall have the whole rustic _canaille_ upon
+us in a twinkling—it is such a bad place.’”
+
+I almost imagine Borrow would have said, under the circumstances, as he
+was putting his foot into the stirrup to mount his horse to fly for his
+life into the wild regions of an unknown country:—
+
+    “Jesus, lover of my soul,
+       Let me to Thy bosom fly;
+    While the nearer waters roll,
+       While the tempest still is high.
+    Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
+       Till the storm of life is past,
+    Safe into the haven guide,
+       Oh, receive my soul at last.
+
+    “Other refuge have I none,
+       Hangs my helpless soul on Thee,
+    Leave, O leave me not alone,
+       Still support and comfort me.
+    All my trust on Thee is stayed,
+       All my help from Thee I bring,
+    Cover my defenceless head,
+       With the shadow of Thy wing.”
+
+Sir Walter Scott, in “Guy Mannering,” speaking of the dark deeds of the
+Gipsies, says:—“The idea of being dragged out of his miserable
+concealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight murder, without
+weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties which would
+be only their sport, and cries for help which could never reach other ear
+than their own—his safety intrusted to the precarious compassion of a
+being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and
+imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling—the
+bitterness of his emotions almost choked him.  He endeavoured to read in
+her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her
+features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which
+females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether
+smother.  There was no such touch of humanity about this woman.”
+
+“‘Never fear,’ said the old Gipsy man, ‘Meg’s true-bred; she’s the last
+in the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and often cuts
+queer words.’  With more of this gibberish, they continued the
+conversation, rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark, obscure
+dialect, eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing
+distinctly or in plain language the subject on which it turned.”
+
+G. P. Whyte-Melville speaks of the Russian Gipsies in the language of
+fiction in his “Interpreter” as follows:—“The morning sun smiles upon a
+motley troop journeying towards the Danube.  Two or three lithe, supple
+urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and bright
+black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the advanced guard.
+Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the whole property of the tribe.  The
+main body consists of sinewy, active-looking men, and strikingly handsome
+girls, all walking with the free, graceful air and elastic gait peculiar
+to those whose lives are passed entirely in active exercise, under no
+roof but that of heaven.  Dark-browed women in the very meridian of
+beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race of swarthy progeny,
+all alike distinguished for the sparkling eyes and raven hair, which,
+with a cunning nothing can overreach, and a nature nothing can tame, seem
+to be the peculiar inheritance of the Gipsy.  Their costume is striking,
+not to say grotesque.  Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind their
+brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form a very picturesque
+and not unbecoming head-gear; whilst in a few instances coins even of
+gold are strung amongst the jetty locks of the Zingyni beauties.  The men
+are not so particular in their attire.  One sinewy fellow wears only a
+goatskin shirt and a string of beads round his neck, but the generality
+are clad in the coarse cloth of the country, much tattered, and bearing
+evident symptoms of weather and wear.  The little mischievous urchins who
+are clinging round their mothers’ necks, or dragging back from their
+mothers’ hands, and holding on to their mothers’ skirts, are almost
+naked.  Small heads and hands and feet, all the marks of what we are
+accustomed to term high birth, are hereditary among the Gipsies; and we
+doubt if the Queen of the South herself was a more queenly-looking
+personage than the dame now marching in the midst of the throng, and
+conversing earnestly with her companion, a resolute-looking man scarce
+entering upon the prime of life, with a Gipsy complexion, but a bearing
+in which it is not difficult to recognise the soldier.  He is talking to
+his protectress—for such she is—with a military frankness and vivacity,
+which even to that royal personage, accustomed though she be to exact all
+the respect due to her rank, appear by no means displeasing.  The lady is
+verging on the autumn of her charms (their summer must have been
+scorching indeed!), and though a masculine beauty, is a beauty
+nevertheless.  Black-browed is she, and deep-coloured, with eyes of fire,
+and locks of jet, even now untinged with grey.  Straight and regular are
+her features, and the wide mouth, with its strong, even dazzling teeth,
+betokens an energy and force of will which would do credit to the other
+sex.  She has the face of a woman that would dare much, labour much,
+everything but _love_ much.  She ought to be a queen, and she _is_ one,
+none the less despotic for ruling over a tribe of Gipsies instead of a
+civilised community . . .
+
+“‘Every Gipsy can tell fortunes; mine has been told many a time, but it
+never came true.’
+
+“She was studying the lines on his palm with earnest attention.  She
+raised her dark eyes angrily to his face.
+
+“‘Blind! blind!’ she answered, in a low, eager tone.  ‘The best of you
+cannot see a yard upon your way.  Look at that white road, winding and
+winding many a mile before us upon the plain.  Because it is flat and
+soft and smooth as far as we can see, will there be no hills on our
+journey, no rocks to cut our feet, no thorns to tear our limbs?  Can you
+see the Danube rolling on far, far before us?  Can you see the river you
+will have to cross some day, or can you tell me where it leads?  I have
+the map of our journey here in my brain; I have the map of your career
+here on your hand.  Once more I say, when the chiefs are in council, and
+the hosts are melting like snow before the sun, and the earth quakes, and
+the heavens are filled with thunder, and the shower that falls scorches
+and crushes and blasts—remember me!  I follow the line of wealth: Man of
+gold! spoil on; here a horse, there a diamond; hundreds to uphold the
+right, thousands to spare the wrong; both hands full, and broad lands
+near a city of palaces, and a king’s favour, and a nation of slaves
+beneath thy foot.  I follow the line of pleasure: costly amber; rich
+embroidery; dark eyes melting for the Croat; glances unveiled for the
+shaven head, many and loving and beautiful; a garland of roses, all for
+one—rose by rose plucked and withered and thrown away; one tender bud
+remaining; cherish it till it blows, and wear it till it dies.  I follow
+the line of blood:—it leads towards the rising sun—charging squadrons
+with lances in rest, and a wild shout in a strange tongue; and the dead
+wrapped in grey, with charm and amulet that were powerless to save; and
+hosts of many nations gathered by the sea—pestilence, famine, despair,
+and victory.  Rising on the whirlwind, chief among chiefs, the honoured
+of leaders, the counsellor of princes—remember me!  But ha! the line is
+crossed.  Beware! trust not the sons of the adopted land; when the lily
+is on thy breast, beware of the dusky shadow on the wall! beware, and
+remember me!’ . . .
+
+“I proffered my hand readily to the Gipsy, and crossed it with one of the
+two pieces of silver which constituted the whole of my worldly wealth.
+The Gipsy laughed, and began to prophesy in German.  There are some
+events a child never forgets; and I remember every word she said as well
+as if it had been spoken yesterday.
+
+“‘Over the sea, and again over the sea; thou shalt know grief and
+hardship and losses, and the dove shall be driven from its nest.  And the
+dove’s heart shall become like the eagle’s, that flies alone, and fleshes
+her beak in the slain.  Beat on, though the poor wings be bruised by the
+tempest, and the breast be sore, and the heart sink; beat on against the
+wind, and seek no shelter till thou find thy resting-place at last.  The
+time will come—only beat on.’
+
+“The woman laughed as she spoke; but there was a kindly tone in her voice
+and a pitying look in her bright eyes that went straight to my heart.
+Many a time since, in life, when the storm has indeed been boisterous and
+the wings so weary, have I thought of those words of encouragement, ‘The
+time will come—beat on.’ . . .
+
+“‘Thou shalt be a “De Rohan,” my darling, and I can promise thee no
+brighter lot—broad acres, and blessings from the poor, and horses, and
+wealth, and honours.  And the sword shall spare thee, and the battle turn
+aside to let thee pass.  And thou shalt wed a fair bride with dark eyes
+and a queenly brow; but beware of St. Hubert’s Day.  Birth and burial,
+birth and burial—beware of St. Hubert’s Day.’”
+
+Disraeli, speaking of the Gipsies in his “Venetia,” says:—“As Cadurcis
+approached he observed some low tents, and in a few minutes he was in the
+centre of an encampment of Gipsies.  He was for a moment somewhat
+dismayed, for he had been brought up with the usual terror of these wild
+people; nevertheless he was not unequal to the occasion.  He was
+surrounded in an instant, but only with women and children, for Gipsy men
+never immediately appear.  They smiled with their bright eyes, and the
+flashes of the watch-fire threw a lurid glare over their dark and
+flashing countenances; they held out their practised hands; they uttered
+unintelligible, but not unfriendly sounds.”
+
+Matilda Betham Edwards, in her remarks upon Gipsies, says:—“Your pulses
+are quickened to Gipsy pitch, you are ready to make love or war, to heal
+and slay, to wander to the world’s end, to be outlawed and hunted down,
+to dare and do anything for the sake of the sweet, untramelled life of
+the tent, the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the
+joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery love.”
+
+I come now to notice what a few of the poets have said about these
+ignorant, nomadic tribes, who have been skulking and flitting about in
+our midst, since the days of Borrow, Roberts, Hoyland, and Crabb—a period
+of over forty years.
+
+    “He grows, like the young oak, healthy and broad,
+    With no home but the forest, no bed but the sward;
+    Half-naked he wades in the limpid stream,
+    Or dances about in the scorching beam.
+    The dazzling glare of the banquet sheen
+    Hath never fallen on him I ween,
+    But fragments are spread, and the wood pine piled,
+    And sweet is the meal of the Gipsy child.”—ELIZA COOK.
+
+    “The Gipsy eye, bright as the star
+    That sends its light from heaven afar,
+    Wild with the strains of thy guitar,
+       This heart with rapture fill.
+    Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,
+    Come, touch me with the light guitar.
+    Thy brow unworked by lines of care,
+    Decked with locks of raven hair,
+    Seems ever beautiful and fair
+       At moonlight’s stilly hour.
+    What bliss! beside the leafy maze,
+    Illumined by the moon’s pale rays,
+    On thy sweet face to sit and gaze,
+       Thou wild, uncultured flower.
+    Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,
+    Come, touch me with the light guitar.”
+
+                                      HUBERT SMITH: “Tent Life in Norway.”
+
+    “From every place condemned to roam,
+    In every place we seek a home;
+    These branches form our summer roof,
+    By thick grown leaves made weather-proof;
+    In shelt’ring nooks and hollow ways,
+    We cheerily pass our winter days.
+    Come circle round the Gipsy’s fire,
+    Come circle round the Gipsy’s fire,
+    Our songs, our stories never tire,
+    Our songs, our stories never tire.”—REEVE.
+
+    “Where is the little Gipsy’s home?
+       Under the spreading greenwood tree,
+    Wherever she may roam,
+       Wherever that tree may be.
+    Roaming the world o’er,
+       Crossing the deep blue sea,
+    She finds on every shore,
+       A home among the free,
+    A home among the free,
+       Ah, voilà la Gitana, voilà la Gitana.”—HALLIDAY.
+
+    “He checked his steed, and sighed to mark
+    Her coral lips, her eyes so dark,
+    And stately bearing—as she had been
+    Bred up in courts, and born a queen.
+    Again he came, and again he came,
+    Each day with a warmer, a wilder flame,
+    And still again—till sleep by night
+    For Judith’s sake fled his pillow quite.”—DELTA.
+
+    “A race that lives on prey, as foxes do,
+    With stealthy, petty rapine; so despised,
+    It is not persecuted, only spurned,
+    Crushed under foot, warred on by chance like rats,
+    Or swarming flies, or reptiles of the sea,
+    Dragged in the net unsought and flung far off,
+    To perish as they may.”
+
+                                GEORGE ELIOT: “The Spanish Gipsies,” 1865.
+
+    “Help me wonder, here’s a booke,
+    Where I would for ever looke.
+    Never did a Gipsy trace
+    Smoother lines in hands or face;
+    Venus here doth Saturne move
+    That you should be the Queene of Love.”
+
+                                                               BEN JONSON.
+
+    “Fond dreamer, pause! why floats the silvery breath
+    Of thin, light smoke from yonder bank of heath?
+    What forms are those beneath the shaggy trees,
+    In tattered tent, scarce sheltered from the breeze;
+    The hoary father and the ancient dame,
+    The squalid children, cowering o’er the flame?
+    Those were not born by English hearths to dwell,
+    Or heed the carols of the village bell;
+    Those swarthy lineaments, that wild attire,
+    Those stranger tones, bespeak an eastern sire;
+    Bid us in home’s most favoured precincts trace
+    The houseless children of a homeless race;
+    And as in warning vision seem to show
+    That man’s best joys are drowned by shades of woe.
+
+    “Pilgrims of Earth, who hath not owned the spell
+    That ever seems around your tents to dwell;
+    Solemn and thrilling as the nameless dread
+    That guards the chambers of the silent dead!
+    The sportive child, if near your camp he stray,
+    Stands tranced with fear, and heeds no more his play;
+    To gain your magic aid, the love-sick swain,
+    With hasty footsteps threads the dusky lane;
+    The passing traveller lingers, half in sport,
+    And half in awe beside your savage court,
+    While the weird hags explore his palm to spell
+    What varied fates these mystic lines foretell.
+
+    “The murmuring streams your minstrel songs supply,
+    The moss your couch, the oak your canopy;
+    The sun awakes you as with trumpet-call,
+    Lightly ye spring from slumber’s gentle thrall;
+    Eve draws her curtain o’er the burning west,
+    Like forest birds ye sink at once to rest.
+
+    “Free as the winds that through the forest rush,
+    Wild as the flowers that by the wayside blush,
+    Children of nature wandering to and fro,
+    Man knows not whence ye came, nor where ye go;
+    Like foreign weeds cast upon Western strands,
+    Which stormy waves have borne from unknown lands;
+    Like the murmuring shells to fancy’s ears that tell
+    The mystic secrets of their ocean cell.
+
+    “Drear was the scene—a dark and troublous time—
+    The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime;
+    Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill
+    Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will.
+    Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows,
+    And black night flickers with the driving snows,
+    A stranger people, ’mid that murky gloom,
+    Knocked at the gates of awe-struck Christendom!
+    No clang of arms, no din of battle roared
+    Round the still march of that mysterious horde;
+    Weary and sad arrayed in pilgrim’s guise,
+    They stood and prayed, nor raised their suppliant eyes.
+    At once to Europe’s hundred shores they came,
+    In voice, in feature, and in garb the same.
+    Mother and babe and youth, and hoary age,
+    The haughty chieftain and the wizard sage;
+    At once in every land went up the cry,
+    ‘Oh! fear us not—receive us or we die!’”
+
+                           DEAN STANLEY’S PRIZE POEM, 1837: “The Gipsies.”
+
+
+
+
+Part IV.
+Gipsy Life in a Variety of Aspects.
+
+
+         [Picture: A Gipsy’s van near Notting Hill, Latimer Road]
+
+In Part III. I have endeavoured, as well as I have been able, to show
+some of the agencies that have been set in motion during the last three
+centuries for and against the Gipsies, with a view to their
+extermination, by the hang-man, to their being reclaimed by the religious
+zeal and fervour of the minister, and to their improvement by the
+artificial means of poetry, fiction, and romance.  First, the persecution
+dealt out to the Gipsies in this, as well as other countries, during a
+period of several centuries, although to a large extent brought upon
+themselves by their horrible system of lying and deception, neither
+exterminated them nor improved their habits; but, on the contrary, they
+increased and spread like mushrooms; the oftener they were trampled upon
+the more they seemed to thrive; the more they were hated, hunted, and
+driven into hiding-places the oftener these sly, fortune-telling, lying
+foxes would be seen sneaking across our path, ready to grab our chickens
+and young turkeys as opportunities presented themselves.  Second, that
+when stern justice said “it is enough,” persecution hanging down its
+hands and revenge drooping her head, a few noble-hearted men, filled with
+missionary zeal, took up the cause of the Gipsies for a period of nearly
+forty years in various forms and ways at the end of the last and the
+commencement of the present century.  Except in a few isolated cases,
+they also failed in producing any noticeable change in either the moral,
+social, or religious condition of the Gipsies, and with the death of
+Hoyland, Borrow, Crabb, Roberts, and others, died the last flicker of a
+flickering light that was to lead these poor, deluded, benighted heathen
+wanderers upon a road to usefulness, honesty, uprightness, and industry.
+Third, that on the decline of religious zeal, fervour, and philanthropy
+on behalf of the Gipsies more than forty years ago the spasmodic efforts
+of poets, novelists, and dramatists, in a variety of forms of fiction and
+romance, came to the front, to lead them to the goal through a lot of
+questionable by-lanes, queer places, and artificial lights, the result
+being that these melodramatic personages have left the Gipsies in a more
+pitiable condition than they were before they took up their cause,
+although they, in doing so, put “two faces under one hat,” blessing and
+cursing, smiling and frowning, all in one breath, praising their faults
+and sins, and damning their _few_ virtues.  In fact, to such a degree
+have fiction writers painted the black side of a Gipsy’s life, habits,
+and character in glowing colours that, to take another 20,000 men, women,
+and children out of our back slums and sink-gutters and write the word
+“Gipsy” upon their back, instead of “scamp,” and send them through the
+country with a few donkeys, some long sticks, old blankets and rags, dark
+eyes, dirty faces, filthy bodies, short petticoats, and old scarlet hoods
+and cloaks, you would in fifty years make this country not worth living
+in.  It is my decided conviction that unless we are careful, and take the
+“bull by the horns,” and compel them to educate their children, and to
+put their habitations, tents, and vans under better sanitary
+arrangements, we shall be fostering seeds in these dregs of society that
+will one day put a stop to the work of civilisation, and bring to an end
+the advance in arts, science, laws, and commerce that have been making
+such rapid strides in this country of late years.
+
+It is more pleasant to human nature to sit upon a stile on a midsummer
+eve, down a country lane, in the twilight, as the shades of evening are
+gathering around you, the stars twinkling over head, the little silver
+stream rippling over the pebbles at your feet in sounds like the distant
+warbling of the lark, and the sweet notes of the nightingale ringing in
+your ears, than to visit the abodes of misery, filth, and squalor among
+the Gipsies in their wigwams.  It is more agreeable to the soft parts of
+our hearts and our finer feelings to listen to the melody and harmony of
+lively, lovely damsels as they send forth their enchanting strains than
+to hear the cries of the poor little, dirty Gipsy children sending forth
+their piteous moans for bread.  It is more delightful to the poetic and
+sentimental parts of our nature to guide over the stepping-stones a
+number of bright, sharp, clean, lively, interesting, little dears, with
+their “hoops,” “shuttle-cocks,” and “battle-doors,” than to be seated
+among a lot of little ragged, half-starved Gipsy children, who have never
+known what soap, water, and comb are.  It is more in harmony with our
+sensibilities to sit and listen to the drollery, wit, sarcasm, and fun of
+_Punch_ than to the horrible tales of blood, revenge, immorality, and
+murder that some of the adult Gipsies delight in setting forth.  It is
+more in accordance with our feelings to sit and admire the innocent,
+angelic being, the perfection of the good and beautiful, than to sit by
+the hardened, wicked, ugly, old Gipsy woman who has spent a lifetime in
+sin and debauchery, cursing the God who made her as she expires.
+Nevertheless, these things have to be done if we are to have the angelic
+beings from the other world ministering to our wants, and wafting us home
+as we leave our tenement of clay behind to receive the “Well done.”
+
+I will now, as we pass along, endeavour to show what the actual condition
+of the Gipsies has been in the past, and what it is at the present time,
+which, in some cases, has been touched upon previously, with reference to
+the moral, social, and religious traits in their character that go to the
+making up of a MAN—the noblest work of God.  The peculiar fascinating
+charms about them, conjured up by ethnologists and philologists, I will
+leave for those learned gentlemen to deal with as they may think well.  I
+will, however, say that, as regards their so-called language, it is
+neither more nor less than gibberish, not “full of sound and fury
+signifying nothing,” but full of “sound and fury” signifying something.
+They never converse with it openly among themselves for a good purpose,
+as the Frenchmen, Germans, Turks, Spaniards, or other foreigners do.
+Some of the old Gipsies have a thousand or more leading words made up
+from various sources, English, French, German, Spanish, Indian, &c.,
+which they teach their children, and use in the presence of strangers
+with a certain amount of pride, and, at the same time, to throw dust into
+their eyes while the Gipsies are talking among themselves.  They will in
+the same breath bless you in English and curse you in Romany; this I
+experienced myself lately while sitting in a tent among a dozen
+uninteresting-looking Gipsies, while they one and all were thanking me
+for taking steps to get the children educated.  There was one among them
+who with a smile upon his face, was cursing me in Romany from his heart.
+Many writers differ in the spelling and pronunciation of Gipsy words, and
+what strikes me as remarkable is, the Gipsies themselves are equally
+confused upon these points.  No doubt the confusion in the minds of
+writers arises principally from the fact that they have had their
+information from ignorant, lying, deceiving Gipsies.  Almost all Gipsies
+have an inveterate hatred and jealousy towards each other, especially if
+one sets himself up as knowing more than John Jones in the next yard.
+One Gipsy would say paanengro-gújo means sailor, or water gentile,
+another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile; another
+would say poovengri-gújo meant a sailor; another would say it means an
+Irishman.  They glory in contradictions and mystification.  I was at an
+encampment a few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and
+forty children there were not three that could talk Romany, and there was
+not one who could spell a single word of it.  Their language, like
+themselves, was Indian enough, no doubt, when they started on their
+pilgrimage many centuries ago; but, as a consequence of their mixing with
+the scum of other nations in their journey westward, the charm in their
+language and themselves has pretty nearly by this time vanished.  If I
+were to attempt to write a book about their language it would not do the
+Gipsies one iota of good.  “God bless you” are words the Gipsies very
+often use when showing their kindness for favours received, and, as a
+kind of test, I have tried to find out lately if there were any Gipsies
+round London who could tell me what these words were in Romany, and I
+have only found one who could perform the task.  They all shake their
+heads and say, “Ours is not a language, only slang, which we use when
+required.”  Taking their slang generally, according to Grellmann,
+Hoyland, Borrow, Smart, and Crofton, there is certainly nothing very
+elevating about it.  Worldliness, sensuality, and devilism are things
+helped forward by their gibberish.  Words dealing with honesty,
+uprightness, fidelity, industry, religion, cleanliness, and love are very
+sparse.
+
+William Stanley, a converted Gipsy, said, some years since, that “God
+bless you” was in Romany, Artmee Devillesty; Smart and Crofton say it is,
+Doòvel, pàrav, pàrik toot, toòti.  In another place they say it is Doovel
+jal toosà.  Mrs. Simpson says it is, Mi-Doovel-kom-tooti.  Mrs. Smith
+says it is Mi-Doovel Andy-Paratuta.
+
+The following are the whole of the slang words Smart and Crofton have
+under the letters indicated, and which words are taken principally from
+Grellmann, Hoyland, Borrow, and Dr. Paspati:—
+
+I.
+
+I,                          Man, mè, màndi, mànghi.
+
+Ill,                        Nàsfelo, nàffelo doosh.
+
+Illness,                    Nàffelopén.
+
+Ill-tempered,               Kòrni.
+
+Imitation,                  Foshono.
+
+Immediately,                Kenàw sig.
+
+In,                         Adrè, dre, ando, inna.
+
+Indebted,                   Pazerous.
+
+Inflame,                    Katcher.
+
+Injure,                     Dooka.
+
+Inn,                        Kítchema.
+
+Innkeeper,                  Kitchemèngro.
+
+Intestine,                  Vénderi.
+
+Into,                       Andè, adrè, drè.
+
+Ireland,                    Hindo-tem, Hinditemeskro-tem.
+
+Irishman,                   Hindi-temengro, poovengri gaujo.
+
+Irish Gipsy,                Efage.
+
+Iron,                       Sáster, saàsta, saáshta.
+
+Iron,                       Sástera.
+
+Is,                         See.
+
+It,                         Les.
+
+Itch,                       Honj.
+
+J.
+
+Jail,                       Stèripen.
+
+Jews,                       Midùvelesto-maùromèngri.
+
+Jockey,                     Kèstermèngro.
+
+Judgment,                   Bitchama.
+
+Jump,                       Hokter hok òxta.
+
+Jumper,                     Hoxterer.
+
+Just now,                   Kenaw sig.
+
+Justice of the peace,       Chivlo-gaujo, chuvno-gaùjo, pòkenyus,
+                            poòkinyus.
+
+K.
+
+Keep,                       Righer, riker.
+
+Kettle,                     Kekàvvi, kavvi.
+
+Key,                        Klèrin klisin.
+
+Kick,                       Del, dé.
+
+Kill,                       Maur.
+
+Kin,                        Simènsa.
+
+Kind,                       Komelo komomuso.
+
+King,                       Kràlis.
+
+Kingdom,                    Kralisom tem.
+
+Kiss,                       Chooma.
+
+Knee,                       Chong, choong.
+
+Knife,                      Choori chivomèngro chinomèngro.
+
+Knock,                      Koor, dè.
+
+Know,                       Jin.
+
+Knowing,                    Yoki, jinomengro, jinomeskro.
+
+Q.
+
+Quarrel,                    Chíngar.
+
+Quarrel,                    Chingariben, gòdli.
+
+Quart,                      Troòshni.
+
+Queen,                      Kralisi krailisi.
+
+Quick,                      Sig.
+
+Quick, Be,                  Sigo toot, rèssi toot kair àbba.
+
+Quietly,                    Shookàr.
+
+The following dozen words will show, in some degree, the fearful amount
+of ignorance there is amongst them, even when using the language of their
+mother country, for England is the mother country of the present race of
+Gipsies.  For—
+
+Expensive,           Expencival.
+
+Decide,              Cide.
+
+Advice,              Device.
+
+Dictionary,          Dixen.
+
+Equally,             Ealfully.
+
+Instructed,          Indistructed.
+
+Gentleman,           Gemmen.
+
+Daunted,             Dauntment.
+
+Spitefulness,        Spiteliness.
+
+Habeas Corpus,       Hawcus paccus.
+
+Increase,            Increach.
+
+Submit,              Commist.
+
+
+
+I cannot find joy, delight, eternity, innocent, ever, everlasting,
+endless, hereafter, and similar words, and, on inquiry, I find that many
+of the Gipsies do not believe in an eternity, future punishment, or
+rewards; this belief, no doubt, has its effects upon their morals in this
+life.
+
+The opinion respecting the Gipsy language at the commencement of the
+present century was, that it was composed only of cant terms, or of what
+has been called the slang of beggars; much of this probably was promoted
+and strengthened by the dictionary contained in a pamphlet, entitled,
+“The Life and Adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew.”  It consists for the
+most part of English words trumped up apparently not so much for the
+purpose of concealment as a burlesque.  Even if used by this people at
+all, the introduction of this cant and slang as the genuine language of
+the community of Gipsies is a gross imposition on the public.
+
+Rees, in his Encyclopædia, 1819, describes the Gipsies as “impostors and
+jugglers forming a kind of commonwealth among themselves, who disguise
+themselves in uncouth habits, smearing their faces and bodies, and
+framing to themselves a canting language, wander up and down, and under
+pretence of telling fortunes, curing diseases, &c., abuse the common
+people, trick them of their money, and steal all that they come at.”
+
+Mr. Borrow, speaking of the Hungarian Gipsies in his “Zyncali,” page 7,
+says:—“Hungary, though a country not a tenth part so extensive as the
+huge colossus of the Russian empire, whose Czar reigns over a hundred
+lands, contains perhaps as many Gipsies, it not being uncommon to find
+whole villages inhabited by this race.  They likewise abound in the
+suburbs of the towns.
+
+“In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its pristine barbarity.
+In no country does the hard hand of oppression bear so heavy upon the
+lower classes—not even in Russia.  The peasants of Russia are serfs, it
+is true, but their condition is enviable compared with that of the same
+class in the other country; they have certain rights and privileges, and
+are, upon the whole, happy and contented, at least, there, whilst the
+Hungarians are ground to powder.  Two classes are free in Hungary to do
+almost what they please—the nobility and the Gipsies (the former are
+above the law, the latter below it).  A toll is wrung from the hands of
+the hard working labourers, that most meritorious class, in passing over
+a bridge, for example, at Perth, which is not demanded from a
+well-dressed person, nor from Zingany, who have frequently no dress at
+all, and whose _insouciance_ stands in striking contrast with the
+trembling submission of the peasants.  The Gipsy, wherever you find him,
+is an incomprehensible being, but nowhere more than in Hungary, where in
+the midst of slavery he is free, though apparently one step lower than
+the lowest slave.  The habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are abominable;
+their hovels appear sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is
+at best rags; their food frequently of the vilest carrion, and
+occasionally, if report be true, still worse: thus they live in filth, in
+rags, in nakedness.  The women are fortune-tellers.  Of course both sexes
+are thieves of the first water.  They roam where they list.”
+
+The “Chronicle of Bologna,” printed about the year 1422, says:—“And of
+those who went to have their fortunes told few there were who had not
+their purses stolen, or some portion of their garments cut away.  Their
+women also traversed the city six or eight together, entering the houses
+of the citizens, and diverting them with idle talk while one of the party
+secured whatever she could lay her hands upon.  In the shops they
+pretended to buy, but in fact stole.  They were amongst the cleverest
+thieves that the world contained.  Be it noted that they were the most
+hideous crew ever seen in these parts.  They were lean and black, and ate
+like pigs.  The women wore mantles flung upon one shoulder, with only a
+vest underneath.”  Forli, who wrote about them about the same time as the
+“Chronicle of Bologna,” does not seem to have liked them, and says they
+were not “even civilised, and resembling rather savage and untamed
+beasts.”
+
+A writer describes a visit to a Gipsy’s tent as follows:—“We were in a
+wigwam which afforded us but miserable shelter from the inclemency of the
+season.  The storm raged without; the tempest roared in the open country;
+the wind blew with violence, and whistled through the fissures of the
+cabin; the rain fell in torrents, and prevented us from continuing our
+route.  Our host was an Indian with sparkling and intelligent eyes, clad
+with a certain elegance, and wrapped majestically in a large fur cloak.
+Seated close to the fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior
+of the wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible
+desire to imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his impressions.
+So taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight
+rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm, then
+raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften when he
+pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the
+branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced
+by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground.  By
+degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the
+chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian shrieked, howled,
+and roared in the most frightful manner; he struggled and struck his
+instrument with extraordinary rapidity; it was a real tempest, to which
+nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling of the dogs, nor the
+bellowing of the affrighted buffaloes.”
+
+Mr. Leland, speaking of the Russian Gipsies near Moscow, says that after
+meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, they were
+altogether original, deeply interesting, and able to read and write, and
+have a wonderful capacity for music, and goes on to say that he speedily
+found the Russian Gipsies were as unaffected and childlike as they were
+gentle in manner, and that compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy,
+begging, and always suspecting Gipsy roughs, as a delicate greyhound
+might compare with a very shrewd old bulldog trained by a fly tramp.
+Leland, in his article, speaking of one of the Russian Gipsy maidens,
+says:—“Miss Sarsha, who had a slight cast in one of her wild black eyes,
+which added something to the Gipsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who
+wore in a ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right
+eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady, and
+with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say it.  What with her
+eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her tongue, she constituted altogether
+a fine specimen of irrepressible fireworks.”
+
+Leland, referring to the musical abilities of the Russian Gipsies, in his
+article in “Macmillan’s Magazine,” November, 1879, says:—“These artists,
+with wonderful tact and untaught skill have succeeded in all their songs
+in combining the mysterious and maddening chorus of the true wild eastern
+music with that of regular and simple melody intelligible to every
+western ear.”  “I listened,” says Leland, “to the strangest, wildest, and
+sweetest singing I ever had heard—the singing of Lurleis, of syrens, of
+witches.  First, one damsel, with an exquisitely clear, firm voice began
+to sing a verse of a love ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus
+stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a
+few seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling lake,
+seemed changed to a midnight tempest roaring over a stormy sea, in which
+the basso of the black captain pealed like thunder, and as it died away a
+second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more
+excitement—it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated
+waters—a strange contralto witch gleam, and then again the chorus and the
+storm, and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger—the
+movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad—a
+locomotive quick step and then a sudden silence—sunlight—the storm had
+blown away;” and adds, “I could only think of those strange fits of
+excitement which thrill the Red Indian, and make him burst into song.”
+
+“After the first Gipsy lyric then came another to which the captain
+especially directed my attention as being what Sam. Petalengro calls ‘The
+girl in the red chemise’—as well as I can recall his words.  A very sweet
+song, with a simple but spirited chorus, and as the sympathetic
+electricity of excitement seized the performers we were all in a minute
+going down the rapids in a spring freshet.  ‘Sing, sir, sing!’ cried my
+handsome neighbour, with her black Gipsy eyes sparkling fire.”
+
+Some excuse ought to be made for Leland getting into this wild state of
+excitement, for he had on his right and on his left, before and behind
+him, dark-eyed Gipsy beauties—as some would call them—among whom was one,
+the belle of the party, dressed in black silk attire, wafting in his face
+the enchanting fan of fascination till he was completely mesmerised.  How
+different this hour’s excitement to the twenty-three hours’ reality!
+
+The following is the full history of a remarkable case which has recently
+occurred in Russia, taken from the London daily papers last November, and
+it shows the way in which Gipsy witches and fortune-tellers are held and
+horribly treated in that country.  It is quite evident that Gipsies and
+witches are not esteemed by the Russians like angels:—
+
+    Agrafena Ignatjewa was as a child simple and amiable, neither sharper
+    nor more stupid than all the other girls of her native village,
+    Wratschewo, in the Government of Novgorod.  But the people of the
+    place having, from her early youth, made up their minds that she had
+    the “evil eye,” nothing could eradicate that impression.
+
+    Being branded with this reputation, it naturally followed that powers
+    of divination and enchantment were attributed to her, including the
+    ability to afflict both men and animals with various plagues and
+    sicknesses.
+
+    In spite, however, of the supernatural skill with which she was
+    credited, she met with no suitor save a poor soldier.  She accepted
+    him gladly, and going with him, shortly after her marriage, to St.
+    Petersburg, Wratschewo lost sight of her for some twelve years.  She
+    was, however, by no means forgotten there, for when, after the death
+    of her husband, she again betook herself to the home of her
+    childhood, she found that her old reputation still clung to her.  The
+    news of her return spread like wild-fire, and general disaster was
+    anticipated from her injurious spells.  This, however, was, from
+    fear, talked of only behind her back, and dread of her at length
+    reached such a pitch that the villagers and their wives sent her
+    presents and assisted her in every way, hoping thereby to get into
+    her good graces, and so escape being practised upon by her infernal
+    arts.  As she was now fifty years of age, somewhat weakly, and
+    therefore unable to earn a living, these attentions were by no means
+    unwelcome, and she therefore did nothing to disabuse her neighbours’
+    minds.  Their superstition enabled her to live comfortably and
+    without care, and she knew very well that any assurances she might
+    give would not have produced the slightest effect.
+
+    A short time after her return to Wratschewo, several women fell ill.
+    This was, of course, laid at the door of Ignatjewa, particularly as
+    one of these women, the daughter of a peasant, had been attacked
+    immediately after being refused a slight favour by her.  Whenever any
+    misfortune whatsoever happened in the village, all fingers pointed to
+    Ignatjewa as the source of it.  At the beginning of the present year
+    a dismissed soldier, in the interest of the community, actually
+    instituted criminal proceedings against her before the local
+    urjadnik, the chief of the police of the district, the immediate
+    charge preferred being that she had bewitched his wife.
+
+    Meanwhile the feeling in the village against her became so
+    intensified that it was resolved by the people, pending the decision
+    on the complaint that had been lodged, to take the law into their
+    hands so far as to fasten her up in her cottage.
+
+    The execution of this resolve was not delayed a moment.  Led by
+    Kauschin, Nikisorow, Starovij, and an old man of seventy, one
+    Schipensk, whose wife and daughters were at the time supposed to be
+    suffering from her witchcraft, a crowd of villagers set out on the
+    way to Ignatjewa’s dwelling.  Nikisorow had provided himself with
+    hammer and nails, and Iwanow with some chips of pinewood “to smoke
+    out the bad spirits.”  Finding the cottage door locked, they beat it
+    in, and while a portion of them nailed up the windows the remainder
+    crowded in and announced to the terrified woman that, by unanimous
+    decision, she was, for the present, to be kept fastened up in her
+    house.  Some of them then proceeded to look through the rooms, where
+    they found, unfortunately, several bottles containing medicaments.
+    Believing these to be enchanted potions, and therefore conclusive
+    proofs of Ignatjewa’s guilt, it was decided, on the suggestion of
+    Nikisorow, to burn her and her devilish work there and then.  “We
+    must put an end to it,” shouted the peasants in chorus; “if we let
+    her off now we shall be bewitched one and all.”
+
+    Kauschin, who held in his hand a lighted chip of pine-wood, which he
+    had used “to smoke out the spirits” and to light him about the
+    premises, instantly applied it to a bundle of straw lying in a room,
+    after which all hastily left.  Ignatjewa attempted in vain to follow
+    them.  The agonised woman then tried to get out at the windows, but
+    these were already nailed up.  In front of the cottage stood the
+    people, blankly staring at the spreading flames, and listening to the
+    cries of their victim without moving a muscle.
+
+    At this point Ignatjewa’s brother came on the scene, and ran towards
+    the cottage to rescue his sister.  But a dozen arms held him back.
+    “Don’t let her out,” shouted the venerable Schipensk, the husband and
+    father of the bewitched women.  “I’ll answer for it, that we won’t,
+    father; we have put up with her long enough,” replied one of the
+    band.  “The Lord be praised!” exclaimed another, “let her burn away;
+    she bewitched my daughters too.”
+
+    The little room in which Ignatjewa had taken refuge was not as yet
+    reached by the fire.  Appeals were now made to her to confess herself
+    a witch, the brother joining, probably in the hope that if she did so
+    her life might be spared.  “But I am entirely innocent,” the poor
+    woman cried out.  One of the bystanders, apparently the only one in
+    possession of his five senses, made another attempt at rescue, but
+    was hindered by the mob.  He then, in loud tones, warned them of the
+    punishment which would certainly await them, but in vain, no
+    attention was paid to him.  On the contrary, the progress of the
+    flames not appearing rapid enough, it was endeavoured to accelerate
+    it by shoving the snow from the roof and loosening the frame-work.
+    The fire now extended rapidly, one beam after another blazed up, and
+    at length the roof fell in on the wretched woman.
+
+    The ashes smouldered the whole night; on the following morning
+    nothing was found remaining but the charred bones of Ignatjewa.
+
+    The idea now, it would seem, occurred to the murderers that perhaps,
+    after all, their action had not been altogether lawful.  They
+    accordingly resolved to bribe the local authority, who had already
+    viewed the scene of the affair, to hush it up.  For this purpose they
+    made a collection, and handed him the proceeds, twenty-one roubles
+    ninety copecks.  To their astonishment he did not accept the money,
+    but at once reported the horrible deed to his superior officer.
+    Sixteen of the villagers were, in consequence, brought up for trial
+    at Tichwin before the district court of Novgorod on the charge of
+    murdering Agrafena Ignatjewa, in the manner above described.
+
+    After a protracted hearing with jury the following result was arrived
+    at:—Kauschin, who had first set fire to the building; Starovij, who
+    had assisted in accelerating the burning; and Nikisorow, the prime
+    mover in the matter, who had nailed up the windows, were found
+    guilty, and sentenced by the judge to some slight ecclesiastical
+    penance, while the remaining thirteen, including the aged
+    Schipensk—who had used his influence to prevent a rescue—went scot
+    free.
+
+The Spanish Gipsies, in Grellmann’s day, would resort to the most wicked
+and inhuman practices.  Before taking one of their horses to the fair
+they would make an incision in some secret part of the skin, through
+which they would blow the creature up till his flesh looked fat and
+plump, and then they would apply a strong sticking plaster to prevent the
+air escaping.  Wolfgang Franz says they make use of another device with
+an eel.  Grellmann says of the Spanish Gipsies in his day that dancing
+was another means of getting something; they generally practised dancing
+when they were begging, particularly if men were about the streets.
+Their dances were of the most disgusting kind that could be conceived;
+the most lascivious attitudes and gestures, young girls and married
+women, travelling with their fathers, would indulge in, to the extent of
+frisking about the streets in a state of nudity.
+
+Further inquiries among the Gipsies more than ever satisfy me that my
+first statement last August, viz., that five per cent. of them could not
+read and write, is being more than fully borne out by facts brought under
+my notice; in fact, I question if there will be three per cent. of the
+Gipsies who can read and write.  The following letter has been sent to me
+by a friend to show that there is one Gipsy in the country, at least, who
+knows how to put a letter together, and as it is somewhat of a curiosity
+I give it, as exactly as possible as I received it, of course leaving out
+the name, and without note or comment.
+
+                                                            “Newtown Moor,
+                                                          “the 22nd, 1877.
+
+    “Dear Sir,—
+
+    “I recivd your last Letter, and proude to say that I shall (if alls
+    well) endeavor to cum on the day mentioned.  I shall start from hear
+    5.36 a.m., and be in Edinburgh betwen 3 and 4.  I have no more to say
+    very particular, only feel proude of having the enviteation (we are
+    all well hear) with the exception of my little Daughter.  She still
+    keeps about the same.  I shall finish (this little bit) by sending
+    all our very kind love and respects to Mrs. --- and yourself.
+    Hopeing this will find you boath in good helth (I shall go on with a
+    little bit of something else)  (by the way, a little filling up which
+    I hope you will parden me for taking up so much of your time.
+
+                                                               “I am yours
+                                                        “Very obediently,t
+                                                            “WELSH HARPER.
+
+    (Now a little more about what my poor old mother leant me when a
+    child) and before I go on any further I want you (if you will be so
+    kind) as to perticullery—understand me—that the ch has a curious
+    sound—also the LR, as, for instence, chommay, in staid hommay, choy
+    in place of hoi.  Chotche yoi instaid of _hotche_ yoi.  Matteva ma
+    tot _in staid_ of lat eva ma tot and so on.  I shall now commence
+    with the feminine and the musculin gender (but I must mind as I don’t
+    put my foot in it) as you know a hundred times more than I do about
+    these last words—the same time the maight be a little picket up by
+    _them_.  _Well_, hear goes to make a start.  (You must not always
+    laugh.)
+
+“Singular                  Feminine          M.           F.
+“Masculine gender.         gender.
+
+Dad                        Dai               Dada         Daia
+
+Chavo                      Chai              Chavay       Chaia
+
+Tieno                      Tienoy            Tickna
+
+Morsh                      Jovel             Morsha       Jovya
+
+Gongeo                     Gangee            Gongea       Gongeya
+
+Racloo                     Raclee
+
+Raclay  or                 Racklay
+
+Pal                        Pen               Palla        Peoya
+
+Pella                      Penya             Cock         Bebey
+
+
+
+    (I shall finish this) as you know yourself it will take me to long to
+    go on with more of it.  I shall now sho how my poor mother use to
+    speak her English.
+
+    “THE WHOL FAMALY CAMPING WITH HORSES, DONKEYS, AND DOGS.
+
+    “On the first weakning in the morning (mother speaking to my Father
+    in the Tent)—“Now, man, weak dear Boys up to go and geather some
+    sticks to light the fire, and to see whare dem Hoses and Donkeys are.
+    I think I shoud some marshas helen a pray the Drom and coving the
+    collas out of the pub.  Mother again—Now, boy, go and get some water
+    to put in the ole kettle for breakfast.  The Boy—I davda—I must go
+    and do every bit a thing.  Why don’t you send dat gel to cer some
+    thing some times her crie chee tal only wishing talkay all the
+    blessed time.  Mother, I am going to send her to the farm House for
+    milk (jack loses mony) when a Bran of fire is flying after him, and
+    he (the boy) over a big piece of wood, and hurts his knea.
+
+    “The girl goes for the milk (and she has a river to go threw) when
+    presently a Bull is heard roreng.  Mother, dare now, boy, go and meet
+    your sister; does de Bull roreing after her.  She will fall down in a
+    faint in de middle of de riber.  Boy sar can I gal ear yoi ta ma
+    docadom me heroi ta shom quit leam (the old woman), go, man, go, man,
+    and stick has dat charey chai is a beling da da say dat dat is a very
+    bad after jovyas.  Strenge men brings the Horses and donkeys up to
+    the tents, and begins to scould very much.  (The little girl comes
+    with the milk.)  The girl said to her brother that she may fall over
+    the wooden in the river for what he cared; yet the boy said that when
+    she would fall down she would chin a bit, and all the fish would come
+    and nibble at her.  Horras and her bull; and then they began the
+    scrubble, and begins to scould her brother for not going to meet her,
+    when they boath have a scuffel over the fire, and very near knocks
+    the jockett over, when the boy hops away upon one leg, and hops upon
+    one of the dog’s paws—un-seen—and dog runs away barking, and runs
+    himself near one of the Donkeys, and the Donkey gives him a kick,
+    until he is briging in the horse.  The old woman: Dare now, dare now,
+    ockkie now chorro jocked mardo.  Breakfast is over with a deal of
+    boather, and a little laughing and cursing and swaring.
+
+    “They strike the tents.  (The old woman)  Men chovolay nen sig waste
+    ja mangay.  I am a faling a vaver drom codires, and you will meet me
+    near old Town.  Be shewer and leave a _pattern_ by the side of the
+    cross road, if you sal be dare before me.
+
+    “(The old man and the Boys Pitches the Tents) and gets himself ready
+    to go to the Town.  The old woman comes up, and one of the girls with
+    her—boath very tired and havey, loaded with _choben_ behind her back,
+    anugh to frighten waggens and carts of the road with her humpey back.
+
+    “(They intend to stay in this delightfull camping place for a good
+    many days.)  To day is soposid to be a very hot day, and a fare day
+    in a Town about three miles and ½ from there.  The old woman and one
+    of her Daughters goes out as usual.  The old man takes a couple of
+    Horses to the Fare to try and sell.  (The boys go a fishing.)  The
+    day is very bright and hot.  (The old man soon comes home.)
+
+    “One of the prityist girls takes a strol by herself down to a
+    butyfull streem of water to have herself a wash, and she begins
+    singing to the sound of a waterfall close by her, when all of a suden
+    a very nice looking young gentleman, who got tiard fishing in the
+    morning, and the day being very hot, took a bit of a lull on his
+    face, his basket on his back, and Fishing-rod by his side (the girl
+    did not see him) nor him her) until he was atracted by some strange
+    sound, when all of a instant he sprung upon his heels, and to his
+    surprise seen a most butyfull creature with her bear bosom and her
+    long black hair and butyfull black eyes, white teeth, and a butyfull
+    figure.  He stared with all the eyes he had, and he made a advance
+    towards her, and when she seen him she stared also at him, and
+    aproaching slowly towards her and saying, from whence comest thou
+    hear, my butyfull maid (and staring at her butyfull figure) thinking
+    that she was some angel as droped down (when she with a pleasant
+    smile by showing her ivory and her sparkling eyes)  Oh, my father’s
+    tents are not fare off, and seen the day very warm I thought to have
+    a little wash.
+
+    “Gentleman Well indeed I have been fishing to day, and cot a few this
+    morning; but the day turned out so excesably hot I was obliged to go
+    in to a shade and have a sleep, but was alarmed at your sweet voice
+    mingling with the murmuring waters.  They boath steer up to the camp,
+    when now and then as he is speaking to her on the road going up, a
+    loude and shrill laugh is heard many times—the same time he does not
+    sho the least sign of vulgaraty by taking any sort of liberty with
+    her whatever.  They arrive at the tents, when one or the little boys
+    says to his dady Dady, dady, there is a rye a velin a pra.  The
+    gentleman sitts himself down and pulls out a big Flask very near full
+    of Brandy and toboco, and offers to the old man.
+
+    “By this time that young girl goes in her Tent and pull down the
+    front, and presently out she comes butyfully dressed, which bewitched
+    the young gentleman, and he said that they were welcome to come there
+    to stop as long as they had a mind so as they would not tear the
+    Headges.  He goes and leaves them highly delighted towards hime, and
+    he should pay them another visit.  This camping ground belonged to
+    the young gentleman’s father, and is situated in a butyfull part of
+    Derbyshire.  One of the little girls sees two young ladys coming a
+    little sideways across the common from a gentleman’s house which is
+    very near, which turns out to be the gentleman’s two sisters.  The
+    little girl, Mamey, mamey, der is doi Rawngas avelin accai atch a
+    pray.  The young ladys comes to the tents and smiles, when the old
+    woman says to one of them, Good day, meyam, it’s a very fine day,
+    meyam; shall I tell you a few words, meyam?  The old woman takes them
+    on one side and tells them something just to please them, now and
+    then a word of truth, the rest a good lot of lies.
+
+    “The old man goes off for a stroll with a couple of dogs.
+
+    “One of the young boys asks his mother for some money, and she
+    refuses him, or says she has got none.  The boy says, Where is the
+    £000 tooteys sold froom those doi Rawngas maw did accai I held now
+    from them they pend them not appopolar?  One of the other brothers
+    says to him, Hear, Abraham, ile lend you 5s.  Will you, my blessed
+    brother.  Yes, I will; hear it is.  Now we will boath of us go to the
+    gav togeather.  One gets his fiddle ready and the other the Tamareen.
+    The harp is too heavy to carry.  They go to call at the post office
+    for a chinginargery—they boath come home rather wary.
+
+    “The next day the Boys go a fishing again and bring home a good lot
+    (as the day was not near so hot as the day before) and comes home in
+    good time to play the harp and violin (and sometimes the Tambureen)
+    for the county gouges [green horns], as a good many comes to have a
+    dance on the green—the collection would be the boys pocket money.
+
+    “There is a great deal of amusement found by those that us to follow
+    Barns.  The have many country people coming them to hear there music
+    and to dance on the green, or sometimes in the barn, but most oftener
+    in the house in a big kitchen, and the country people would be
+    staring at the collays, Gipsies, with all there eyes, and the Gipsies
+    would stare at the people to see them such Dinalays [fools].
+
+    “Those who followed Barns, us to call gentlemen’s houses with the
+    Harps, and us to be called in and make a good thing of it.
+
+    “Dear Mr.—With your permission I will leave of now, and let you know
+    a little more when I come.  Hoping that I have not trespased on your
+    time to read such follishness.  All that I have written has happened.
+
+                                                   “I again beg to remain,
+                                                 “Yours very respectfully,
+                                           “WELSHANENGAY BORY BOSHAHENGBO.
+
+                                                          [Hedge Fiddler.]
+
+    “I beg to acquaint you that I am the oldest living Welsh Harper in
+    the world at the present time.  Mr. Thomas G---, Welsh Harper to the
+    Prince of Wales, is next to me.”
+
+It would be perhaps a difficult task to find a score of Gipsies out of
+the 15,000 to 20,000 there are in this country who can write as well as
+the foregoing letter.
+
+The following may be considered a fair specimen of the high class or
+“Gentleman Gipsy,” so much admired by those who have got the Gipsy spell
+round their necks, the Gipsy spectacles before their eyes, the Gipsy
+charm in their pocket, and who can see nothing but what is lively,
+charming, fascinating, and delightful in the Gipsy, from the crown of his
+head to the sole of his foot.  To those of my friends I present them with
+an account of Ryley Bosvil as a man after their own heart, at the same
+time I would call their attention to his ending, as related by Borrow.
+
+Ryley Bosvil was a native of Yorkshire, a county where, as the Gipsies
+say, “There’s a deadly sight of Bosvils.”  He was above the middle
+height, exceedingly strong and active, and one of the best riders in
+Yorkshire, which is saying a great deal.  He was thoroughly versed in all
+the arts of the old race; he had two wives, never went to church, and
+considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth and there was
+an end of him.  He frequently used to say that if any of his people
+became Gorgios he would kill them.  He had a sister of the name of Clara,
+a nice, delicate girl, about fourteen years younger than himself, who
+travelled about with an aunt; this girl was noticed by a respectable
+Christian family, who, taking great interest in her, persuaded her to
+come and live with them.  She was instructed by them, in the rudiments of
+the Christian religion, appeared delighted with her new friends, and
+promised never to leave them.  After the lapse of about six weeks there
+was a knock at the door, and a dark man stood before it, who said he
+wanted Clara.  Clara went out trembling, had some discourse with the man
+in an unknown tongue, and shortly returned in tears, and said that she
+must go.  “What for?” said her friends.  “Did you not promise to stay
+with us?”  “I did so,” said the girl, weeping more bitterly; “but that
+man is my brother, who says I must go with him; and what he says must
+be.”  So with her brother she departed, and her Christian friends never
+saw her again.  What became of her?  Was she made away with?  Many
+thought she was, but she was not.  Ryley put her into a light cart, drawn
+by a “flying pony,” and hurried her across England, even to distant
+Norfolk, where he left her with three Gipsy women.  With these women the
+writer found her encamped in a dark wood, and had much discourse with her
+both on Christian and Egyptian matters.  She was very melancholy,
+bitterly regretted her having been compelled to quit her Christian
+friends, and said that she wished she had never been a Gipsy.  She was
+exhorted to keep a firm grip of her Christianity, and was not seen again
+for a quarter of a century, when she was met on Epsom Downs on the Derby
+day, when the terrible horse, “Gladiateur,” beat all the English steeds.
+She was then very much changed indeed, appearing as a full-blown Egyptian
+matron, with two very handsome daughters flaringly dressed in genuine
+Gipsy fashion, to whom she was giving motherly counsels as to the best
+means to _hok_ and _dukker_ the gentlefolk.  All her Christianity she
+appeared to have flung to the dogs, for when the writer spoke to her on
+that very important subject she made no answer save by an indescribable
+Gipsy look.  On other matters she was communicative enough, telling the
+writer, amongst other things, that since he saw her she had been twice
+married, and both times very well, for that her first husband, by whom
+she had the two daughters, whom the writer “kept staring at,” was a man
+every inch of him, and her second, who was then on the Downs grinding
+knives with a machine he had, though he had not much manhood, being
+nearly eighty years old, had something much better, namely, a mint of
+money, which she hoped shortly to have in her possession.
+
+Ryley, like most of the Bosvils, was a tinker by profession; but though a
+tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of heart.  His grand ambition
+was to be a great man among his people, a Gipsy king (no such individuals
+as either Gipsy kings or queens ever existed).  To this end he furnished
+himself with clothes made after the costliest Gipsy fashion; the two
+hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were broad
+gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the fore-buttons were
+English “spaded guineas,” the buttons of the waistcoat were half-guineas,
+and those of the collar and the wrists of his shirt were seven-shilling
+gold-pieces.  In this coat he would frequently make his appearance on a
+magnificent horse, whose hoofs, like those of the steed of a Turkish
+Sultan, were cased in shoes of silver.  How did he support such expense?
+it may be asked.  Partly by driving a trade in “wafedo loovo,”
+counterfeit coin, with which he was supplied by certain honest
+tradespeople of Brummagem; partly and principally by large sums of money
+which he received from his two wives, and which they obtained by the
+practice of certain arts peculiar to Gipsy females.  One of his wives was
+a truly remarkable woman.  She was of the Petalengro or Smith tribe.  Her
+Christian name, if Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri,
+and from her exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called
+by the Gipsies Yocky Shuri—that is, smart or clever Shuri, Yocky being a
+Gipsy word signifying “clever.”  She could dukker—that is, tell
+fortunes—to perfection, by which alone, during the racing season, she
+could make a hundred pounds a month.  She was good at the big hok—that
+is, at inducing people to put money into her hands in the hope of it
+being multiplied; and, oh, dear! how she could caur—that is, filch gold
+rings and trinkets from jewellers’ cases, the kind of thing which the
+Spanish Gipsies call ustibar pastesas—filching with hands.  Frequently
+she would disappear and travel about England, and Scotland too,
+dukkering, hokking, and cauring, and after the lapse of a month return
+and deliver to her husband, like a true and faithful wife, the proceeds
+of her industry.  So no wonder that the Flying Tinker, as he was called,
+was enabled to cut a grand appearance.  He was very fond of hunting, and
+would frequently join the field in regular hunting costume, save and
+except that instead of the leather hunting cap he wore one of fur, with a
+gold band round it, to denote that though he mixed with Gorgios he was
+still a Romany chal.  Thus equipped, and mounted on a capital hunter,
+whenever he encountered a Gipsy encampment he would invariably dash
+through it, doing all the harm he could, in order, as he said, to let the
+juggals know that he was their king, and had a right to do what he
+pleased with his own.  Things went on swimmingly for a great many years,
+but, as prosperity does not continue for ever, his dark hour came at
+last.  His wives got into trouble in one or two expeditions, and his
+dealings in wafedo loovo to be noised about.  Moreover, by his grand airs
+and violent proceedings, he had incurred the hatred of both Gorgios and
+Gipsies, particularly of the latter, some of whom he had ridden over and
+lamed for life.  One day he addressed his two wives—
+
+    “The Gorgios seek to hang me,
+    The Gipsies seek to kill me;
+    This country we must leave.”
+
+                                    SHURI.
+
+    “I’ll join with you to heaven,
+    I’ll fare with you, Yandors,
+    But not if Lura goes.”
+
+                                    LURA.
+
+    “I’ll join with you to heaven
+    And to the wicked country,
+    Though Shuri goeth too.”
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    “Since I must choose betwixt you,
+    My choice is Yocky Shuri,
+    Though Lura loves me best.”
+
+                                    LURA.
+
+    “My blackest curse on Shuri;
+    Oh, Ryley, I’ll not curse you,
+    But you will never thrive.”
+
+She then took her departure, with her cart and donkey, and Ryley remained
+with Shuri.
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    “I’ve chosen now betwixt ye,
+    Your wish you now have gotten,
+    But for it you shall smart.”
+
+He then struck her with his fist on the cheek and broke her jaw-bone.
+Shuri uttered no cry or complaint, only mumbled—
+
+    “Although with broken jaw-bone,
+    I’ll follow thee, my Riley,
+    Since Lura doesn’t fal.”
+
+Thereupon Ryley and Yocky Shuri left Yorkshire and wended their way to
+London, where they took up their abode in the Gipsyry near Shepherd’s
+Bush.  Shuri went about dukkering and hokking, but not with the spirit of
+former times, for she was not quite so young as she had been, and her
+jaw, which was never properly cured, pained her very much.  Ryley went
+about tinkering, but he was unacquainted with London and its
+neighbourhood, and did not get much to do.  An old Gipsy man, who was
+driving about a little cart filled with skewers, saw him standing in a
+state of perplexity at a place where four roads met:—
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    “Methinks I see a brother.
+    Who’s your father?  Who’s your mother?
+    And what be your name?”
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    “A Bosvil was my father,
+    A Bosvil was my mother,
+    And Ryley is my name.”
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    “I’m glad to see you, brother;
+    I am a kaulo camlo. {218a}
+    What service can I do?”
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    “I’m jawing petulengring, {218b}
+    But do not know the country;
+    Perhaps you’ll show me round.”
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    “I’ll sikker tulle prala!
+    Ino bikkening escouyor, {218c}
+    And av along with me.”
+
+The old Gipsy showed Ryley about the country for a week or two, and Ryley
+formed a kind of connection and did a little business.  He, however,
+displayed little or no energy, was gloomy and dissatisfied, and
+frequently said that his heart was broken since he had left Yorkshire.
+Shuri did her best to cheer him, but without effect.  Once when she bade
+him get up and exert himself, he said that if he did it would be of no
+use, and asked her whether she did not remember the parting prophecy of
+his other wife, that he would never thrive.  At the end of about two
+years he ceased going his rounds, and did nothing but smoke under the
+arches of the railroad and loiter about beershops.  At length he became
+very weak and took to his bed; doctors were called in by his faithful
+Shuri, but there is no remedy for a bruised spirit.  A Methodist came and
+asked him, “What was his hope?”  “My hope,” said he, “is that when I am
+dead I shall be put into the ground, and my wife and children will weep
+over me,” and such, it may be observed, is the last hope of every genuine
+Gipsy.  His hope was gratified.  Shuri and his children, of whom he had
+three—two stout young fellows and a girl—gave him a magnificent funeral,
+and screamed and shouted and wept over his grave.  They then returned to
+the “arches,” not to divide his property among them, and to quarrel about
+the division, according to Christian practice, but to destroy it.  They
+killed his swift pony—still swift though twenty-seven years of age—and
+buried it deep in the ground without depriving it of its skin.  Then they
+broke the caravan to pieces, making of the fragments a fire, on which
+they threw his bedding, carpets, curtains, blankets, and everything which
+would burn.  Finally, they dashed his mirrors, china, and crockery to
+pieces, hacked his metal pots, dishes, and what not to bits, and flung
+the whole on the blazing pile. {219}  Such was the life, such the death,
+and such were the funeral obsequies of Ryley Bosvil, a Gipsy who will be
+long remembered amongst the English Romany for his buttons, his two
+wives, grand airs, and last not least, for having been the composer of
+various stanzas in the Gipsy tongue, which have plenty of force if
+nothing else to recommend them.  One of these, addressed to Yocky Shuri,
+runs as follows:—
+
+    “Beneath the bright sun there is none,
+             There is none
+    I love like my Yocky Shuri;
+    With the greatest delight in blood I would fight
+    To the knees for my Yocky Shuri.”
+
+How much better and happier it would have been for this poor, hardened,
+ignorant, old Gipsy, if, instead of indulging in such rubbish as he did
+in the last hours of an idle and wasted life, he could, after a life
+spent in doing good to the Gipsies and others over whom he had influence,
+as the shades of the evening of life gathered round him, sung, from the
+bottom of his heart—fetching tears to his eyes as it did mine a Sunday or
+two ago—the following verses to the tune of “Belmont:”—
+
+    “When in the vale of lengthened years
+       My feeble feet shall tread,
+    And I survey the various scenes
+       Through which I have been led,
+
+    “How many mercies will my life
+       Before my view unfold!
+    What countless dangers will be past!
+       What tales of sorrow told!
+
+    “This scene will all my labours end,
+       This road conduct on high;
+    With comfort I’ll review the past,
+       And triumph though I die.”
+
+On the first Sunday in February this year I found myself surrounded by a
+black, thick London fog—almost as dense as the blackest midnight, and an
+overpowering sense of suffocation creeping over me—in the midst of an
+encampment of Gipsies at Canning Town, and, acting upon their kind
+invitation, I crept into one of their tents, and there found about a
+dozen Gipsy men of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg
+shavings.  Some of their faces looked full of intelligence and worthy of
+a better vocation, and others seemed as if they had had the “cropper” at
+work round their ears; so short was their hair that any one attempting to
+“pull it up by the roots” would have a difficult task, unless he set to
+it with his teeth.  They looked to me as if several of them had worn
+bright steel ornaments round their wrists and had danced at a county
+ball, and done more stepping upon the wheel of fortune than many people
+imagine; at any rate, they were quite happy in their way, and seemed
+prepared for another turn round when needful.  Their first salutation
+was, “Well, governor, how are you?  Sit you down and make yourself
+comfortable, and let’s have a chat.  Never mind if it is Sunday, send for
+some ‘fourpenny’ for us.”  I partly did as they bid me, but, owing to the
+darkness of the tent and the fog, I sat upon a seat that was partly
+covered with filth, consequently I had an addition to my trousers more
+than I bargained for.  I told them my object was not to come to send for
+“fourpenny,” but to get a law passed to compel the Gipsy parents to send
+their children to school, and to have their tents registered and provided
+with a kind of school pass book; and, before I had well finished my
+remarks, one of the Gipsies, a good-looking fellow, said, “I say, Bill,
+that will be a capital thing, won’t it?”  “God bless you, man, for it,”
+was the remark of another, and so the thing went the round among them.
+By this time there were some score or more Gipsy women and children at
+the tent door, or, I should rather say, rag coverlet, who heard what had
+passed, and they thoroughly fell in with the idea.  The question next
+turned upon religion.  They said they had heard that there were
+half-a-dozen different religions, and asked me if it was true.  One said
+he was a Roman Catholic; but did not believe there was a hell.  Another
+said he was a Methodist, but could not agree with their singing and
+praying, and so it went round till they asked me what religion was.  I
+told them in a way that seemed to satisfy them, and I also told them some
+of its results.  I could not learn that any of these Gipsies had ever
+been in a place of worship.
+
+I mentioned to them that I wanted to show, during my inquiries, both
+sides of the question, and should be glad if they would point out to me
+the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up to and consider as a good
+pattern for them to follow.  Here they began to scratch their heads, and
+said I had put them “a nightcap on.”  “Upon my soul,” said one, “I should
+not know where to begin to look for one,” and then related to me the
+following story:—“The Devil sent word to some of his agents for them to
+send him the worst man they could find upon the face of the earth.  So
+news went about among various societies everywhere, consultations and
+meetings were held, and it was decided that a Gipsy should be sent, as
+none of the societies or agents could find one bad enough.  Accordingly a
+passport was procured, and they started the Gipsy on his way.  When he
+came to the door of hell he knocked for admittance.  The Devil shouted
+out, ‘Who is there?’  The Gipsy cried out, ‘A Gipsy.’  ‘All right,’ said
+the Devil; ‘you are just the man I am wanting.  I have been on the
+look-out for you some time.  Come in.  I have been told the Gipsies are
+the worst folks in all the world.’  The Gipsy had not been long in hell
+before the Devil perceived that he was too bad for his place, and the
+place began to swarm with young imps to such a degree that the Devil
+called the Gipsy to him one day, and said, ‘Of all the people that have
+ever come to this place you are the worst.  You are too bad for us.  Here
+is your passport.  Be off back again!’  The Devil opened the door, and
+said, as the Gipsy was going, ‘Make yourself scarce.’  So you see,” said
+Lee to me, “we are too bad for the Devil.  We’ll go anywhere, fight
+anybody, or do anything.  Now, lads, drink that ‘fourpenny’ up, and let’s
+send for some more.”  This is Gipsy life in England on a Sunday afternoon
+within the sound of church bells.
+
+           [Picture: A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her pipe]
+
+The proprietor of the _Weekly Times_ very readily granted permission for
+one of the principals of his staff to accompany me to one of the Gipsy
+encampments a Sunday or two ago on the outskirts of London.  Those who
+know the writer would say the article is truthful, and not in the least
+overdrawn:—“The lane was full of decent-looking houses, tenanted by
+labourers in foundries and gas and waterworks; but there were spaces
+between the rows of houses, forming yards for the deposit of garbage, and
+in these unsavoury spots the Gipsies had drawn up their caravans, and
+pitched their smoke-blackened tents.  These yards were separated from
+each other by rows of cottages, and each yard contained families related
+near or distantly, or interested in each other’s welfare by long
+associations in the country during summer time, and in such places as we
+found them during the winter season.  After spending several hours with
+these people in their tents and caravans, and passing from yard to yard,
+asking the talkative ones questions, we came to the conclusion that, in
+the whole bounds of this great metropolis, it would have been impossible
+to have found any miscalling themselves Gipsies whose mode of living more
+urgently called for the remedial action of the law than the tenants of
+Lamb-lane.  In the first place, there was not a true Gipsy amongst them;
+nor one man, woman, or child who could in any degree claim relationship
+with a Gipsy.  They were, all of them, idle loafers, who had adopted the
+wandering life of the Gipsy because of the opportunities it afforded of
+combining a maximum of idle hours with a minimum of work.  The men
+exhibited this in their countenances, in the attitudes they took up, by
+the whining drawl with which they spoke; the women, by their dirtiness
+and inattention to dress; and the children, by their filthy condition.
+The men and women had fled from the restraints of house life to escape
+the daily routine which a home involved; the men had no higher ambition
+than to obtain a small sum of money on the Saturday to pay for a few
+days’ food.  There was not one man amongst them who could solder a broken
+kettle; a few, however, could mend a chair bottom, but there all
+industrial ability ended; and the others got their living by shaving
+skewers from Monday morning to Friday night, which were sold to butchers
+at 10d. or 1s. the stone.  These men stayed at home, working over the
+brazier of burning coke during the week, while their wives hawked small
+wool mats or vases, but nothing of their own manufacture; and the
+grown-up lads, on market-days, added to the general industry by buying
+flowers in Covent-garden, and hawking them in the suburbs of the
+metropolis.  We were assured by Mr. Smith that this class of pseudo-Gipsy
+was largely on the increase, and to check their spread Mr. Smith suggests
+that the provisions of an Act of Parliament should be mainly directed.
+Only one of all we saw and spoke to on Sunday was ‘a scholar’—that is,
+could read at all—and this was a lad of about fourteen, who had spent a
+few hours occasionally at a Board school.  With all the others the
+knowledge that comes of reading was an absolute blank.  They knew
+nothing, except that the proceeds of the previous week had been below the
+average; social events of surpassing interest had not reached them, and
+the future was limited by ‘to-morrow.’  We questioned them upon their
+experiences of the past winter, and the preference they had for their
+tents over houses was emphatically marked.  ‘Brick houses,’ said one
+woman, who was suckling a baby, ‘are so full of draughts.’  Night and day
+the brazier of burning coke was never allowed to go low, and under the
+tent the ground was always dry, however wet it might be outside, because
+of the heat from the brazier; besides, they lay upon well-trodden-down
+straw, six or eight inches deep, and covered themselves with their
+clothes, their wraps, their filthy rugs, and tattered rags, and were as
+warm as possible.  The tents had many advantages over a brick house.
+Besides having no draughts, there was no accumulation of snow upon the
+tops of the tents; and so these witless people were content to endure
+poverty, hunger, cold, and dirt for the sake of minimising their
+contribution to the general good of the whole commonwealth.  The poorest
+working man in London who does an honest week’s work is a hero compared
+with such men as these.  It would be impossible to nurture sentiment in
+any tent in Lamb-lane.  There was no face with a glimmer of honest
+self-reliance about it, no face bearing any trace of the strange beauty
+we had noticed in other encampments, and no form possessed of any
+distinguishing grace.  The whole of the yards were redolent of dirt; and
+the people, each and all, inexcusably foul in person.  In several yards
+little boys or girls sat on the ground in the open air, tending coke
+fires over which stood iron pots, and, as the water boiled and raised the
+lids, it was plain that the women were taking advantage of the quiet
+hours of the afternoon for a wash.  Before we came away from the last
+yard, lines had been strung across all the yards, and the hastily-washed
+linen rags were fluttering in the air.  One tent was closed to visitors.
+It was then four o’clock, and a woman told us confidentially her friend
+was washing a blanket, which she would have to dry that same afternoon,
+as it would be ‘wanted’ at night; but ‘the friend’ professed her
+readiness to take charge of anything we had to spare for the
+washerwoman—a mouthful of baccy, a ‘sucker’ for the baby, or ‘three
+ha’pence for a cup of tea.’  Boys were there of fourteen and sixteen,
+with great rents in the knees of their corduroys, who only went out to
+hawk one day in the week—Saturday.  They started with a light truck for
+Covent-garden at four in the morning, and would have from 4s. to 6s. to
+lay out in flowers.  When questioned as to what flowers they had bought
+on the previous day, one lad said they were ‘tulips, hyacinths, and
+cyclaments,’ but nobody could give us an intelligible description of the
+last-named flowers.  Two lads generally took charge of the flower truck,
+and the result of the day’s hawking was usually a profit of half-a-crown
+to three shillings.  These lads also assisted during the week in shaving
+skewers, and accompanied their fathers to market when they had a load to
+sell.  In one tent we found a dandy-hen sitting; she had been so occupied
+one week, and the presence of the children and adults, who shared her
+straw bed, in no way discomposed her.  We found that baccy and ‘suckers’
+were the most negotiable exchanges with these people.  The women, young
+and old, small boys and the men, all smoked, and the day became historic
+with them because, of the extra smokes they were able to have.  The
+‘suckers’ were the largest specimen of ‘bulls’ eyes’ we could find—not
+those dainty specimens sold at the West-end or in the Strand, but real
+whoppers, almost the size of pigeons’ eggs; and yet there was no baby
+whose mouth was not found equal to the reception and the hiding of the
+largest; and we noticed as a strange psychological fact that no baby
+would consent, though earnestly entreated by its mother, to suffer the
+‘sucker’ to leave its mouth for the mother to look at.  The babies knew
+better, shaking their wary little heads at their mothers.  Instinct was
+stronger than obedience.  We were not sorry to get away from Lamb-lane,
+with its filthy habitations, blanket washings, ragged boys and girls,
+lazy men and women.  For the genuine Gipsy tribe, and their mysterious
+promptings to live apart from their fellows in the lanes and fields of
+the country, we have a sentimental pity; but with such as these Lamb-lane
+people, off-scourings of the lowest form of society, we have no manner of
+sympathy; and we hope that a gracious Act of Parliament may soon rid
+English social life of such a plague, and teach such people their duty to
+their children and to society at large—things they are too ignorant and
+too idle to learn for themselves.”
+
+My son sends me the following account of a visit he made to a Gipsy
+encampment near London:—I visited the camp at Barking Road this
+afternoon.  Possibly you thought I might not go if you gave me a correct
+description of the route, for I certainly went through more muddy streets
+and over lock-bridges than your instructions mentioned.  Presuming I was
+near the camp, I inquired of a policeman, and was surprised with the
+reply that there used to be one, but he had not heard anything of it for
+a long while.  His mind was evidently wandering, or else he meant it as a
+joke, for we were then standing within three hundred yards of the largest
+encampment I have yet seen.  It is situated at the back of Barking Road,
+in what may be termed a field, but it certainly is not a green one, for
+the only horse and donkey that I saw were standing against boxes
+eating—perhaps corn.
+
+I am surprised that the Gipsies should choose such an exposed, damp place
+for camping-ground, as it is always partly under water, and the only
+shelter afforded being a few houses at the back and one side; the rest
+faces, and is consequently exposed to, the bleak winds blowing over the
+marsh and the river.
+
+At the entrance I was met by a poor woman taking a child to the doctor,
+her chief dread being that if she did not the law would be down upon her.
+She had put the journey off to the last minute, for the poor thing looked
+nearly dead then.
+
+Once in the camp one could not but notice the miserable appearance of the
+place.  Women and children, not one of whom could read and write, with
+scarcely any clothing, the latter without shoes or stockings.  Twenty to
+twenty-five old, ragged, and dirty tents—not canvas, but old, worn-out
+blankets—separated by the remains of old broken vans, buckets, and
+rubbish that must have taken years to accumulate.  Everything betokened
+age and poverty.  Evidently this field has been a camping-ground for some
+years.  Three old vans were all the place could boast of, and one of
+those was made out of a two-wheeled cart.
+
+I was for the first ten minutes fully occupied in trying to keep a
+respectable distance from a number of dogs of all sizes and breeds, which
+had the usual appetite for fresh meat and tweed trowsering, and, at the
+same time, endeavouring in vain to find solid ground upon which to stand,
+for the place at the entrance and all round the tents was one regular
+mass of deep “slush.”  It soon became known that my pockets were
+plentifully supplied with half-ounces of tobacco and sweets.  These I
+soon disposed off, especially the latter, for there seemed no end to the
+little bare-footed children that could walk, and those that couldn’t were
+brought in turn by their sisters or brothers.  I was invited to visit all
+the tents, but I could gain but little information beyond an account of
+the severe winter, bad state of trade, your visit in one of the black,
+dense fogs, &c.
+
+         [Picture: Inside a Christian Gipsy’s Van—Mrs. Simpson’s]
+
+The men followed the occupation of either tinkers or peg-makers, and all
+the young women will pull out their pipe and ask for tobacco as readily
+as the old ones.
+
+The camp is one of the Lees.  The majority of the men, women, and
+children are of light complexion, and, as for a dark-eyed beauty, one was
+not to be found.  I stayed most of the time under the “blanket” of the
+old man, Thomas Lee, who is a jolly old fellow about sixty, and the
+father of eleven young children.  He was evidently the life of the camp,
+for they all flock round his tent to hear his interesting snatches of
+song and story.
+
+He had heard that Her Majesty had sent £50 to assist you in getting the
+children educated, and just before I left I was pleased to hear him give
+vent to his feelings with the rough but patriotic speech that “She was a
+rare good woman, and a Queen of the right sort.”
+
+It must not be inferred from what I have said, or shall say, that there
+are no good Gipsies among them.  Here and there are females to be found
+ready at all hours and on all occasions to do good both to the souls and
+bodies of Gipsies and house-dwellers as they travel with their basket
+from door to door hawking their wares; and to illustrate the truth of
+this I cannot do better than refer to the case of the good and
+kind-hearted Mrs. Simpson, who is generally located with her husband and
+some grand-children in her van in the neighbourhood near Notting Hill, on
+the outskirts of London.  Mrs. Simpson tells me that she is not a
+thorough Gipsy, only a half one.  Her father was one of the rare old
+Gipsy family of Lees, of Norfolk, and her mother was a Gorgio or Gentile,
+who preferred following the “witching eye” and “black locks” to the rag
+and stick hovel—or, to be more aristocratic, “the tent”—whose roof and
+sides consisted of sticks and canvas, with an opening in the roof to
+serve as a chimney, through which the smoke arising from the hearth-stick
+fire could pass, excepting that which settled on the hands and face.
+Grass, green, decayed, or otherwise, to serve as a carpet, the brown
+trampled turf taking the place of mosaic and encaustic tile pavements,
+straw instead of a feather-bed, and a soap-box, tea-chest, and like
+things doing duty as drawing-room furniture.  Mrs. Simpson, when quite a
+child, was always reckoned most clever in the art of deception, telling
+lies and fortunes out of a small black Testament, of which she could not
+read a sentence or tell a letter; sometimes reading the planets of silly
+geese, simpletons, and fools out of it when it was upside down, and when
+detected she was always ready with a plausible excuse, which they, with
+open mouths, always swallowed as Gospel; and for more than twenty-five
+years she kept herself and family in this way with sufficient money to
+keep them in luxury, loose living, and idleness, till the year of 1859,
+when, by some unaccountable means, her conscience, which, up to this
+time, had been insensible, dull, and without feeling, became awakened,
+sharp, and alive.  Probably this quickening took place in consequence of
+her hearing a good Methodist minister in a mission-room in the
+neighbourhood.  The result was that the money she took by telling
+fortunes began to burn her fingers, and to make it sit upon her
+conscience as easy as possible she had a large pocket made in her dress
+so that she could drop it in without much handling.  It was no easy thing
+to give up such an easy way of getting a living to face the realities of
+an honest pedlar’s life, in the midst of “slamming of doors,”
+“cold-shoulders,” “scowls,” “frowns,” and insults; and a woman with less
+determination of character would never have attempted it—or, at least, if
+attempted, it would soon have been given up on account of the
+insurmountable difficulties surrounding it.  Many times she has sat by
+the wayside with her basket, after walking and toiling all day, and not
+having taken a penny with which to provide the Sunday’s dinner, when at
+the last extremity Providence has opened her way and friends have
+appeared upon the scene, and she has been enabled to “go on her way
+rejoicing,” and for the last twenty years she has been trying to do all
+the good she can, and to day she is not one penny the loser, but, on the
+other hand, a gainer, by following such a course.  Personally, I have
+received much encouragement and valuable information at her hands to help
+me in my work to do the Gipsy children good in one form or other.  I have
+frequently called to see the grand old Gipsy woman, sometimes
+unexpectedly, and when I have done so I have either found her reading the
+Bible or else it has been close to her elbow.  Its stains and soils
+betoken much wear and constant use.  Very different to the old woman who
+put her spectacles into her Bible as she set it upon the clock, and lost
+them for more than seven years.  She is a firm believer in prayer; in
+fact, it seems the very essence of her life, and she can relate numbers
+of instances when and where God has answered her petitions.  On her
+bed-quilt are the following texts of scripture, poetry, &c., which, as
+she says, these, with other portions of God’s word, she “has learnt to
+read without any other aid except His Holy Spirit:”—“For God so loved the
+world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him
+should not perish but have everlasting life.”  “Every kingdom divided
+against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a
+house falleth.”  “But whoso hath this world’s goods and seeth his brother
+have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth
+the love of God in him?”  “All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer
+believing ye shall receive.”  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
+He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the
+still waters.”  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
+death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff
+they comfort me.”  “I am the door; by Me if any man enter in he shall be
+saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture.”  “Let nothing be done
+through strife, but in lowliness of mind; let each esteem others better
+than themselves.”  “Look not every man on his own things, but every man
+also on the things of others.”  “Let your speech be always with grace,
+seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
+“Wives submit yourselves unto your husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.”
+“Husbands love your own wives and be not bitter against them.”  “Children
+obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the
+Lord.”  “Fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be
+discouraged.”  “Servants obey in all things your masters according to the
+flesh, not with eye service as man pleases, but in singleness of heart
+fearing God.”  “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace,
+long-suffering, gentleness,” &c.  “The wages of sin is death.”  “Let us
+run the race with patience.”  “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
+“Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them.”
+“He that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”  “Come unto Me all
+ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  “I am the
+way, the truth, and the life.”  “Whatsoever ye find to do, do it with all
+your might.”  “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
+there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
+there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”  “He that
+overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall
+be My son.”  “And they shall see His face and His name shall be in their
+foreheads.”  “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle,
+neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they
+shall reign for ever and ever.”
+
+    “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee;
+    Let the water and the blood,
+    From Thy riven side which flowed,
+    Be of sin the double cure,
+    Save me from its guilt and power.
+
+    “While I draw this fleeting breath,
+    When mine eyes shall close in death,
+    When I soar to worlds unknown,
+    See Thee on Thy judgment throne;
+    Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee.”
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    “Just as I am, without one plea,
+    But that Thy blood was shed for me,
+    And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee,
+    O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
+
+    “Just as I am—Thy love unknown
+    Has broken every barrier down;
+    Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
+    O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    “Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
+    The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
+    When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
+    Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
+
+    “Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
+    Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away!
+    Change and decay in all around I see;
+    O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
+
+    “I need Thy presence every passing hour;
+    What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
+    Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?
+    Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me.”
+
+Upon these promises of help, comfort, warning, encouragement, and
+consolation, she has many times rested her wearied body after returning
+from her day’s trudging and toil, and under these she has slept
+peacefully as in the arms of death, ready to answer the Master’s summons,
+and to meet with her dear little boy who has crossed the river, when He
+shall say, “It is enough; come up hither,” and “sit on My throne.”
+Although she is a big, powerful woman, and has been more so in years that
+are past, when any one begins to talk about Heaven and the happiness and
+joy in reserve for those who have a hope of meeting with loved ones
+again, when the cares and anxieties of life are ended, it is not long
+before they see big, scalding, briny tears rolling down her dark,
+Gipsy-coloured face, and she will frequently edge in words during the
+conversation about her “Dear Saviour” and “Blessed Lord and Master.”  I
+may mention the names of other warm-hearted Gipsies who are trying to
+improve the condition of some of the adult portion of their brethren and
+sisters—dwellers upon the turf, and clod scratchers, who feed many of
+their poor women and children upon cabbage broth and turnip sauce, and
+“bed them down,” after kicks, blows, and ill-usage, upon rotten straw
+strewn upon the damp ground.  Mrs. Carey, Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, Mrs.
+Hedges, and the three Gipsy brothers Smith, Mrs. Lee, and a few others,
+have not laboured without some success, at the same time they are
+powerless to improve the condition of the future generations of Gipsy
+women and children, young mongrels and hut-dwelling Gorgios, by applying
+the civilising influences of education and sanitary measures to banish
+heathenism worse than that of Africa, idleness, immorality, thieving,
+lying, and deception of the deepest dye from our midst, as exhibited in
+the dwellings of the rag and stick hovels to be seen flitting about the
+outskirts, fringe, and scum of our own neglected ragamuffin population,
+roaming about under the cognition that the name of a Gipsy is nauseous
+and disgusting in most people’s mouths on account of the damning evil
+practices they have followed and carried out for centuries upon the
+honest and industrious artisans, tradesmen, and others they have been
+brought in contact with.  A raw-boned Gipsy, with low, slanting forehead,
+deep-set eyes, large eyebrows, thick lips, wide mouth, skulkingly slow
+gait, slouched hat, and a large grizzly-coloured dog at his heels, in a
+dark, narrow lane, on a starlight night, is not a pleasant state of
+things for a timid and nervous man to grapple with; nevertheless this is
+one side of a Gipsy’s life as he goes prowling about in quest of his
+prey, and as such it is seen by those who know something of Gipsy life.
+
+    “And they return at evening: they growl like a dog and compass the
+    city;
+    They—they prowl about for food.
+    If (or since) they are not satisfied they spend the night (in the
+    search).”
+
+                                                         “Sunday at Home.”
+
+Even my friends, the canal-boatmen, look upon Gipsies as the lowest of
+the low, and lower down the social scale than any boatman to be met with.
+Some of them have gone so far as to try to shake my nerves by telling me
+that, now I had taken the Gipsy women and children in hand, they would
+not give sixpence for my life.  I could only reply with a smile, and tell
+them that I was in safe keeping till the work was done, as in the case of
+the canal movement.  Frowns, dogs, sticks, stones, and oaths did not
+frighten me.  The time had arrived when the vagabondish life of a
+Gipsy—so called—should be unmasked and the plain truth made known; and
+for this the Gipsies will thank me, if they take into consideration the
+object I have in view and the end I am seeking.  My object is to elevate
+them, through the instrumentality of sanitary officer and schoolmaster
+being at work among the children, into respectable citizens of society,
+earning an honest livelihood by honourable and legitimate means; far
+better to do this than to go sneaking about the country, begging,
+cadging, lying, and stealing all they can lay their hands upon, and
+training their children to put up with the scoffs, sneers, and insults of
+the Gorgios or Gentiles for the sake of pocketing a penny at the cost of
+losing their manhood.  A thousand times better live a life such as would
+enable them to look everybody straight in the face than burrowing and
+scratching their way into the ground, making skewers at one shilling per
+stone, and being considered as outlaws, having the mark of Cain upon
+their forehead, with their hands against everybody and everybody against
+them.  There is no honour in a scamp’s life, credit in being a thief,
+glory surrounding a rogue, and halo over the life of a vagabond and a
+tramp.  To see a half-naked, full grown-man and his wife, with six or
+eight children, sitting on the damp ground in rag huts large enough only
+for a litter of pigs, scratching roasted potatoes out of the dying embers
+of a coke fire, as thousands are doing to-day, is enough to freeze the
+blood in one’s veins, make one utter a shriek of horror and despair, and
+to bring down the wrath of God upon the country that allows such a state
+of things in her midst.
+
+    “How dark yon dwelling by the solemn grove!”
+
+
+
+
+Part V.
+The sad Condition of the Gipsies, with Suggestions for their Improvement.
+
+
+One thing that strikes me in going through the writings of those authors
+in this country who have endeavoured to deal with the Gipsy question is,
+their hesitation to tackle the Gipsy difficulty at home.  On the surface
+of the books they have written there appears a disposition to mince the
+subject, at all events, that amount of courage has not been put into
+their works that characterised Grellmann’s work upon the Gipsies of his
+own country.  If an account similar to Grellmann’s had appeared
+concerning our English Gipsies a century ago, and energetic action had
+been taken by our law-makers, instead of publishing an account of the
+Hungarian and other Continental Gipsies, it is impossible to calculate
+the beneficent results that would have accrued long before this, both to
+the Gipsies themselves and the country at large.
+
+     [Picture: Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller’s van near Latimer Road]
+
+One writer deals principally with the Scotch Gipsies, another with the
+Spanish Gipsies, another is trying to prove the Egyptian origin of the
+Gipsies, another is tracing their language, another treats upon our
+English Gipsies in a kind of “milk-and-watery” fashion that will neither
+do them good nor harm—he pleases his readers, but leaves the Gipsies
+where he found them, viz., in the ditch.  Another went to work on the
+principle of praying and believing for them; but, I am sorry to say, in
+his circumscribed sphere his faith and works fell flat, on account, no
+doubt, of this dear, good man and his friends undertaking to do a work
+which should in that day have been undertaken by the State, at least,
+that part of it relating to the education of the Gipsy children.
+
+The Gipsy race is supposed to be the most beautiful in the world, and
+amongst the Russian Gipsies are to be found countenances, which, to do
+justice to, would require an abler pen than mine; but exposure to the
+rays of the sun, the biting of the frost, and the pelting of the pitiless
+sleet and snow destroys the beauty at a very early age, and if in infancy
+their personal advantages are remarkable, their ugliness at an advanced
+age is no less so, for then it is loathsome and appalling:—“He wanted but
+the dark and kingly crown to have represented the monster who opposed the
+progress of Lucifer whilst careering in burning arms and infernal glory
+to the outlet of his hellish prison.”  In our own country a number of
+Gipsies sit as models, for which they get one shilling per hour.  They
+are not in demand as perfect specimens of the human figure from the crown
+of the head to the sole of the foot; but few of them, owing to their low,
+debasing habits, have arrived at that state of perfection.  I know one
+real, fine, old Gipsy woman who sits to artists for the back of her head
+only, on account of her black, frizzy, raven locks.  One will sit for her
+eyes, another for the nose, another for the hands and feet, another for
+the colour only.  Alfred Smith sits for his feet, and there are others
+who sit for their legs and arms.  No class of people, owing to their
+mixture with other classes, tribes, and nations, presents a greater
+variety of models for the artist than the Gipsy.  If an artist wants to
+paint a thief he can find a model among the Gipsies.  If he wants to
+paint a dark highwayman lurking behind a hedge after his prey he goes to
+the Gipsy.  If he wants to paint Ajax he goes to the Gipsy.  If he wants
+to paint a Grecian, Roman, or Spaniard he goes to the Gipsy.  Of course
+there are exceptions, but if an artist wants to paint a large, fine,
+intellectual-looking figure, with an open countenance, he keeps away from
+the Gipsies and seeks his models elsewhere.  Dregs among the Gipsies have
+produced queens for the artists.
+
+Gipsies with a mixture of English blood in their veins have produced men
+with pluck, courage, and stamina, strongly built, with plenty of muscle
+and bone.  Two “bruisers” of the Gipsy vagabond class have worn the
+champion’s belt of the world; and, on the other hand, this mixture of
+English and Gipsy blood has produced some fine delicate Grecian forms of
+female beauty, dove-like, soft in eye, hand, and heart—the flashy fire in
+the eye of a Gipsy has been reduced to the modesty and innocence and
+simplicity of a child.  Our present race of Gipsies, under the influence
+of education, refinement, and religion, will, if properly and wisely
+taken in hand and dealt with according to the light of reason and truth,
+produce a class of men and women well qualified to take their share, for
+weal or for woe, in the struggle of life.
+
+Some first-rate songsters and musicians have been produced among the
+Gipsies, and whose merits have been acknowledged.  Perhaps the highest
+compliment ever paid to a singer was paid by Catalini herself to one of
+the daughters of a tanned and tawny skin.  It is well known in Russia
+that the celebrated Italian was so enchanted with the voice of a Moscow
+Gipsy (who, after the former had displayed her noble talent before a
+splendid audience in the old Russian capital, stepped forward and poured
+forth one of her national strains) that she tore from her own shoulders a
+shawl of cashmere which had been presented to her by the Pope, and,
+embracing the Gipsy, insisted on her acceptance of the splendid gift,
+saying that it was intended for the matchless songster, which she now
+perceived she herself was not.  No doubt there are many good voices among
+our Gipsies; what is required to bring them out is education and culture.
+Our best Gipsy songsters and musicians are in Wales.
+
+The following is a specimen of a Gipsy poetic effusion, which my Gipsy
+admirers will not consider an extraordinarily high-flown production—the
+outcome of nearly one million Gipsies who have wandered up and down
+Europe for more than three hundred years, as related by Borrow.
+
+
+
+TWO GIPSIES.
+
+
+    “Two Gipsy lads were transported,
+    Were sent across the great water;
+    Plato was sent for rioting,
+    And Louis for stealing the purse
+          Of a great lady.
+
+    “And when they came to the other country,
+    The country that lies across the water,
+    Plato was speedily hung,
+    But Louis was taken as a husband
+          By a great lady.
+
+    “You wish to know who was the lady:
+    ’Twas the lady from whom he stole the purse;
+    The Gipsy had a black and witching eye,
+    And on account of that she followed him
+          Across the great water.”
+
+Smart and Crofton, speaking poetically and romantically of Gipsy life,
+say as follows:—
+
+“With the first spring sunshine comes the old longing to be off, and soon
+is seen, issuing from his winter quarters, a little cavalcade, tilted
+cart, bag and baggage, donkeys and dogs, rom, romni, and tickni, chavis,
+and the happy family is once more under weigh for the open country.  With
+dark, restless eye and coarse, black hair fluttered by the breeze, he
+slouches along, singing as he goes, in heart, if not in precise words—
+
+    “I loiter down by thorpe and town,
+       For any job I’m willing;
+    Take here and there a dusty brown,
+       And here and there a shilling.
+
+No carpet can please him like the soft green turf, and no curtains
+compare with the snow-white blossoming hedgerow thereon.  A child of
+Nature, he loves to repose on the bare breast of the great mother.  As
+the smoke of his evening fire goes up to heaven, and the savoury odour of
+roast hotchi witchi or of canengri soup salutes his nostrils, he sits in
+the deepening twilight drinking in with unconscious delight all the
+sights and sounds which the country affords; with his keen senses alive
+to every external impression he feels that
+
+    “’Tis sweet to see the evening star appear,
+    ’Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep
+          From leaf to leaf.
+
+He dreamily hears the distant bark of the prowling fox, and the
+melancholy hootings of the wood owls; he marks the shriek of the
+night-wandering weasel, and the rustle of the bushes as some startled
+forest creature darts into deep coverts; or, perchance, the faint sounds
+from a sequestered hamlet of a great city.  Cradled from infancy in such
+haunts as these ‘places of nestling green for poets made,’ and surely for
+Gipsies too, no wonder if, after the fitful fever of town life, he sleeps
+well, with the unforgotten and dearly-loved lullabies of his childhood
+soothing him to rest.”
+
+The following is in their own Gipsy language to each other, and exhibits
+a true type of the feeling of revenge they foster to one another for
+wrongs done and injuries received, and may be considered a fair specimen
+of the disposition of thousands of Gipsies in our midst:—“Just see,
+mates, what a blackguard he is.  He has been telling wicked lies about
+us, the cursed dog.  I will murder him when I get hold of him.  That
+creature, his wife, is just as bad.  She is worse than he.  Let us thrash
+them both and drive them out of our society, and not let them come near
+us, such cut-throats and informers as they are.  They are nothing but
+murderers.  They are informers.  We shall all come to grief through their
+misdoings.”  Not much poetry and romance in language and characters of
+this description.
+
+    “These Indians ne’er forget
+    Nor evermore forgive an injury.”
+
+The following is a wail of their own, taken from Smart and Crofton, and
+will show that the Gipsies themselves do not think tent life is so
+delightful, happy, and free as has been pictured in the imaginative brain
+of novel writers, whose knowledge has been gained by visiting the Gipsies
+as they have basked on the grassy banks on a hot summer day, surrounded
+by the warbling songsters and rippling brooks of water, as clear as
+crystal, at their feet, sending forth dribbling sounds of enchantment to
+fall upon musical ears, touching the cords of poetic affection and lyric
+sympathy:—“Now, mates, be quick.  Put your tent up.  Much rain will come
+down, and snow, too—we shall all die to-night of cold; and bring
+something to make a good fire, too.  Put the tent down well, much wind
+will come this night.  My children will die of cold.  Put all the rods in
+the ground properly to make it stand well.  The poor children cry for
+food.  My God! what shall I do to give them food to eat?  I have nothing
+to give them.  They will die without food.”
+
+My object in this part will be to deal with the Gipsy question in a hard,
+matter of fact way, both as regards their present condition and the only
+remedy by which they are to be improved.  No one believes in the power of
+the Gospel more than I do as to its being able to rescue the very dregs
+of society from misery and wretchedness; but in the case of the Gipsies
+and canal-boatmen they cannot be got together so as to be brought under
+its influence.  Their darkness, ignorance, and flitting habits, prevent
+them either reading about Jesus or being brought within the magic spell
+of the Gospel.  When once the Gipsy children have learned to read and
+write I shall then have more faith in the power of God’s truth reaching
+the hearts of the Gipsies and producing better results.
+
+The following letter has been handed to me by the uncle, to show what a
+little, dark-eyed Gipsy girl of twelve years of age can do.
+Notwithstanding all its faults it is a credit to the little beauty,
+especially if it is taken into consideration that she has had no father
+to teach her, and she has chiefly been her own schoolmaster and mistress.
+She is the only one who can read and write in a large family.  Her books
+have been sign-boards, guide-posts, and mile-stones, and her light the
+red glare of a coke fire.  I give the letter to show two things; first,
+that there is a strong desire among the poor Gipsy children for
+education; second, that there is that mental calibre about the Gipsy
+children of the present generation that only requires fostering,
+handling, educating, and caring for as other children are to produce in
+the next generation a class of people of whom no country need be ashamed.
+They will be equal to stand shoulder to shoulder with other labouring
+classes.
+
+                           (Copy of envelope.)
+
+                               “JOB CLATAN
+                              “Char bottomar
+                            “at ash be hols in
+                              “Darbyshere.”
+
+                            (Copy of letter.)
+
+                                                          “febury 18 1880.
+
+“Dear uncel and Aunt
+
+“I wright these few li to you hoping find you all well.
+
+“Fanny Vickers as sent you a rose father and Mother as sent there best
+love to you I think it is very strang you have never wrote it is Twenty
+year if live till may it is a strang thing you doant com to see her  She
+is stark stone blind and lives with son john at gurtain  I hope and trust
+you will send us word how you are getting  Fanny mother is not only a
+very poor crater somtimes Mother often thinks she should often like to
+see your bazy and joby you might com land see us in the summer if we had
+nothing elce I ca il find them something to eat  if mother never see you
+in this world she is hopining to see you in heaven  so no more from your
+afexenen brother and sister Vickers  good buy * * * * Kiss all on you * *
+* *”
+
+In speaking of the Gipsies in Scotland sixty years ago, Mr.
+Deputy-Sheriff Moor, of Aberdeenshire, says as follows:—“Occasionally
+vagrants, both single and in bands, appear in this part of the country,
+resorting to fairs, when they commit depredations on the unwary.”  Sir
+Walter Scott, Bart., says of the Gipsies:—“A set of people possessing the
+same erratic habits, and practising the trade of tinkers, are well known
+in the Borders, and have often fallen under the cognisance of the law.
+They are often called Gipsies, and pass through the country annually in
+small bands, with their carts and asses.  The men are tinkers, poachers,
+and thieves upon a small scale,” and he goes on to say that “some of the
+more atrocious families have been extirpated.”  Mr. Riddell, Justice of
+Peace for Roxburghshire, says:—“They are thorough desperadoes of the
+worst class of vagabonds.  Those who travel through this county give
+offence chiefly by poaching and small thefts.  All of them are perfectly
+ignorant of religion.  They marry and cohabit amongst each other, and are
+held in a sort of horror by the common people.”  Mr. William Smith, the
+Baillie of Kelso, and a gentlemen of high position, says:—“Some kind of
+honour peculiar to themselves seems to prevail in their community.  They
+reckon it a disgrace to steal near their homes, or even at a distance if
+detected.  I must always except that petty theft of feeding their
+shilties and asses on the farmers’ grass and corn, which they will do
+whether at home or abroad.”  And he further says, “I am sorry to say,
+however, that when checked in their licentious appropriations they are
+much addicted both to threaten and to execute revenge.”  Mr. Smith always
+visited the Gipsies upon one of the estates of which he had the charge,
+consequently he would be likely to know more about them than most people.
+A number of other gentleman confirmed these statements.  By comparing
+these remarks with the statements of Mr. Harrison in a letter published
+in the _Standard_ last August, backing up my case, it will be seen that
+the Scotch Gipsies if anything have degenerated.  Mr. Harrison’s letter
+will be found in Part II.
+
+Much has been said and written with reference to their health and age.
+For my own part I firmly believe that the great ages to which they say
+they live—of course there are many exceptions—are only myths and
+delusions, and another of their dodges to excite sympathy.  From the days
+of their debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable
+phrase for Gipsies, “old hags,” they seem to jump from sixty to between
+seventy and eighty at a bound.  I was talking to one I considered an old
+woman as to her age only a day or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful
+tone, “I am a long way over seventy,” and I asked her if she could tell
+me the year in which she was born, to which she replied that she “was
+sixteen when the good Queen was crowned.”
+
+The following case, related to me by the tradesman himself, at
+Battersea—a sharp, quick, business gentleman, who boasted to me that he
+had never been sold before by any one—will show faintly how clever the
+Gipsy women are at lying, deception, and cheating:—Three pretty,
+well-dressed Gipsy women went into his shop one day last summer, and said
+that they had arranged to have a christening on the morrow, and as beer
+got into the heads of their men, and made them wild, which they did not
+like to see on such occasions, they had decided to have a quiet, little,
+respectable affair, and in place of beer they were going to have wine,
+cakes, and biscuits after their tea; and they ordered some currant cake,
+several bottles of wine, tea, sugar, and other things required on such
+occasions, to the amount of two pounds fourteen shillings.  The Gipsies
+asked to have the bill made out and the goods packed in a hamper.  And
+while this was being done the Gipsies said to the tradesman: “Now, as we
+have ordered so much from you, we think that you ought to buy a mat or
+two and other things of us.”  Without consulting his wife, he agreed to
+buy one or two things, to the amount of eleven shillings, which the
+tradesman had thought would have been deducted from their account; but
+the Gipsies thought differently—and here was the craft—and said, “We
+don’t understand figures.  You had better pay us for the mats, &c., and
+we will pay you for the wine.”  The tradesman, who was thrown off his
+guard, paid them the eleven shillings.  With this they walked out of his
+shop, saying that they would take the bill with them, and send a man with
+the money and a barrow for the wine, cake, &c., in a few minutes, which
+they did not, but left the tradesman a wiser but sadder man for spending
+eleven shillings in things he did not require; and his remarks to me
+were, “No more Gipsies for me, thank you.  I’ve had quite plenty of
+Gipsies for my lifetime.”
+
+Cases have been known when the Gipsy women have gone among the farmers’
+cattle and rubbed their nostrils with some nastiness to such an extent as
+to cause the cattle to loathe their food.  The Gipsy in the lane—who of
+course knows all about the affair—goes to the farmer and tells him he can
+cure his cattle.  This is agreed upon.  All the Gipsy does is to visit
+the cattle secretly and slyly, and rub off the nastiness he has put on.
+The cattle immediately begin to eat their food, and the Gipsy gets his
+fee.  They kill lambs by sticking pins into their heads.
+
+Tallemant says that near Peye, in Picardy, a Gipsy offered a stolen sheep
+to a butcher for one hundred sous, or five francs; but the butcher
+declined to give more than four francs for it.  The butcher then went
+away; whereupon the Gipsy pulled the sheep from a sack into which he had
+put it, and substituted for it a child belonging to his tribe.  He then
+ran after the butcher, and said, “Give me five francs, and you shall have
+the sack into the bargain.”  The butcher paid him the money, and went
+away.  When he got home he opened the sack, and was much astonished when
+he saw a little boy jump out of it, who in an instant caught up the sack
+and ran off.  “Never was a poor man so hoaxed as this butcher.”  When
+they want to leave a place where they have been stopping they set out in
+an opposite direction to that in their right course.  The Gipsies have a
+thousand other tricks—so says one of the Gipsy fraternity named Pechou de
+Ruby.  Paul Lacroix says that when they take up their quarters in any
+village they steal very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the
+neighbouring parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner.  If
+they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and make a
+rapid flight from the place.  They make counterfeit money, and put it
+into circulation.  They play all sorts of games; they buy all sorts of
+horses, whether sound or unsound, provided they can manage to pay for
+them in their own base coin.  When they buy food, they pay for it in good
+money the first time, as they are held in such distrust; but when they
+are about to leave a neighbourhood they again buy something, for which
+they tender false coin, receiving the change in good money.  In harvest
+time all doors are shut against them, nevertheless they contrive, by
+means of picklocks and other instruments, to effect an entrance into
+houses, when they steal linen, clocks, silver, and any other movable
+article which they can lay their hands upon.  They give a strict account
+of everything to their captain, who takes his share.  They are very
+clever in making a good bargain.  When they know of a rich merchant
+living in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communication
+with him, and swindle him, after which they change their clothes, have
+their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft
+material, lest they should be heard, and gallop away.  Grellmann
+says:—“The miserable condition of the Gipsies may be imagined from the
+following facts: many of them, and especially the women, have been
+burned, by their own request, in order to end their miserable existence;
+and we can give the case of a Gipsy, who, having been arrested, flogged,
+and conducted to the frontier, with the threat that if he re-appeared in
+the country he would be hanged, resolutely returned after three
+successive and similar threats at three different places, and implored
+that the capital sentence might be carried out, in order that he might be
+released from a life of such misery.”  And he goes on to say that “these
+unfortunate people were not even looked upon as human beings, for during
+a hunting party the huntsmen had no scruple whatever in killing a Gipsy
+woman who was suckling her child, just as they would have done any wild
+beast which came in their way.”  And he further says that they received
+“into their ranks all those whose crime, the fear and punishment of an
+uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming life continually threw in
+their path; they made use of them either to find their way into countries
+of which they were ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise
+have been impracticable.  They were not slow to form an alliance with
+profligate characters, who sometimes worked in concert with them.”
+
+A century ago it was somewhat romantic, and answered very well as a
+contrast to civilisation, to see a number of people moving about the
+country, dressed in beaver hats and bonnets, scarlet cloaks and hoods,
+short petticoats, velvet coats with silver buttons, and a plentiful
+supply of gold rings.  The novelty of their person, with dark skin and
+eyes, black hair, and their fortune-telling proclivities, and other odd
+curiosities and eccentricities, answered well for a time as a kind of
+eye-blinder to their little thefts and like things; but that day is over.
+Their silver buttons are all gone to pot.  Their silk velvet coats, plush
+waistcoats, and diamond rings have vanished, never more to return with
+their present course of life; patched breeches, torn coats, slouched
+hats, and washed gold rings have taken their places, and ragged garments
+in place of silk dresses for the poor Gipsy women.  The Gipsy men
+“lollock” about, the women tell fortunes, and the children gambol on the
+ditch banks with impunity, nobody caring to interfere with them in any
+way.  This kind of thing, as regards dash and show, is to a great extent
+passed, and those men who put on a show of work at all, it is as a
+general thing at tinkering, chair-mending, peg-splitting, skewer-making,
+and donkey buying.  The men make the skewers and sell them at prices
+varying from one shilling to two shillings per stone; the wood for the
+skewers they do not always buy.  A friend of mine told me a couple of
+months since that the Gipsies had broken down his fences with impunity,
+and had taken five hundred young saplings out of his plantation for this
+purpose.  Chairs are bottomed at prices ranging from one shilling and
+upwards.  Some of them do scissor-grinding, for which they charge
+exorbitant prices.  Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton Hall, told me
+very recently that one of the Boswell gang had charged him two shillings
+for grinding one knife.  Some of the women, who are not good hands at
+fortune-telling, sell artificial flowers, combs, brushes, lace, &c.  The
+women who are good at fortune-telling can make a good thing out of it,
+even at this late day, in the midst of so much light and Christianity,
+and they carry it out very adroitly and cleverly too.  Two or three
+months ago I was invited by some Gipsy friends to have tea with them on
+the outskirts of London.  They very kindly sent for twopenny worth of
+butter for me, and allowed me the honour of using the only cup and
+saucer, which they said were over one hundred years old.  The tea for the
+grown-up sons and daughters was handed round in mugs, jugs, and basins.
+The good old man cut my bread and butter with his dark coloured hands
+pretty thin, but the bread for his sons and daughters was like pieces of
+bricks, which, with pieces of bacon, he pitched at them without any
+ceremony, and as they caught it they, although men and women, kept saying
+“Thank you, pa,” “Thank you, pa,” and down it went without either knives
+or forks, or very little grinding.  We were all sitting upon the floor,
+my table being an undressed brick out of some old building, and it was
+with some difficulty I could keep the pigs that were running loose in the
+yard from taking a piece off my plate, but with a pretty free use of my
+toe I kept sending the little grunters squeaking away.  After tea I felt
+a little curious to know what was in the big old Gipsy dame’s basket, for
+I had an idea one or two hair-brushes, combs, laces, and other small
+trifles which lay on the top of a small piece of oilcloth covering the
+inside of the basket had, by their greasy appearance, done duty for many
+a long day.  I told the old Gipsy dame that I was going home the next
+day, and should like to take a little thing or two for my little ones at
+home, as having been bought of a Gipsy woman near London.  The sharp old
+woman was not long in offering me one or two of her trifles that lay on
+the top of her basket, but these I said were not so suitable as I should
+like.  “Had she nothing more suitable lower down as a small present?”
+After a little fumbling and flustering she began to see my motive, and
+said, “Ah!  I see what you are after.  I will tell you the truth and show
+you all.”  She turned the oilcloth off the basket, underneath of which
+were “shank ends” of joints, ham-bones, pieces of bacon, and crusts.
+“These,” she said, “have been given to me by servant girls and others for
+telling their fortunes, really lies, and I have brought them here for my
+children to live upon, and this is how we live.”
+
+       [Picture: Gipsy Fortune-tellers cooking their evening meal]
+
+Fortune-telling is a soul-crushing and deadly crying evil, and it is far
+from being stamped out.  A hawker’s licence, about the size of one of
+these pages, covers a life-time of sin and iniquity in this respect.  A
+basket with half-a-dozen brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and
+a pocket Bible, is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve
+them for a year.  They generally prophecy good.  Knowing the readiest way
+to deceive, to a young lady they describe a handsome gentleman as one she
+may be assured will be her “husband.”  To a youth they promise a pretty
+lady with a large fortune.  And thus suiting their deluding speeches to
+the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects of those who employ
+them, they seldom fail to please their vanity, and often gain a rich
+reward for their fraud.
+
+A young lady in Gloucestershire allowed herself to be deluded by a Gipsy
+woman, of artful and insinuating address, to a very great extent.  This
+lady admired a young gentleman, and the Gipsy promised that he would
+return her love.  The lady gave her all the plate in the house, and a
+gold chain and locket, with no other security than a vain promise that
+they should be restored at a given period.  As might be expected, the
+wicked woman was soon off with her booty, and the lady was obliged to
+expose her folly.  The property being too much to lose, the woman was
+pursued and overtaken.  She was found washing her clothes in a Gipsy
+camp, with the gold chain about her neck.  She was taken up, but on
+restoring the articles was allowed to escape.
+
+The same woman afterwards persuaded a gentleman’s groom that she could
+put him in possession of a great sum of money if he would first deposit
+with her all he then had.  He gave her five pounds and his watch, and
+borrowed for her ten more of two of his friends.  She engaged to meet him
+at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and
+that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold
+covered with a clean napkin.  He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the
+appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence
+strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he
+considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was soon to receive.  Of
+course he met no Gipsy; she had fled another way with the property she
+had so wickedly obtained.  While waiting her arrival a hare started
+suddenly from its resting-place and so alarmed him that he as suddenly
+took to his heels and made no stop till he reached his master’s house,
+where he awoke his fellow-servants and told to them his disaster.
+
+This woman, who made so many dupes, rode a good horse, and dressed both
+gaily and expensively.  One of her saddles cost thirty pounds.  It was
+literally studded with silver, for she carried on it the emblems of her
+profession wrought in that metal—namely, a half moon, seven stars, and
+the rising sun.  Poor woman! _her_ sun is set.  Her sins have found her
+out.  Fortune-tellers die hard without exception, so I am told by the
+Gipsies themselves.
+
+Some time ago a gentleman followed several Gipsy families.  Arriving at
+the place of their encampment his first object was to gain their
+confidence.  This was accomplished; after which, to amuse their
+unexpected visitant, they showed forth their night diversions in music
+and dancing; likewise the means by which they obtained their livelihood,
+such as tinkering, fortune-telling, and conjuring.  That the gentleman
+might be satisfied whether he had obtained their confidence or not, he
+represented his dangerous situation, in the midst of which they all with
+one voice cried, “Sir, we would kiss your feet rather than hurt you!”
+After manifesting a confidence in return, the master of this formidable
+gang, about forty in number, was challenged by the gentleman for a
+conjuring match.  The challenge was instantly accepted.  The Gipsies
+placed themselves in a circular form, and both being in the middle
+commenced with their conjuring powers to the best advantage.  At last the
+visitor proposed the making of something out of nothing.  This proposal
+was accepted.  A stone which never existed was to be created, and appear
+in a certain form in the middle of a circle made on the turf.  The master
+of the gang commenced, and after much stamping with his foot, and the
+gentleman warmly exhorting him to cry aloud, like the roaring of a lion,
+he endeavoured to call forth nonentity into existence.  Asking him if he
+could do it, he answered, “I am not strong enough.”  They were all asked
+the same question, which received the same answer.  The visitor
+commenced.  Every eye was fixed upon him, eager to behold this unheard-of
+exploit; but (and not to be wondered at) he failed! telling them he
+possessed no more power to create than themselves.  Perceiving the
+thought of insufficiency pervading their minds, he thus spoke: “Now, if
+you have not power to create a poor little stone, and if 1 have not power
+either, what must that power be which made the whole world out of
+nothing?—men, women, and children! that power I call God Almighty.”
+
+I have been told that the dislike they have to rule and order has led
+many of them to maim themselves by cutting off a finger, that they might
+not serve in either the army or the navy; and I believe there is one
+instance known of some Gipsies murdering a witness who was to appear
+against some of their people for horse-stealing; the persons who were
+guilty of the deed are dead, and in their last moments exclaimed with
+horror and despair, “Murder, murder.”  But these circumstances do not
+stamp their race without exception as infamous monsters in wickedness.
+
+The following is a remarkable instance of the love of costly attire in a
+female Gipsy of the old school.  The woman alluded to obtained a very
+large sum of money from three maiden ladies, pledging that it should be
+doubled by her art in conjuration.  She then decamped to another
+district, where she bought a blood-horse, a black beaver hat, a new
+side-saddle and bridle, a silver-mounted whip, and figured away in her
+ill-obtained finery at the fairs.  It is not easy to imagine the
+disappointment and resentment of the covetous and credulous ladies, whom
+she had so easily duped.  With the present race of our gutter-scum
+Gipsies the last remnant of Gipsy pride is nearly dead—poverty, rags, and
+despair taking the place.
+
+Gipsies of the old type are not strangers to pawnbrokers’ shops; but they
+do not visit these places for the same purposes as the vitiated poor of
+our trading towns.  A pawnshop is their bank.  When they acquire property
+illegally, as by stealing, swindling, or fortune-telling, they purchase
+valuable plate, and sometimes in the same hour pledge it for safety.
+Such property they have in store against days of adversity and trouble,
+which on account of their dishonest habits often overtake them.  Should
+one of their families stand before a judge of his country, charged with a
+crime which is likely to cost him his life, or to transport him, every
+article of value is sacrificed to save him from death or apprehended
+banishment.  In such cases they generally retain a counsel to plead for
+the brother in adversity.  Their attachment to the horse, donkey, rings,
+snuff-box, silver spoons, and all things, except the clothes, of the
+deceased relatives is very strong.  With such articles they will never
+part, except in the greatest distress, and then they only pledge some of
+them, which are redeemed as soon as they possess the means.
+
+It has been stated by some writers, that there is hardly a Gipsy in
+existence who could not, if desired, produce his ten or twenty pounds “at
+a pinch.”  Some of those who work, no doubt, could; but it is entirely
+erroneous, as many other statements relating to the Gipsies, to imagine
+that the whole of them are as well off as all this.  Smith tells us that
+there is not one in twenty who can show one pound, much less twenty.  A
+Gipsy named Boswell travelled about in the Midland counties with a large
+van pretty well stocked with his wares, and everybody, especially the
+Gipsies, thought he was a rich man; but in course of time it came to pass
+that he died, which event revealed the fact that he was not worth
+half-a-crown.  No class of men and women under the sun has been more
+wicked than the Gipsies, and no class has prospered less.  By their evil
+deeds for centuries they have brought themselves under the curse of God
+and the lash of the law wherever they have been.
+
+    “To our foes we leave a shame! disgrace can never die;
+    Their sons shall blush to hear a name still blackened with a lie.”
+
+Their miserable condition, the persecution, misrepresentation, and the
+treatment they are receiving are due entirely to their own
+evil-doing—lying, cheating, robbing, and murder bring their own reward.
+The Gipsies of to-day are drinking the dregs of the cups they had mixed
+for others.  The sly wink of the eye intended to touch the heart of the
+innocent and simple has proved to be the electric spark that has reached
+heaven, and brought down the vengeance of Jehovah upon their heads.  The
+lies proceeding from their bad hearts have turned out to be a swarm of
+wasps settling down upon their own pates; their stolen goods have been
+smitten with God’s wrath; the horses, mules, and donkeys in their
+unlawful possession are steeds upon which the Gipsies are riding to hell;
+and the fortune-telling cards are burning the fingers of the Gipsy women;
+in one word, the curse of God is following them in every footstep on
+account of their present sins, and not on account of their past
+traditions.  Immediately they alter their course of life, and “cease to
+do evil and learn to do well”—no matter whether they are Jews or
+barbarians, bond or free—the blessing of God will follow, and they will
+begin to thrive and prosper.
+
+Smoking and eating tobacco adds another leaden weight to those already
+round their neck, and it helps to bow them down to the ground—a short
+black pipe, the ranker and oftener it has been used the more delicious
+will be the flavour, and the better they will like it.  When their
+“baccy” is getting “run out,” the short pipe is handed round to the
+company of Gipsies squatting upon the ground, without any delicacy of
+feeling, for all of them to “have a pull.”  Spittoons are things they
+never use.  White, scented, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs are not often
+brought into request upon their “lovely faces.”  They prefer allowing the
+bottom of the dresses the honour of appearing before his worship “the
+nose.”  Nothing pleases the Gipsies better than to give them some of the
+weed.  I saw a poor, dying, old Gipsy woman the other day.  Nothing
+seemed to please her so much, although she could scarcely speak, as to
+delight in referring to the sins of her youth, of a kind before referred
+to, and no present was so acceptable to her as “a nounce of baccy.”  She
+said she “would rather have it than gold,” and I “could not have pleased
+her better.”  I doubt whether she lived to smoke it.  I think I am
+speaking within the mark when I state that fully three-fourths of the
+Gipsy women in this country are inveterate smokers.  It is a black,
+burning shame for us to have such a state of things in our midst.  In
+nine cases out of ten the children of drunken, smoking women will turn
+out to be worthless scamps and vagabonds, and a glance at the Gipsies
+will prove my statements.
+
+Eternity will reveal their deeds of darkness—murders, immorality,
+torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor slaves of women,
+beastly and murderous brutality to their poor children.  There is a
+terrible reckoning coming for the “Gipsy man,” who can chuckle to his
+fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who
+can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own
+body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with
+sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow
+can find its way without let or hinderance; who can take upon his knees a
+dog and fondle it in his bosom, and, at the same time, spit in his wife’s
+face with oaths and cursing, and send her out in the snow on a
+piercing-cold winter’s day, half clad and worse fed, with child on her
+back and basket on her arm, to practise the art of double-dyed lying and
+deception on honest, simple people, in order to bring back her ill-gotten
+gains to her semi-clad hovel, on which to fatten her “lord and master,”
+by half-cleaned knuckle-bones, ham-shanks, and pieces of bacon that fall
+from the “rich man’s table.”
+
+The following is a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I
+have visited.  In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab,
+two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped
+against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place.  The
+Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in
+prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type, marked
+with small-pox, and plenty of tongue—by the way, I may say I have not yet
+seen a dumb and deaf Gipsy.  She turned up her dress sleeves and showed
+me how she had “made the blood run out of another Gipsy woman for hitting
+her child.”  As she came near to me exhibiting her fisticuffing powers, I
+might have been a little nervous years ago; but dealing with men and
+things in a rough kind of fashion for so many years has taken some amount
+of nervousness of this kind out of me.
+
+It may be as well to remark here that the Gipsy women can do their share
+of fighting, and are as equally pleased to have a stand-up fight as the
+Gipsy men are.  One of these Gipsy women lives with a man who is not a
+thorough Gipsy, who spends a deal of his time under lock and key on
+account of his poaching inclinations; and other members of this large
+family are on the same kind of sliding scale, and not one of whom can
+read or write.
+
+It is not pleasant to say strong things about clergymen, for whom I have
+the highest respect; nevertheless, there are times when respect for
+Christ’s church, duty to country, love for the children and anxiety for
+their eternal welfare, compels you to step out of the beaten rut to
+expose, though with pain, wrong-doing.  In a day and Sunday school-yard
+connected with the Church of England, not one hundred miles from London,
+there are to be seen—and I am informed by them, except during the
+hop-picking season, that it is their camping-ground, and has been for
+years—one van, in which there are man, wife, young woman, and a daughter
+of about fourteen years of age; the young woman and daughter sleep in a
+kind of box under the man and his wife.  In another part of the yard is a
+Gipsy tent, where God’s broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a
+“batten of straw” serves as a bed.  There is a woman, two daughters, one
+of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a
+youth I should think about sixteen years of age.  I should judge that the
+mother and her two daughters sleep on one bed at one end of the tent and
+the youth at the other; there is no partition between them, and only
+about seven feet of space between each bed of litter.  In another tent
+there is man, wife, and one child.  When I was there, on the Sunday
+afternoon, they were expecting the Gipsy “to come home to his tent drunk
+and wake the baby.”  In another tent there was a Gipsy with his lawful
+wife and three children.  One of the Gipsy women in the yard frequently
+came home drunk, and I have seen her smoking with a black pipe in her
+mouth three parts tipsy.  Now, I ask my countrymen if this is the way to
+either improve the habits and morals of the Gipsies themselves, or to set
+a good example to day and Sunday scholars.  Drunkenness is one of the
+evil associations of Gipsy life.  Brandy and “fourpenny,” or “hell fire,”
+as it is sometimes called, are their chief drinks.  A Gipsy of the name
+of Lee boasted to me only a day or two since that he had been drunk every
+night for more than a fortnight, his language being, “Oh! it is
+delightful to get drunk, tumble into a row, and smash their peepers.
+What care we for the bobbies.”  They seldom if ever use tumblers.  A
+large jug is filled with this stuff, in colour and thickness almost like
+treacle and water, leaving a kind of salty taste behind it as it passes
+out of sight; but, I am sorry to say, not out of the body, mind, or
+brain, leaving a trail upon which is written—more! more! more!  Under its
+influence they either turn saints or demons as will best serve their
+purpose.  The more drink some of the Gipsy women get the more the red
+coloured piety is observable in their faces, and when I have been talking
+to them, or otherwise, they have said, “Amen,” “Bless the Lord,” “Oh, it
+is nice to be ’ligious and Christany,” as they have closed round me; and
+with the same breath they have begun to talk of murder, bloodshed, and
+revenge, and to say, “How nice it is to get a living by telling lies.”
+Half an ounce of tobacco and a few gentle words have a most wonderful
+effect upon their spirits and nerves under such circumstances.  I have
+frequently seen drunken Gipsy women in the streets of London.  Early this
+year I met one of my old Gipsy women friends in Garrett Lane, Wandsworth,
+with evidently more than she could carry, and a weakness was observable
+in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far gone as not to know
+who I was.  She tried to make a curtsy, and in doing so very nearly lost
+her balance, and it took her some ten yards to recover her perpendicular.
+With a little struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and
+pursued her way to the tent.
+
+In December of last year four Gipsies, of Acton Green, were charged
+before the magistrates at Hammersmith with violently assaulting an
+innkeeper for refusing to allow them to go into a private part of his
+house.  A terrible struggle ensued, and a long knife was fetched out of
+their tents, and had they not been stopped the consequences might have
+been fearful.  They were sent to gaol for two months, which would give
+them time for reflection.  A few days ago two Gipsies from the East End
+of London were sent to gaol for thieving, and are now having their turn
+upon the wheel of fortune.
+
+    “Whirl fiery circles, and the moon is full:
+    Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow,
+    And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast;
+    Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns,
+    And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands;
+    Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads.
+    Here serpents dash their stings into my face,
+    All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives
+    His red-hot talons in my burning scalp.
+    Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears
+    Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down
+    Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies
+    Scorch deep like melting minerals.  Murther!  Fire!”
+
+Cries the Gipsy, as he rolls about on his bed of filthy litter, in a tent
+whose only furniture is an old tin bucket pierced with holes, a soap-box,
+and a few rags, with a poor-looking, miserable woman for a wife, and a
+lot of wretched half-starved, half-naked children crying round him for
+bread.  “Give us bread!”  “Give us bread!” is their piteous cry.
+
+The Gipsy in Hungary is a being who has puzzled the wits of the
+inhabitants for centuries, and the habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are
+abominable; their hovels, for they do not all live in tents and
+encampments, are sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is
+nothing but rags, and they live on carrion; and it is in this pitiable
+condition they go singing and dancing to hell.  Nothing gives them more
+pleasure than to be told where a dead pig, horse, or cow may be found,
+and the Gipsies, young and old, will scamper to fetch it; decomposition
+rather sharpens their ravenous appetites; at any rate, they will not
+“turn their noses up” at it in disgust; in fact, Grellmann goes so far as
+to say that human flesh is a dainty morsel, especially that of children.
+What applies to the Hungarian Gipsies will to a large extent apply to the
+Gipsies in Spain, Germany, France, Russia, and our own country.  There is
+no proof of our Gipsies eating children; but if I am to believe their own
+statements, the dead dogs, cats, and pigs that happen to be in their way
+run the risk of being potted for soup, and causing a “smacking of the
+lips” as the heathens sit round their kettle—which answers the purpose of
+a swill-tub when not needed for cooking—as it hangs over the coke fire,
+into which they dip their platters with relish and delight.  What becomes
+of the dead donkeys, mules, ponies, and horses that die during their
+trafficking is best known to themselves.  No longer since than last
+winter I was told by some Gipsies on the outskirts of London that some of
+their fraternity had been seen on more than one occasion picking up dead
+cats out of the streets of London to take home to their dark-eyed
+beauties and lovely damsels.  Only a few days since I was told by a lot
+of Gipsies upon Cherry Island, and in presence of some of the Lees, that
+some of their fraternity, and they mentioned some of their names, had
+often picked up snails, worms, &c., and put them alive into a pan over
+their coke fires, and as the life was being frizzled out of the creeping
+things they picked them out of the pan with their fingers and put them
+into their months without any further ceremony.  I cannot for the life of
+me think that human nature is at such a low ebb among them as to make
+this kind of life general.  At most I should think cases of this kind are
+exceptional.  Their food, whether it be animal or vegetable, is generally
+turned into a kind of dirty-looking, thick liquid, which they think good
+enough to be called soup.  Their principal meal is about five o’clock,
+upon the return of the mother after her hawking and cadging expeditions.
+Their bread, as a rule, is either bought, stolen, or begged.  When they
+bake, which is very seldom, they put their lumps of dough among the red
+embers of their coke fires.  Sometimes they will eat like pigs, till they
+have to loose their garments for more room, and other times they starve
+themselves to fiddle-strings.  A few weeks since, when snow was on the
+ground, I saw in the outskirts of London eight half-starved, poor,
+little, dirty, Gipsy children dining off three potatoes, and drinking the
+potato water as a relish.  They do not always use knife and fork.  Table,
+plates, and dishes are not universal among them.  Their whole kitchen and
+table requirements are an earthen pot, an iron pan, which serves as a
+dish, a knife, and a spoon.  When the meal is ready the whole family sit
+round the pot or pan, and then “fall to it” with their fingers and teeth,
+Adam’s knives and forks, and the ground providing the table and plates.
+Boiled pork is, as a rule, their universal, every-day, central
+pot-boiler, and the longer it is boiled the harder it gets, like the
+Irishman who boiled his egg for an hour to get it soft, and then had to
+give it up as a bad job.  Some of these kind-hearted folks have, on more
+than one occasion, given me “a feed” of it.  It is sweet and nice, but
+awfully satisfying, and I think two meals would last me for a week very
+comfortably; all I should require would be to get a good dinner off their
+knuckle-bones, roll myself up like a hedgehog, doze off like Hubert
+Petalengro into a semi-unconscious state, and I should be all right for
+three or four days.  “Beggars must not be choosers.”  They have done what
+they could to make me comfortable, and for which I have been very
+thankful.  I have had many a cup of tea with them, and hope to do so
+again.
+
+One writer observes:—“Commend me to Gipsy life and hard living.  Robust
+exercise, out-door life, and pleasant companions are sure to beget good
+dispositions both of body and mind, and would create a stomach under the
+very ribs of death capable of digesting a bar of pig-iron.”  Their habits
+of uncleanliness are most disgusting.  Occasionally you will meet with
+clean people, and children with clean, red, chubby faces; but in nine
+cases out of ten they are of parents who have had a different bringing up
+than squatting about in the mud and filth.  One woman I know at Notting
+Hill, and who was born in an Oxfordshire village, is at the present time
+surrounded with filth of the most sickening kind, which she cannot help,
+and to her credit manages to keep her children tolerably clean and nice
+for a woman of her position.  There is another at Garrett Lane,
+Wandsworth; another at Sheepcot Lane, Battersea; two at Upton Park; one
+at Cherry Island; two at Hackney Wick, and several others in various
+parts on the outskirts of London.  At Hackney Wick I saw twenty tents and
+vans, connected with which there were forty men and women and about
+seventy children of all ages, entirely devoid of all sanitary
+arrangements.  A gentleman who was building some property in the
+neighbourhood told me that he had seen grown-up youths and big girls
+running about entirely nude in the morning, and squatting about the
+ground and leaving their filth behind them more like animals than human
+beings endowed with souls and reason.  When I was there it was with some
+difficulty I could put my foot in a clean place.  The same kind of thing
+occurs in a more or less degree wherever Gipsies are located, and, sad to
+relate, house-dwelling Gipsies are very little better in this respect.
+Grellmann, speaking of the German and Hungarian Gipsies many years ago,
+says:—“We may easily account for the colour of their skin.  The
+Laplanders, Samoyeds, as well as the Siberians, have bronze,
+yellow-coloured skins, in consequence of living from their childhood in
+smoke and dirt, as the Gipsies do.  These would long ago have got rid of
+their swarthy complexions if they had discontinued this Gipsy manner of
+living.  Observe only a Gipsy from his birth till he comes to man’s
+estate, and one must be convinced that their colour is not so much owing
+to their descent as to the nastiness of their bodies.  In summer the
+child is exposed to the scorching sun, in winter it is shut up in a smoky
+hut.  Some mothers smear their children over with black ointment, and
+leave them to fry in the sun or near the fire.  They seldom trouble
+themselves about washing or other modes of cleaning themselves.
+Experience also shows us that it is more their manner of life than
+descent which has propagated this black colour of the Gipsies from
+generation to generation.”  I am told, and I verily believe it, that many
+of the children are not washed for years together.  I have seen over and
+over again dirt peeling off the poor children’s bodies and faces like a
+skin, and leaving a kind of white patch behind it, presenting a kind of a
+piebald spectacle.  Some of the children never take their clothes off
+till they drop off in shreds.  Many of the Gipsies, both old and young,
+have only one suit of clothes.  English delicacy of feeling and sentiment
+for female virtue must stand abashed with horror at this kind of
+civilisation in the nineteenth century of Christian England.  I have seen
+washing done on the Sunday afternoon among them, and while the clothes
+have been drying on the line the women and children have been roasting
+themselves before the fires in nearly a nude state.  A Sunday or two ago
+a poor Gipsy woman was washing her only smoky-looking blanket late in the
+afternoon, and upon which she would have to lay that night.  It was a
+cold, wintry, drizzling afternoon, and how it was to get dry was a puzzle
+to me.  A Gipsy woman, named Hearn, said to me a few days ago, in answer
+to some conversation relating to their dirty habits; “The reason for the
+Gipsies not washing themselves oftener was on account of their catching
+cold after each time they washed.”  She “only washed herself once in a
+fortnight, and she was almost sure to catch cold after it.”  In some
+things the real old Gipsies are very particular, _i.e._, they will on no
+account take their food out of cups, saucers, or basins, that have been
+washed in the same pansions in which their linen has been washed; so
+sensitive are they on this point that if they found out that by an
+accident this custom had been transgressed they would immediately break
+the vessel to pieces.  This is a custom picked up by the Gipsies among
+the Jews in their wandering from India through the Holy Land.  Another
+practice they adopt in common with the Jews is, swearing or taking oaths
+over their dead relations.  The customs, practices, and words picked up
+by them during their wanderings have added to their mystification.  While
+they will respect certain delicacy observed among the Jews, they will eat
+pork, the most detestable of all food in the eyes of the Israelites, and
+will even pay a greater price for it than for beef or mutton.  An
+Englishwoman, who had married a Gipsy named Smith, told me very recently,
+in presence of her mother-in-law and another woman, that she had seen her
+husband eat a small plate of cooked snails as a dainty.  While the
+daughter-in-law was telling me this, the old Gipsy mother-in-law, with
+one foot in the grave, not far from Mary’s Place, near the Potteries,
+Notting Hill, was trying to make me believe what a choice dish there was
+in store for me if I would allow her to cook me a hedgehog.  She said I
+should “find it nicer than the finest rabbit or pheasant I had ever
+tasted.”  The fine, old, Gipsy woman, as regards her appearance, although
+suffering from congestion of lungs and inflammation, and expecting every
+moment to be her last, would joke and make fun as if nothing was the
+matter with her.  When I questioned her upon the sin of lying, she said,
+“If the dear Lord spares me, I shall tell lies again.  I could not get on
+without it; how could I?  I could not sell my things without lies.”  She
+was rather severe, and this was a pleasing feature in the old woman’s
+character, upon a Gipsy who was pretending to “’ligious,” and yet living
+upon the money gained by his wife in telling fortunes.  She said, “If I
+must be ‘’ligious,’ I would be ‘’ligious.’  You might,” said the old
+woman, “as well eat the devil as suck his broth.  Ah! I hate the fellow.”
+After asking her, and getting her interpretation of “God bless you” in
+Romany, which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti—and she was the only Gipsy round
+London who could put the words in Romany—and some other conversation
+accompanied with “coppers and baccy,” &c., and to which she replied,
+“Amen!” with as much earnestness as if she was the greatest saint outside
+heaven, we parted.
+
+Much has been said and written years ago about the chastity, fidelity,
+and faithfulness of the Gipsies towards each other.  This may have been
+the case, and in a few exceptional cases it holds good now; but if I am
+to believe these men themselves they are very isolated indeed, and what I
+have said upon this point about the brick-yard _employés_ in my “Cry of
+the Children from the Brick-yards of England,” and also those living in
+canal-boats, in “Our Canal Population,” holds good, but with ten times
+more force concerning the Gipsies.  Immorality abounds to a most alarming
+degree.  Incest, wantonness, lasciviousness, lechery, whoring, bigamy,
+and every other abomination low, degrading, carnal appetites, propensity,
+and lust originate and encourage they practise openly, without the least
+blush; in fact, I question if many of them know what it is to blush at
+all.
+
+I have heard a deal of disgusting, filthy language in my time among
+brick-yard and canal-boat women, but not a tithe so sickening as among
+some Gipsy women.  I pitied them, and to look upon them as charitably as
+possible I set it down to their extreme ignorance of the language they
+used.  A Gipsy at Upton Park last week named D--- gloried to my face in
+the fact that he was not married.  This same man has a brother not far
+from Mitcham Common living with two sisters in an unlawful state.
+Abraham Smith, a Gipsy at Upton Park, who is over seventy, and tells me
+that he is trying to serve God and get to heaven, mentioned a case to me
+of a Gipsy and a woman at Hackney Wick.  The man has several children by
+a woman now living with another man, and the woman has several children
+by another man.
+
+This Gipsy, S---, and his woman S---, turned both lots of their former
+own children adrift upon the wide, wide world, uncared for, unprotected,
+and abandoned, while they are living and indulging in sin to their
+hearts’ content, without the least shame and remorse.  Inquire of whoever
+I may, and look whichever way Providence directs me among the various
+phases of Gipsy life, I find the same black array of facts staring me in
+the face, the same dolorous issues everywhere.  The words reason, honour,
+restraint, and fidelity are words not to be found in their vocabulary.
+My later inquiries fully confirm my previous statements as to two-thirds
+living as husband and wife being unmarried.  I have not found a Gipsy to
+contradict this statement.  Abraham Smith fully agrees with it.
+
+The marriage ceremony of the Gipsies is a very off-hand affair.  Formerly
+there used to be some kind of ceremony performed by a friend.  Now the
+ceremony is not performed by any one.  Of course there are a few who get
+married at the church, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is
+performed by the clergyman gratuitously.  As soon as a boy has arrived in
+his teens he begins to think that something more than eating and drinking
+is necessary to him, and as the children of Gipsies are under no kind of
+parental, moral, or social restraint, a connection is easily formed with
+girls of twelve, some of them of close relationship.  After a few hours,
+in many cases, of courtship, they go together, and the affair so far is
+over.  They leave their parents’ tents and set up one for themselves, and
+for a short time this kind of life lasts.  In course of time children are
+born, the only attendant being, in many instances, another Gipsy woman,
+or it may be members of their own families see to the poor woman in her
+hour of need.  If they have no vessel in which to wash the newly-born
+child, they dig a hole in the ground, which is filled with cold water,
+and the Gipsy babe is washed in it.  This being over, the poor little
+thing is wrapped in some old rags.  This was the custom years ago, and I
+verily believe the Gipsies have gone backwards instead of forwards in
+matters of this kind.
+
+The following brief account of a visit—one of many I have made to Gipsy
+encampments at Hackney Marshes and other places during the present
+winter—will give some faint idea of what Gipsy life is in this country,
+as seen by me during my interviews with the Gipsies.  The morning was
+dark; the snow was falling fast; about six inches of snow and slush were
+upon the ground—my object being in this case, as in others, viz., to
+visit them at inclement seasons of the weather to find as many of the
+Gipsies in their tents as possible, and as I closed my door I said,
+“Lord, direct me,” and off I started, not knowing which way to go.
+Ultimately I found my way to Holborn, and took the ’bus, and, as I
+thought, to Hackney, which turned out to be “a delusion and a snare,” for
+at the terminus I found myself some two and a half miles from the
+Marshes; however, I was not going to turn back if the day was against me,
+and after laying in a stock of sweets for the Gipsy children, and “baccy”
+for the old folks, I commenced my squashy tramp till I arrived at the
+Marshes; the difficulty here was the road leading to the tents being
+covered ankle deep with snow and water, but as my feet were pretty well
+wet I could be no worse off if I paddled through it.  Consequently, after
+these little difficulties were overcome, I found myself in the midst of
+about a score of tents and vans of all sizes and descriptions, connected
+with which there were not less than thirty-five grown-up Gipsies and
+about sixty poor little Gipsies.  The first van I came to was a kind of
+one-horse cart with a cover over it; inside was a strong, hulking-looking
+fellow and a poor, sickly-looking woman with five children.  The woman
+had only been confined a few days, and looked more fit for “the box” than
+to be washing on such a cold, wintry day.  On a bed—at least, some
+rags—were three poor little children, one of whom was sick, which the
+mother tried to prevent by putting her dirty apron to the child’s mouth.
+The large, piercing eyes of this poor, death-looking Gipsy child I shall
+never forget; they have looked into my innermost soul scores of times
+since then, and every time I think about this sight of misery the sickly
+child’s eyes seem to cry out, “Help me!  Help me!”  The poor woman said
+it was the marshes that caused the illness, but my firm opinion is that
+it was neither more nor less than starvation.  The poor woman seemed to
+be given up to despair.  A few questions put to her in the momentary
+absence of the man elicited the fact that she was no Gipsy.  She had been
+brought up as a Sunday-school scholar and teacher, and had been beguiled
+away from her home by this “Gipsy man.”  She said she could tell me a lot
+if I would come some other time.  She also said, “Gipsy life as it is at
+present carried out ought to be put a stop to, and would be if people
+knew all.”  With a few coppers given to her and the children we parted.
+In another tent on the marshes there was a man, woman, and six children.
+The tent was about twelve feet long, six feet six inches wide, and an
+average height of about three feet, making a total of about two hundred
+and thirty-four cubic feet of space for man, wife, and six children.
+These were of both sexes, grown-up and in their teens.  Their bed was
+straw upon the damp ground, and their sheets, rags.  The man was
+half-drunk, and the poor children were running about half-naked and
+half-starved.  The woman had some Gipsy blood in her veins, but the man
+was an Englishman, and had, so he said, been a soldier.  With a few
+coppers and sweets among the children, and in the midst of “Good-byes!”
+and “God bless you’s!” I left them, promising to pay them another visit.
+Out of these twenty families only three were properly married, and only
+two could read and write, and these were the poor woman who had been a
+Sunday-school scholar and the man who had been a soldier, and, strange to
+say, the children of these two people could not read a sentence or tell a
+letter.  No minister ever visited them, and not one ever attended a place
+of worship.  In a visit to an encampment in another part of London I came
+across a poor Irishwoman, who had been allured away from her respectable
+home at the age of sixteen by one of the Gipsy gang.  When I saw her she
+was sitting crying, with two half-starved children by her side, who,
+owing to the coke fire, had bad eyes.  Their home was an old ragged tent,
+and their bed, rotten straw.  When I saw them, and it was about one
+o’clock, they had not tasted food for twenty-four hours.  I sent for a
+loaf for them, and they set to work upon it with as much relish as if
+they had been gnawing at the leg of a Christmas fat turkey.  The poor
+Gipsy woman had been a Sunday-school scholar, and could read and write,
+but neither her husband nor children could tell a letter.  Her taking to
+Gipsy life had broken her father’s heart.  Her eldest child, a fine
+little girl of about seven years of age, had been taken from her by her
+friends, and was being educated and cared for.  A few weeks since the
+little daughter was anxious to see her mother, consequently she was taken
+to her tent; but, sad to relate, instead of the daughter going to kiss
+her mother, as she would expect, she turned away from her with a shudder
+and a shriek, and for the whole day the child did nothing but cry.  It
+would not touch a morsel of anything.  The only pleasant look that came
+upon its countenance was as it was leaving.  As the poor child was
+leaving the tent she would not kiss her mother or say the usual
+“Good-bye” as she went away.  This poor woman, as in the case of the
+woman at Hackney, said she could tell me a lot of things, which she would
+some time, and said, “Gipsy life ought to be put a stop to, for there was
+something about it more than people knew,” and I thoroughly believe what
+this poor woman says.  It is my firm conviction that there is much more
+in connection with Gipsy life than many people imagine, or is dreamt of
+in their philosophy.  There is a substratum of iniquity lower than any
+writers have ever touched.  There are certain things in connection with
+their dark lives, hidden and veiled by their slang language, that may not
+come out in my day, but most surely daylight will be shed upon them some
+day.  They will kill and murder each other, fight and quarrel like
+hyenas, but certain things they will not divulge, and so long as the
+well-being of society is not in danger I suppose we have no right to
+interfere.  A query arises here.  Their past actions back me up in this
+theory.  Upon Mitcham Common last week there were nearly two hundred
+tents and vans.  In one tent, which may be considered a specimen of many
+others, there were two men and their wives, and about twelve children of
+both sexes and of all ages.  In another tent there were nine children of
+both sexes and all ages, some of them men and women, and for the life of
+me I cannot tell how they are all packed when they sleep—I suppose like
+herrings in a box, pell-mell, “all of a heap.”  One of these Gipsy young
+women was a model, and has her time pretty much occupied during the day.
+I have been among house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midland counties, and
+have found twelve to fifteen men, women, and children, squatting about on
+the floor, which they used as a workshop, sitting-room, drawing-room, and
+bed-room; although there was a bed-room up-stairs it was not often
+used—so I was told by the landlady.
+
+There is much more sickness among the Gipsies than is generally known,
+especially among the children.  They have strong faith in herbs; the
+principal being chicken-weed, groundsel, elder leaves, rue, wild sage,
+love-wort, agrimony, buckbean, wood-betony, and others; these they boil
+in a saucepan like they would cabbages, and then drink the decoction.
+They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last extremity.  They are
+very much like the man who tried by degrees to train his donkey to live
+and work without food, and just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and
+so it is with the poor Gipsy children.  It kills them to break them in to
+the hardships of Gipsy life.  Occasionally I have heard of Gipsies who
+act as human beings should do with their children.  A well-to-do Gipsy
+whom I know—one of the Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson—has spent over £30 in
+doctors’ bills this winter for his children’s good.  Not one Gipsy in a
+thousand would do likewise.
+
+Gipsies die like other folk, although before doing so they may have lived
+and quarrelled like the Kilkenny cats among other Gipsies; but at death
+these things are all forgotten, and a Gipsy funeral seems to be the means
+to revive all the good they knew about the person dead and a burying of
+all the bad connected with the dead Gipsy’s life.  I am now referring to
+a few of the better class of Gipsies.  Gipsies, as a rule, pay special
+regard to the wishes of a dying Gipsy, and will sacrifice almost anything
+to carry them out.  I attended the funeral of a house-dwelling Gipsy,
+Mrs. Roberts, at Notting Hill, a few weeks ago.  The editor and
+proprietor of the _Suburban Press_, refers to this funeral in his edition
+under date February 28th, as follows:—“On Monday last a noteworthy event
+took place in the humble locality of the Potteries, Notting Dale.  In
+this district are congregated a miscellaneous population of the poorest
+order, who get what living they can out of the brick-fields or adjoining
+streets and lanes, or by costermongering, tinkering, &c., &c.  They dwell
+together in the poorest and most melancholy-looking cottages, some in
+sheds and outhouses, or in dilapidated vans, for it is the resort and
+_locale_ of many of the Gipsies that wander in the western suburbs.  Yet
+all these make up a kind of community and live together as friends and
+neighbours, and every now and again they show themselves amenable to good
+influences, and characters of humble mark and power arise among them.  To
+those who sympathise with the poet who sings of the
+
+    “‘Short and simple annals of the poor,’
+
+we scarcely know a region that can be studied to greater advantage.  In
+the present instance it was the funeral of an old inhabitant of the Gipsy
+tribe, one of the oldest, most respected, and loved of all the nomads,
+and related in some way to many Gipsy families in London and the
+neighbouring counties.  Abutting from the Walmer Road is a good sized
+court or alley called ‘Mary Place,’ and in a nook of one of the small
+cottages here lived Mrs. Roberts for a number of years, who has been
+described to us by one who long enjoyed her acquaintance as ‘a very
+superior woman, intelligent and happy Christian.’  So that she must
+indeed have shone in that humble and sombre spot as a ‘gem of purest ray
+serene,’ though not exactly as the flower
+
+       “‘Born to blush unseen,
+    And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’
+
+                [Picture: Outside a Christian Gipsy’s van]
+
+For the comprehensive genius of Christian sympathy and labour had found
+her out, and she was known and respected, and her influence was felt by
+all around her.  She lived for years a widow, but with five grown-up,
+strong, and thrifty children—two sons and three daughters and troops of
+friends—to cheer her latter days.  The preliminaries—a service of song
+conducted by Mr. Adams and his sons—were soon over, and the coffin being
+lifted through the window was placed on the strong shoulders which had
+been appointed to convey it to Brompton Cemetery, a distance of some
+three miles.  It was a neat coffin, covered with black cloth, and when
+the pall had been thrown over it affectionate hands placed upon it two or
+three large handsome wreaths of immortals white as snow, and so the
+procession moved off followed by weeping sons, daughters, and friends,
+and a host of sympathising neighbours, to the strains of the ‘Dead March
+in Saul.’  _Requiescat in pace_.  Among those present at this interesting
+ceremony standing next to us, and sharing in part our umbrella, was a
+gentleman whose name and vocation we were not aware until afterwards.  We
+were glad, however, to learn that we were unwittingly conversing with no
+other than Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the philanthropic
+and well-known promoter of the ‘Brick-maker’s’ and ‘Canal Boatman’s’
+Acts, who has specially devoted himself to the improvement of the social
+condition of these too-neglected people.  He is now giving his attention
+to the case of the Gipsies, and specially to the children, to whom he is
+anxious to see extended among other things the provisions of the School
+Board Act.  The great and good work of Mr. Smith has already attracted
+the attention of a number of charitable Christian people, and it has not
+been overlooked by Her Majesty the Queen, who, with her accustomed care
+and kindness, has expressed her special interest therein.”  She was a
+good, Christian woman, and I think I am speaking within bounds when I say
+that there is not one in five hundred like she was.  Before she died she
+wished for two things to be carried out at her funeral—one was that she
+should be carried on Gipsies’ shoulders all the way to Brompton Cemetery,
+a distance of some miles; and the other was that Mr. Adams, a gentleman
+in the neighbourhood, should conduct a service of song just before the
+funeral _cortége_ left the humble domicile; both requests were carried
+out, notwithstanding that it was a pouring wet day.  The service of song
+was very impressive, surrounded as we were by some two hundred Gipsies
+and others of the lowest of the low, living in one of the darkest places
+in London.  Some stood with their mouths open and appeared as if they had
+not heard of the name of Jesus before, and there were others whose
+features betokened strong emotion, and upon whose cheeks could be seen
+the trickling tears as we sung, among others:—
+
+    “Shall we gather at the river,
+    Where bright angels’ feet have trod,
+    With its crystal tide for ever
+    Flowing by the throne of God?
+          Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
+          The beautiful, the beautiful river,
+          That flows by the throne of God.
+
+    “Soon we’ll reach the silvery river,
+    Soon our pilgrimage will cease,
+    Soon our happy hearts will quiver,
+    With the melody of peace.
+          Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
+          The beautiful, the beautiful river,
+          That flows by the throne of God.”
+
+It has frequently been stated that the Gipsies never allow their poor to
+go into the union workhouses; this statement is both erroneous, false,
+and misleading.  Clayton, a Gipsy, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, told me only the
+other day that he knew an old Gipsy woman who was living in the Melton
+Mowbray Union Workhouse at the present time, and mentioned some others
+who had died in the union, a few connected with his own family.  Abraham
+Smith, a respectable and an old Christian Gipsy, mentioned the names of a
+dozen or more Gipsies of his acquaintance who had died in the union
+workhouse, some in the Biggleswade Union, of the name of Shaw.  There was
+a time when there was a little repugnance to the union, but this feeling
+has died out, thus adding another proof that the Gipsies, in many
+respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more ago; and
+this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government interference as
+regards the education of the children.  Abraham Smith also further stated
+that nearly all the old people belonging to one family of S--- had died
+in the workhouse in Bedfordshire.  Another thing has forced itself upon
+my attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor unfortunate
+idiots among them.  I know, for a fact, of one family where there are two
+poor creatures, one of whom is in the asylum, and of another family where
+there is one, and a number in various parts where they are semi-idiotic,
+and only next door to the asylum.  These painful facts will plainly show
+to all Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their
+country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the Gipsies
+to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense manner by those
+at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a position as to help
+themselves to some of the blessings we are in possession of ourselves.
+During all my inquiries, when the Gipsies have not fallen in with all I
+have said with reference to Gipsy life, they have all agreed without
+exception to the plan I have sketched out for the education of their
+children and the registration of their tents, &c.
+
+In the days of Hoyland and Borrow the Gipsies were very anxious for the
+education of their children and struggled hard themselves to bring it
+about.  Sixty years ago one of the Lovells sent three of his children to
+school, at No. 5, George Street, taught by Partak Ivery, and paid
+sixpence per week each with them; but the question of religion came up
+and the children were sent home.  The schoolmaster, Ivery, said that he
+had had six Gipsy children sent to his school, and when placed among the
+other children they were reduceable to order.  It is a standing disgrace
+and a shame to us as a nation professing Christianity that at this time
+we had in our midst ten to fifteen thousand poor little heathen children
+thirsting for knowledge, and no one to hand it to them or put them in the
+way to help themselves.  The sin lays at some one’s door, and I would not
+like to be in their shoes for something.  While this dense ignorance was
+manifest among the poor Gipsy children at our doors we were scattering
+the Bibles all over the world, and sending missionaries by hundreds to
+foreign lands and supporting them by hundreds of thousands of pounds
+gladly subscribed by our hard-working artisans and others.  Not that I am
+finding fault with those who take an interest in foreign missions in the
+least—would to God that more were done for every nation upon the face of
+the globe—but I do think in matters relating to the welfare of the
+children we ought to look more at home.
+
+With reference to missionary effort among the Gipsies, I must confess
+that I am not a strong advocate for a strictly sectarian missionary
+organisation to be formed with headquarters in London, and a paid staff
+of officials, to convert the Gipsies.  If the act is passed upon the
+basis I have laid down, the result will be that in course of time the
+Gipsies will be localised.  I am strongly in favour of all sections of
+Christ’s Church dealing with our floating population, whether upon land
+or water, in their own localities, and in a kind of spirit of holy
+rivalry among themselves, if I may use the term.  For the life of me I
+cannot see why temporary wooden erections, something of the “penny-gaff”
+style, should not be erected upon race-courses, and in the market-places
+during fair time, in which religious services could be held free from all
+sectarian bias, and which could be called the Showman’s or Gipsy’s
+Church.  There are times when a short interesting service could be held
+without coming in collision with the steam whistles of the
+“round-abouts,” “big drums,” reports from the “rifle galleries,” the
+screams and shouts of stall-keepers; and at any rate, I think it would be
+better to have a number of organisations at work rather than one, dealing
+both with our Gipsies and canal-boatmen.  In whatever form missionary
+effort is put forth, it must go further than that of a clergyman, who
+told me one Sunday afternoon last year, after he had been preaching in
+the most fashionable church in Kensington, to the effect that, if any of
+the large number of Gipsies who encamped in his parish in the country,
+and not far from the vicarage, “raised their hats to him as he passed
+them, he returned the compliment.”  Poor stuff this to educate their
+children and to civilise and Christianise their parents.
+
+It is my decided opinion that if the Gipsy children had been taken hold
+of at that day, and placed side by side with the children of other
+working classes, we should not by this time have had a Gipsy wigwam
+flitting about our country; fifty years’ educational influences mean, to
+a great extent, their present and eternal salvation.  A tremendous
+responsibility and sin hangs, and will hang, about the necks of those who
+have in the past, or will in the future, shut the door of the school in
+the face of the poor Gipsy child, and turn it into the streets to perish
+everlastingly.  I am confident the Gipsies will do their part if a simple
+plan for its accomplishment can be set in motion.  Harshness, cruelty,
+and insult, rigid, and extreme measures will do no good with the Gipsies.
+Fiery persecution will only frustrate my object.  God knows, they are bad
+enough, and I have no wish to mince matters, or to paint them white, as
+fiction has done.  I have tried—how far I have succeeded it is not for me
+to say—to expose the evils, and not individuals, thoroughly, in
+accordance with my duty to my God, my country, and my conscience, without
+partiality, bias, or fear, be the consequences what they may.  To write a
+book full of glowing colour, pictures, fancies, imagination, and fiction,
+is both more profitable and pleasant.  The waft of a scented
+pocket-handkerchief across one’s face by the hand of a fair and lovely
+damsel is only as a fleeting shadow and a passing vapour; they quickly
+come and they quickly go, leaving no footstep behind them; a shooting
+star and a flitting comet, and all is in darkness blacker than ever.
+Somehow or other the Gipsies will, if possible, encamp near a school, but
+they lack the power to enter, and some of them, no doubt, could send
+their children to school for a few days occasionally; but the Gipsies
+have got it in their heads that their children are not wanted, and this
+is the case with the show people’s children.  Last autumn I saw myself an
+encampment of Gipsies upon Turnham Green; there were about thirty Gipsy
+children playing upon the school-fence, not one of whom could either read
+or write.  The school was only half full, and the teacher was looking
+very pleasantly out of the door of the school upon the poor, ignorant
+children as they were rolling about in the mud.  In another part of
+London a Gipsy owns some cottages, with some spare land between each
+cottage; upon this land there is her own van and a number of other vans
+and tents, for which standing ground they pay the Gipsy woman a rent of
+one shilling and sixpence per week each.  Neither herself nor any of the
+Gipsies connected with the encampment could tell a letter, and there were
+some sixty to seventy men, women, and children of all ages; and the
+strange part of the thing is, the Gipsy woman’s tenants in her cottages
+were compelled by the School Board officer to send their children to
+school, while the Gipsy children were running wild like colts, and
+revelling in dirt and filth in the neighbourhood.  A similar state of
+things to this exists in a more or less degree with all the other
+encampments on the outskirts of London.  At one of the large encampments
+I tried to find if there were really any who could read and write, and to
+put this to the test I took the _Christian World_ and the _Christian
+Globe_ with me.  The Gipsy lad who they said was “a clever scholard” was
+brought to me, and I put the _Christian World_ before him to see if he
+could read the large letters; sad to say, instead of _Christian World_,
+he called it “Christmas,” and there he stuck and could get no further.  I
+have said some strong things, and endeavoured to lay bare some hard facts
+relating to Gipsy life in the preceding part of this book, with a view to
+enlist help and sympathy for the poor children, and not to submit the
+Gipsy fathers to insult and ridicule.
+
+ [Picture: Four little Gipsies sitting for the Artist outside their tent,
+      dressed for the occasion, and who can neither read nor write]
+
+From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the mother is often
+necessitated to leave her tent in the morning, and seldom returns to it
+before night.  Their children are then left in or about their solitary
+camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children then have
+the care of the younger ones.  Those who are old enough gather wood for
+fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime.  By the culpable neglect of the
+parents in this respect the children are often exposed to accidents by
+fire, and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to
+death are not unfrequent.  One poor woman relates that two of her
+children have thus lost their lives by fire during her absence from her
+tent at different periods, and some years ago a child was scalded to
+death at Southampton.
+
+The following account will faintly show something of the hardships of
+Gipsy children’s lives:—It was winter, and the weather was unusually
+cold, there being much snow on the ground.  The tent, which was only
+covered with a ragged blanket, was pitched on the lee side of a small
+hawthorn bush.  The children had stolen a few green sticks from the
+hedges, but they would not burn.  There was no straw in the tent, and
+only one blanket to lay betwixt six children and the frozen ground, with
+nothing to cover them.  The youngest of these children was three and the
+eldest seventeen years old.  In addition to this wretchedness the smaller
+children were nearly naked.  The youngest was squatted on the ground, her
+little feet and legs bare, and gnawing a frozen turnip which had been
+stolen from an adjoining field.  None of them had tasted bread for more
+than a day.  The moment they saw their visitor, the little ones
+repeatedly shouted, “Here is the gemman come for us!”  Some money was
+given to the eldest sister to buy bread with, at which their joy was
+greatly increased.  Straw was also provided for them to sleep on, four
+were measured for clothes, and after a few days they were placed under
+proper care.  The youngest child died, however, a short time after in
+consequence of having been so neglected in infancy.
+
+During last June a Gipsy woman, of the name of Bishop, was found in one
+of the tents, on a common just outside London, with her throat cut and
+her child lying dead by her side in a pool of blood, and the man with
+whom she cohabited—true to his Gipsy character—refused to answer any
+questions concerning this horrible affair.  An impression has gone the
+round for years that the Gipsies are exceedingly kind and affectionate to
+their children, in some instances it, no doubt, is true, but they are
+rare indeed if I may judge from appearances.  I have yet to learn that
+starvation, allowing their children to grow up infinitely worse than
+barbarians, subjecting them to fearful oaths and curses, and inflicting
+upon the poor children blows with sticks, used with murderous passion, to
+within an inch of their lives, exhibits much of the lamb-like spirit,
+dove-like innocence, and childish simplicity fiction would picture to our
+minds concerning these English barbarians as they camp on the mossy banks
+on a hot summer day.  In the presence of myself and a friend one of these
+lawless fellows very recently hurled a log of wood at a poor Gipsy
+child’s head for an offence which we could not learn, farther than it was
+for a trifling affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child’s head, or
+death must have been the result.  In visiting an encampment last autumn I
+came across six Gipsy children having their dinner off three small boiled
+turnips, and drinking the water as broth; the eldest girl, although
+dressed in rags, was going to sit the same afternoon for a leading artist
+upon a throne as a Spanish queen.  In another part of London—Mary Place—I
+found a family of Gipsies living under sticks and rags in the most
+filthy, sickening, and disgusting backyard I have ever been into—to such
+an extent was the stench that immediately I came out of it I had to get a
+little brandy or I should have fainted—the eldest girl of whom had her
+time pretty fully taken up by sitting as an artist’s model in the costume
+of a peasant girl, sometimes gathering buttercups and daisies, at other
+times gathering roses and making button-holes for gentlemen’s coats and
+placing them there with gentle hands and a smiling face; occasionally she
+would be painted as a country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture; at
+other times as a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and gambolling
+with children.  What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to silks and
+satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a palace; from turnips
+and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits; from beds of rotten straw to
+crimson and gold-covered chairs; from trampling among dead cats to a
+carpet composed of wild flowers; from “Get out you wretch and fetch some
+money, no matter how,” to “Come here, my dear, is there anything I can do
+for you?” from the stench of a cesspool to the fragrance of the
+honeysuckle and sweetbriar, in one word, from hell to heaven all in an
+hour—such is one side of Gipsy life among the little Gipsies, not one of
+whom can read a sentence or write one word, and it is in this way Gipsy
+girls are found exposing their bodies to keep their big, healthy brothers
+and fathers at home in idleness and sin.  Two such Gipsy girls have come
+under my own notice, and no doubt there are scores of similar cases.
+Gipsy children are fond of a great degree of heat, and sometimes lie so
+near to the coke fires as to be in danger of burning.  I have seen them
+with their faces as red as if they were upon the point of being roasted,
+and yet they can bear to travel in the severest cold bare-headed, with no
+other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over them.  The cause
+of their bodily qualities, at least some of them, arises from their
+education and hardy manner of life.  Formerly the Gipsies, when there was
+less English blood in their veins, could stand the extreme changes and
+hardships of the English climate much better than now.  An Englishman,
+notwithstanding the fact that he has let go all moral and social respect
+and restraint over his conduct and joined the Gipsies, does not, and
+cannot, thrive and look well under their manner of living, and this I see
+more and more every day.  I have been struck very forcibly lately in
+visiting some of the hordes of Gipsies with the vast number of children
+the Gipsies bring into the world and the few that are reared.  At one
+encampment there were forty men and women and only about the same number
+of children to be seen.  At another encampment I found double the
+quantity of children to adult Gipsies.
+
+    [Picture: A top bedroom in a Gipsy’s van for man, wife, and three
+          children, the sons and daughters sleeping underneath]
+
+No one can deny the fact that some of the children look well, but, on the
+other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of this, pictures of
+starvation, neglect, bad blood, and cruelty.  An Englishman is born for a
+nobler purpose than to lead a vagabond’s life and end his days in
+scratching among filth and vermin in a Gipsy’s wigwam, consequently, upon
+those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the sin
+attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep they take.  I
+don’t lay at the door of their wigwam the sin of child-stealing, but this
+I have seen, _i.e._, many strange-looking children in their tents without
+the least shadow of a similarity to the adults in either habits,
+appearance, manner, or conversation.  Some of the poor things seemed shy
+and reserved, and quite out of their element.  Sometimes the thought has
+occurred to me that they were the children of sin, and put out of the way
+to escape shame being painted upon the back of their parents.  Sometimes
+my pity for the poor things has led me to put a question or two bearing
+upon the subject to the Gipsies, and the answer has been, “The poor
+things have lost their father and mother.”  When I have asked if the
+fathers and mothers were Gipsies a little hesitation was manifested, and
+the subject dropped with no satisfactory answer to my mind.  I have my
+own idea about the matter.
+
+The hardships the women have to undergo are most heartrending.  The
+mother, in order to procure a morsel of food, takes her three months’ old
+child either in her arms or on her back, and wanders the streets or lanes
+in foul or fair weather—in heat or cold.  Some of them have told me that
+they walk on an average over twelves miles a day.  They are the
+bread-winners.  I have seen them on their return to their wigwams, in the
+depth of winter, with six inches of snow on the ground, and scantily
+clad, and with six little children crying round them for bread.  No fire
+in the tent, and her husband idling about in other tents.  In cases of
+confinements, the men have to do something, or they would all starve.
+For a few days they wake up out of their idle dreams.  I know of Gipsy
+women who have trudged along with their loads, and their children at
+their heels, to within the last five minutes of their confinement.  The
+children were literally born under the hedge bottom, and without any tent
+or protection whatever.  A Gipsy woman told me a week or two since that
+her mother had told her that she was born under the hedge bottom in
+Bagworth Lane, in Leicestershire.  When I questioned her on the subject,
+she rather gloried in the fact that they had not time to stick the
+tent-sticks into the ground.  This kind of disgraceful procedure is not
+far removed from that of animals.  I should think that I am speaking
+within compass when I state that two-thirds of the Gipsies travelling
+about the country have been born under what they call the “hedge bottom,”
+_i.e._, in tents and like places.  The Gipsy women use no cradles; the
+child, as a rule, sleeps on the ground.  When a boy attains three years
+of age, so says Hoyland, the rags he was wrapped in are thrown on one
+side, and he is equally exposed with the parents to the severest weather.
+He is then put to trial to see how far his legs will carry him.  Clayton
+told me that when he was a boy of about twelve, his father sent him into
+the town and among the villages—with no other covering upon him only a
+piece of an old shirt—to bring either bread or money home, no matter how.
+
+Among some of the State projects put forth in Hungary more than a century
+since to improve the condition of the Gipsies, the following may be
+mentioned: (1) They were prohibited from dwelling in huts and tents, from
+wandering up and down the country, from dealing in horses, from eating
+animals which died of themselves and carrion.  (2) They were to be called
+New Boors instead of Gipsies, and they were not to converse in any other
+language but that of any of the countries in which they chose to reside.
+(3) After some months from the passing of the Act, they were to quit
+their Gipsy manner of life and settle, like the other inhabitants, in
+cities or villages, and to provide themselves with suitable and proper
+clothing.  (4) No Gipsy was allowed to marry who could not prove himself
+in a condition to provide for and maintain a wife and children.  (5) That
+from such Gipsies who were married and had families, the children should
+be taken away by force, removed from their parents, relations, or
+intercourse with the Gipsy race, and to have a better education given to
+them.  At Fahlendorf, in Schütt, and in the district of Prassburg, all
+the children of the New Boors (Gipsies) above five years old were carried
+away in waggons on the night of the twenty-first of December, 1773, by
+overseers appointed for that purpose, in order, that, at a distance from
+their parents or relations, they might be more usefully educated and sent
+to work.  (6) They were to be taught the principles of religion, and
+their children educated.  Their children were prohibited running about
+their houses, streets, or roads naked, and they were not to be allowed to
+sleep promiscuously by each other without distinction of sex.  (7) They
+were enjoined to attend church regularly, and to give proof of their
+Christian disposition, and they were not to wear large cloaks, which were
+chiefly used to hide the things they had stolen.  (8) They were to be
+kept to agriculture, and were only to be permitted to amuse themselves
+with music when their day’s work was finished.  (9) The magistrates at
+every place were to be very attentive to see that no Gipsy wasted his
+time in idleness, and whoever was remiss in his work was to be liable to
+corporal punishment.
+
+All these suggestions and plans of operation may not suit English life;
+be that as it may, they were suitable to the condition of the Hungarian
+Gipsies, and no doubt laid the foundation for the improvement that has
+taken place among them.  The Hungarian Gipsies are educated, and are
+tillers of the soil.  If a plan similar in some respects had been carried
+out with our Gipsies at the same period, we should not by this time have
+had a Gipsy-tent in the country, or an uneducated Gipsy in our land.
+What a different aspect would have presented itself ere this, if the
+5,000 Gipsies among us had been tilling our waste lands and commons for
+the last century.  With proper management, these 5,000 Gipsy men could
+have bought and kept under cultivation some 20,000 acres of land for the
+well-being of themselves and for the good of the country.  There is
+neglect, indifference, and apathy somewhere.  The blame will lay heavily
+upon some one when the accounts are made up.
+
+It is appalling and humiliating to think that we, as a Christian nation,
+should have had in our midst for more than three centuries 15,000 to
+20,000 poor ignorant Asiatic heathens, naturally sharp and clever, and
+next to nothing being done to reclaim them from their worse than midnight
+darkness.  A heavy sin and responsibility lays at our doors.  Take away
+John Bunyan, a few of the Smiths, Palmers, Lovells, Lees, Hearns,
+Coopers, Simpsons, Boswells, Eastwoods, Careys, Roberts, &c., and what do
+we find?—a black army of human beings who have done next to
+nothing—comparatively speaking—for the country’s good.  They have cadged
+at our doors, lived on our commons, worn our roads, been fed from our
+tables, sent their paupers to our workhouses, their idiots to our
+asylums, and not contributed one farthing to their maintenance and
+support.  Rates and taxes are unknown to them.  There is only one
+instance of them paying rates for their vans, and that is at Blackpool.
+
+It is a black, burning shame and disgrace to see herds of healthy-looking
+girls and great strapping youths growing up in ignorance and idleness,
+not so much as exerting themselves to wash the filth off their bodies or
+make anything better than skewers.  Their highest ambition is to learn
+slang, roll in the ditch, spread small-pox and fevers, threaten
+vengeance, and carry out revenge upon those who attempt to frustrate
+their evil designs.  Excepting skewers, clothes-pegs, and a few other
+little things of this kind, they have not manufactured anything; the
+highest state of perfection they have arrived at is to be able to make
+and tie up a bundle of skewers, split a clothes-peg, tinker a kettle,
+mend a chair, see-saw on an old fiddle, rap their knuckles on a
+tambourine, clatter about with their feet, tickle the guitar, and make a
+squeaking noise through their teeth, that fiction and romance call
+singing.  The most that can be said in their favour is, that a few of
+them have become respectable Christians and hard-working men and women,
+and have done something for the country’s good—and whose fault is it that
+there are not more?  They have been the agents of hell, working out
+Satan’s designs, and we have stood by laughing and admiring their
+so-called pretty faces, scarlet cloaks, and “witching eyes.”  For the
+life of me I can find no more bewitching beauty among them than can be
+found in our back slums any day, circumstances considered—and where does
+the blame lay?—upon our own shoulders for not paying more attention to
+the education and welfare of their children.  It is truly horrible to
+think that we have had 15,000 to 20,000 young and old Gipsies at work,
+carrying out the designs of the infernal regions at the tip end of the
+roots of our national life, vigour, and Christianity.
+
+Only the other day the country was much shocked, and rightly so, at a
+hundred poor Russian emigrants landing upon our shores; and yet we have
+two hundred times this quantity of Gipsies among us, and we quietly stand
+by and take no notice of their wretched condition.  The time will come,
+and that speedily, when we shall have the scales taken off our eyes, and
+the thin, flimsy veil of romance torn to shreds.  Sitting by and admiring
+their “pretty faces” and “witching eyes” will not save their souls,
+educate their children, or put them in the way of earning an honest
+livelihood.  It is not pity—whining, sycophantic pity—alone that will do
+them good.  The Rev. Mr. Cobbin’s Gipsy’s petition, written fifty years
+ago,
+
+    “Oh! ye who have tasted of mercy and love,
+       And shared in the blessings of pardoning grace,
+    Let us the kind fruits of your tenderness prove,
+       And pity, oh! pity, the poor Gipsy race.”
+
+has been little better than beating the air, and it may be repeated a
+thousand times, but if nothing further is done more than “pity,” the
+Gipsies will be worse off in fifty years hence than they are now, nor
+will presenting to them bread, cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a
+dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb did half a century ago, render them permanent
+help.  We must do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a
+little fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for
+themselves.  Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to use their own
+wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers are the agencies to do
+it.  The men are clever and can get money sufficient to keep their
+families comfortable even at skewer-making and chair-mending, &c., if
+they will only work.  All the police-officer must do will be to take
+charge of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle
+for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments.  The State has
+taken in hand a more dangerous class—perhaps the most dangerous—in India,
+viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest industry
+with most encouraging results.  Before the Government tackled them, they
+were idling, loafing, rambling, and robbing all over the country, alike
+to our Gipsies; now they have settled down and become useful and good
+citizens.  In Norway the Gipsies are put into prison, and there kept till
+they have learnt to read and write.  In Hungary the Government has
+appointed a special Minister to look after them, and see that they are
+being properly educated and brought up.  In Russia, the laws passed for
+their imprisonment has had the effect of causing them, to a great extent,
+to settle down to useful trades, and they are forming themselves into
+colonies.  And so, in like manner, in Spain, Germany, France, and other
+European countries, steps have been taken to bring about an improvement
+among them.  In these countries nearly the whole of the Gipsies can read
+and write; and we, of all others, who ought to have set the example a
+century ago in the way of educating the Gipsy children, have stood by
+with folded arms, and let them drift into ruin.  I claim it to be our
+duty—and it will be to our shame if we do not—to see to the welfare of
+the Gipsy children for four reasons.  First, that they are Indians, and
+under the rule of our noble Queen; second, that they are in our midst,
+and ought to take their share of the blessings, duties, and
+responsibilities pertaining to the rest of the community; third, that as
+a Christian nation, professing to lead the van and to set forth the
+blessings of Christianity and civilisation; and, fourth, their universal
+desire for the education of their children, and to contribute their
+quota, however small, to the country’s good, and for the eternal welfare
+of their own children; and I do not think that there will be any
+objection on their part to it being brought about on the plan I have
+briefly sketched out.
+
+I fancy I can hear some of the artists who have been delighted with Gipsy
+models—the novelists who have hung many a tale upon the skirts of their
+garments—the dramatists who have trotted them before the curtain to
+please the public, and some old-fashioned croakers, who delight in
+allowing things to be as they have always been—the same yesterday,
+to-day, and for ever—saying, “let everybody look after their own
+children;” and then, in a plaintive tone, singing—
+
+    “Woodman, spare that tree!
+       Touch not a single bough;
+    In youth it sheltered me,
+       And I’ll protect it now.”
+
+First,—I would have all movable or temporary habitations, used as
+dwellings, registered, numbered, and the name and address of the owner or
+occupier painted in a prominent place on the outside, _i.e._, on all
+tents, Gipsy vans, auctioneers’ vans, showmen’s vans, and like places,
+and under proper sanitary arrangements in a manner analogous to the Canal
+Boats Act of 1877.
+
+Second,—Not less than one hundred cubic feet of space for each female
+above the age of twelve, and each male above the age of fourteen; and not
+less than fifty cubic feet of space for each female young person under
+the age of twelve, and for each male under the age of fourteen.
+
+Third,—No male above the age of fourteen, and no female above the age of
+twelve, should be allowed to sleep in the same tent or van as man and
+wife, unless separate sleeping accommodation be provided for each male of
+the age of fourteen, and for each female of the age of twelve; and also
+with proper regard for partitions and suitable ventilation.
+
+Fourth,—A registration certificate to be obtained, renewable at any of
+the offices of the Urban or Rural sanitary authorities throughout the
+country, for which the owner or occupier of the tent or van should pay
+the sum of ten shillings annually, commencing on the first of January in
+each year.
+
+Fifth,—The compulsory attendance at school of all travelling children, or
+others living in temporary or unrateable dwellings, up to the age
+required by the Elementary Education Acts, which attendance should be
+facilitated and brought about by means of a school pass-book, in which
+the children’s names, ages, and grade could be entered, and which
+pass-book could be made applicable to children living and working on
+canal-boats, and also to other wandering children.  The pass-book to be
+easily procurable at any bookseller’s for the sum of one shilling.
+
+Sixth,—The travelling children should be at liberty to go to either
+National, British, Board, or other schools, under the management of a
+properly-qualified schoolmaster, and which schoolmaster should sign the
+children’s pass-book, showing the number of times the children had
+attended school during their temporary stay.
+
+Seventh,—The cost for the education of these wandering children should be
+paid by the guardians of the poor out of the poor rates, a proper account
+being kept by the schoolmaster and delivered to the parochial authorities
+quarterly.
+
+Eighth,—Power to be given to any properly-qualified sanitary officer,
+School Board visitor or inspector, to enter the tents, vans, canal-boats,
+or other movable or temporary habitations, at any time or in any place,
+and detain, if necessary, for the purpose of seeing that the law was
+being properly carried out; and any one obstructing such officer in his
+duty, and not carrying out the law, to be subject to a fine or
+imprisonment for each offence.
+
+Ninth,—It would be well if arrangements could be made with lords of
+manors, the Government, or others who are owners of waste lands, to grant
+those Gipsies who are without vans, and living in tents only, prior to
+the act coming into force, a long lease at a nominal rent of, say, half
+an acre or an acre of land, for ninety-nine years, on purpose to
+encourage them to settle down to the cultivation of it, and to take to
+honest industry—as many of them are prepared to do.  By this means a
+number of the Gipsies would collect together on the marshes and commons,
+and no doubt other useful and profitable occupation would be the outcome
+of the Gipsies being thus localised, and in which their children could
+and would take an important part; and in addition to these things the
+social and educational advantages to be reaped by following such a course
+would be many.
+
+I have not the least doubt in my mind but that if a law be passed
+embodying these brief, but rough, suggestions, on the one hand, and steps
+are taken to encourage them to settle down, in accordance with the idea
+thrown out in clause nine, on the other, we shall not have in fifty years
+hence an uneducated Gipsy in our midst.  Many of the Gipsies are anxious,
+I know, for some steps to be taken for the children to be brought up to
+work.  The operation of the present Hawkers’ and Pedlars’ Act is acting
+very detrimental to the interests of the Gipsy children, as none are
+allowed to carry a licence under the age of sixteen, consequently all
+Gipsy children, except a few who assist in making pegs and skewers, are
+neither going to school nor yet are they learning a trade or in fact work
+of any kind; they are simply living in idleness, and under the influence
+of evil training that carries mischief underneath the surface.
+
+It is truly appalling to think that over seven hundred thousand sharp,
+clever, well-formed human beings, and with plenty of muscular power,
+have, as I have said before, been roaming about Europe for many centuries
+with no object before them, and accomplishing nothing.  Something like
+ten millions of Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the
+other world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they
+done? what work have they accomplished?  Alas! alas! worse than a cipher
+might be written against them.  They have lived in the midst of beauty,
+songsters, romance, and fiction, and they have been surrounded by
+everything that would help to call forth natural energy, mechanical
+skill, and ability, but they have been in some senses like children
+playing in the street gutters.  They have the elements of success within
+them, but no one has taken them by the hand to put them upon the first
+step, at any rate, so far as England is concerned.  It is grievous to
+think that not one of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way
+of all flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any poetry,
+worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much note—at least, I
+can only hear of one or two.  They have fine voices as a rule, and except
+some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from their
+midst.  No engineer, no mechanic—in fact, no nothing.  The highest state
+of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for the
+feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat, for
+which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other
+people’s linen, some tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a
+little light smith work, and a few have made a little money by
+horse-dealing.  There are others clever at “making shifts” and roadside
+tents, and will put up with almost anything rather than put forth much
+energy.  Since the Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred
+and fifty thousand have been born, principally, as they say, “under the
+hedge bottom,” lived, and died.  They are gone “and their works do follow
+them.”  Their present degraded condition in this country may be laid upon
+our backs.
+
+This book, with its many faults and few virtues, is my own as in the case
+of my others, and all may be laid upon my back; and my object in saying
+hard and unpalatable things about the poor, ignorant Gipsy wanderers in
+our midst is not to expose them to ridicule, or to cause the finger of
+scorn to be pointed at them or to any one connected with them, but to try
+to influence the hearts of my countrymen to extend the hand of practical
+sympathy, and help to rescue the poor Gipsy children from dropping into
+the vortex of ruin, as so many thousands have done before.  It is not
+unlikely but that I shall, in saying plain things about the Gipsies,
+expose myself to some inconvenience, misrepresentation, malice, and spite
+from those who would keep the Gipsies in ignorance, and also from shadow
+philanthropists, who are always on the look out for other people’s
+brains; but these things, so long as God gives me strength, will not
+deter me from doing what I consider to be right in the interest of the
+children, so long as I can see the finger of Providence pointing the way,
+and it is to Him I must look for the reward, “Well done,” which will more
+than repay me for all the inconvenience I have undergone, or may have
+still to undergo, in the cause of the “little ones.”  That man is no real
+friend to the Gipsies who seeks to improve them by flattery and
+deception.  A Gipsy, with all his faults, likes to be dealt fairly and
+openly with—a little praise but no flattery suits him.  They can practise
+cunning, but they do not care to have any one practising it upon them.
+
+I dare not be sanguine enough to hope that I shall be successful, but I
+have tried thus far to show, first, the past and present condition of the
+Gipsies; second, the little we, as a nation, have done to reclaim them;
+and, third, what we ought to do to improve them in the future, so as to
+remove the stigma from our shoulders of having 20,000 to 30,000 Gipsies,
+show people, and others living in vans, &c., in our midst, fast drifting
+into heathenism and barbarism, not five per cent. of whom can read and
+write, at least, so far as the Gipsies are concerned; and those children
+travelling with “gingerbread” stalls, rifle galleries, and auctioneers
+are but little better, for all the parents tell me their children lose in
+the summer what little they learn at school in the winter, for the want
+of means being adopted whereby their children could go to school during
+the daytime as they are travelling through the country with their wares,
+_i.e._, at their halting-places.
+
+In bringing this book to a close, I would say, in the name of all that is
+just, fair, honourable, and reasonable, in the name of science, religion,
+philosophy, and humanity, and in the name of all that is Christ-like,
+God-like, and heavenly, I ask, nay I claim, the attention of our noble
+Queen—whose deep interest in the children of the labouring population is
+unbounded—statesmen, Christians, and my countrymen to the condition of
+the Gipsies and their children, whose condition is herein feebly
+described, and whose cause I have ventured to take in hand, praying them
+to adopt measures and to pass such laws that will wipe out the disgrace
+of having so many thousands of poor, ignorant, uneducated, wretched, and
+lost Gipsy children in our midst, who cannot read and write, on the
+following grounds—
+
+First.  Their Indian origin, which I venture to think has been
+satisfactorily proved, and over which country our Queen is the Empress;
+consequently, our Gipsies ought and have as much need to be taken in hand
+and their condition improved by the State as the Thugs in India have
+been, with such beneficial results, a class similar in many respects to
+our Gipsies.
+
+Second.  As the Government in 1877 passed an act, called “The Canal Boats
+Act,” dealing pretty much with the same class of people as the Gipsies
+and other travelling children, they ought, in all fairness, to extend the
+principle to those living in tents and vans.
+
+Third.  As small-pox, fevers, and other infectious diseases are at times
+very prevalent among them—a medical officer being called in only under
+the rarest occasion—and as the tents and vans are not under any sanitary
+arrangements, there is, therefore, urgent need for some sort of sanitary
+supervision and control to be exercised over their wretched habitations
+to prevent the spread of disease in such a stealthy manner.
+
+Fourth.  As the Government took steps some three centuries ago to class
+the Gipsies as rogues and vagabonds, but took no steps at the same time
+to improve their condition or even to encourage them to get upon the
+right paths for leading an honourable and industrious life, the time has
+now come, I think, both in justice and equity, for the Government to
+adopt some means to catch the young hedge-bottom “Bob Rats,” and to deal
+out to them measures that will Christianise and civilise them to such an
+extent that the Gipsies will not in the future be deserving of the
+epithets passed upon them by the Government for their sins of omission
+and commission.
+
+Fifth.  By passing an Act of Parliament, as I suggest, or amending the
+Canal Boats Act, in accordance with the plan I have laid down, and
+embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete
+the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws
+the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the
+cold, to grope about in the dark as their inclinations might lead them.
+
+Sixth.  The families who are seeking a living as hawkers, show people,
+&c., apart from the Gipsies, are on the increase.  By travelling up and
+down the country in this way they not only escape rates and taxes, but
+their children are going without education, as no provision is made in
+the education acts to meet cases of this kind.  By bringing the Gipsy
+children under the influence of the schoolmaster our law-makers will be
+adding the last stroke to the system of compulsory education introduced
+and carried into law through its first difficult and intricate phases by
+the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P., when he was at the head of the
+Education Department under the Liberal Government, and through its second
+stages by the Right Hon. Lord Sandon, M.P., when he was at the head of
+the Education Department under the Conservative Government.
+
+Seventh.  There is an universal desire among people of the classes I have
+before referred to for the education of their children, in fact, I have
+not met with one exception during my inquiries, and the Gipsies will be
+glad to make some sacrifices to carry it out if the Government will do
+their part in the matter.
+
+Eighth.  The Gipsies and other travellers of the same kind use our roads,
+locate on our commons, live in our lanes, and send their poor, halt,
+maimed, and blind to our workhouses, infirmaries, and asylums, towards
+the support of which they do not contribute one farthing.
+
+Ninth.  As a Christian nation professing to send the Gospel all over the
+world, to preach glad tidings, peace upon earth and good-will towards men
+everywhere, to take steps for the conversion of the Gipsies in India, the
+African, the Chinese, the South Sea Islander, the Turk, the black, the
+white, the bond, the free, in fact everywhere where an Englishman goes
+the Gospel is supposed to go too, and yet—and it is with sadness, sorrow,
+and shame I relate it—we have had on an average during the last three
+hundred and sixty-five years not less than 15,000 Gipsies moving among
+us, and not less than 150,000 have died and been buried, either under
+water, in the ditches, or on the roadside, on the commons, or in the
+cemeteries or churchyards, and we, as Christians of Christian England,
+have not spent 150,000 pence to reclaim the adult Gipsies, or to educate
+their children.
+
+Tenth.  As a civilised country we are supposed to lead the van in
+civilising the world by passing the most humane, righteous, just, and
+liberal laws, carrying them out on the plan of tempering justice with
+mercy; but in matters concerning the interests and welfare of the Gipsies
+we are, as I have shown previously, a long way in the rear.  We have
+passed laws to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer’s
+child, children working in mines, children working in factories,
+performing boys, climbing boys, children working in brick-yards, children
+working and living on canal-boats, and a thousand others; but we have
+done nothing for the poor Gipsy child or its home.  In things pertaining
+to their present and eternal welfare they have asked for bread and we
+have given them a stone; and they have asked for fish and we have given
+them a serpent.  We have allowed them to wander and lose themselves in
+the dark wilds of sin and iniquity without shedding upon their path the
+light of Gospel truths or the blessings of education; and to-day the
+Gipsy children are dying, where thousands have died before, among the
+brambles and in the thicket of bad example, ignorance, and evil training,
+into which we have allowed them to stray blinded by the evil associations
+of Gipsy life.
+
+    “An aged woman walks along,
+    Her piercing scream is on the air,
+    Her head and streaming locks are bare,
+    She sadly sobs ‘My child, my child!’”
+
+A faint voice is heard in the distance calling out—
+
+    “My dying daughter, where art thou?
+    Call on our gods and they shall come.”
+
+                             “So mote it be.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+       London: Printed by HAUGHTON & CO., 10, Paternoster Row, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+WORKS PUBLISHED
+BY
+HAUGHTON & CO.,
+10, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Just Published_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_.
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF GEORGE SMITH,
+OF COALVILLE.
+
+
+“The name of George Smith, of Coalville, is familiar as household words,
+and the unpretending memoir just published by Messrs. Haughton & Co. of
+him, to whose deep sympathy and ceaseless effort the populations of our
+brick-yards and canals owe so much, will be read with interest by
+all.”—_The Graphic_.
+
+“Readers of Mr. Smith’s letters in numerous papers, and of his
+descriptive articles in the _Illustrated London News_, _Graphic_, and
+other journals and magazines, will be glad to possess this little work,
+which tells the story of his career in a brief but interesting manner.
+The book is elegantly printed on good paper, and is embellished with an
+excellent portrait and with an engraving of Mr. Smith among the Gipsy
+children.”—_Capital and Labour_.
+
+“This is ‘a chapter’ in philanthropy, yet it contains three times as much
+in the way of practical philanthropy as would suffice to make any man a
+benefactor to his generation.  His devoted, self-denying, persistent, and
+successful endeavours on behalf of the brick-yard children, the canal
+population, and more recently the Gipsy ‘arabs,’ of our country and time,
+are concisely and vividly set forth in this neat volume.”—_The
+Christian_.
+
+“The name of George Smith, and his noble work amongst the canal-boat folk
+and the Gipsies, have become familiar and welcome to multitudes in Great
+Britain.  This volume is an excellent sketch of Mr. Smith; it contains a
+capital likeness, and should be read by all who desire to possess
+increasing zeal in rescuing the perishing.”—_Christian Age_.
+
+“A smartly written biography of a man who may be justly termed the
+Children’s Friend.  It is well got up, and contains an excellent portrait
+of the great social reformer.  It is well that this fascinating sketch
+should be given to the world.”—_Literary World_.
+
+“In this book we are presented with a sketch of the life and
+labours—labours which have been attended with a large measure of
+success—of one of the most devoted of living
+philanthropists.”—_Scotsman_.
+
+“A fine biography, which every one should read in order to understand the
+noble character of a man who must be pronounced a great
+benefactor.”—_Free Press_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+        _Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_, _with Illustrations_.
+
+
+
+OUR CANAL POPULATION:
+A CRY FROM THE BOAT CABINS, WITH REMEDY.
+
+
+                      New Edition, with Supplement.
+              By GEORGE SMITH, F.S.A., Coalville, Leicester.
+
+“A little book called ‘Our Canal Population,’ lately published and
+written by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, furnishes the most incredible
+details of what is going on on our silent highways.”—_Morning
+Advertiser_.
+
+“The notorious state of ‘Our Canal Population,’ the women and children
+who live on barges, and in whose condition Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, has awakened public interest, is described as ‘revolting and
+intolerable.’  If only a part of the statements made were true it would
+be enough to make the ears of them that hear it tingle for pity and
+shame.”—_Daily News_.
+
+“Although the statements made by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, in ‘Our
+Canal Population,’ were doubtless, in some instances, open to the charge
+of exaggeration, in the main they were largely correct.  Mr. Smith has
+earned the thanks of the community in this philanthropic object, as he
+previously earned our thanks for his efforts to ameliorate the condition
+of children in the brick-yards.”—_Standard_.
+
+“Canal Boats.—On the 1st inst. came into operation an Act (the 40 and 41
+Vic., c. 60) which is calculated to do much good.  Hitherto ‘Our Canal
+Population’ were left pretty much to themselves.  They were considered
+outside the pale of local and educational authorities.  They were
+permitted to live in their boats as they pleased, and to bring up their
+children without any interference from school authorities.  Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts on behalf of the children employed in
+brick-fields were attended with such beneficial results, turned his
+attention to ‘Our Canal Population,’ and the credit likely to be won by
+the passing of the Act of last Session will be mainly his.”—_The Times_.
+
+“Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, who has done so much for the well-being
+of ‘Our Canal Population,’ is now busied in attempts to ameliorate the
+condition of juvenile Gipsies.”—_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+“This gentleman represents by name, at least, a very large family, but he
+has won for himself considerable distinction among the ‘Smiths’ for his
+unparalleled efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of ‘Our Canal
+Population’ on the English canals, the women and children working in the
+brick-yards, and the Gipsy children.”—_Christian Herald_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_, _with Portrait of Author and other
+                             Illustrations_.
+
+
+
+THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN FROM THE BRICK-YARDS OF ENGLAND, AND HOW THE CRY
+HAS BEEN HEARD,
+
+
+            With Observations on the Carrying-out of the Act.
+
+                By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville, Leicester.
+                              SIXTH EDITION.
+
+“We heartily commend to our readers’ notice a new edition of a work which
+is full of thrilling interest to those who sympathise with childhood,
+whose hearts bleed at the story of its wrongs and leap for joy at any
+humane or beneficial measures on its behalf.”—_Sunday School Chronicle_.
+
+“This book, now in its sixth edition, has many capital illustrations, and
+is a monument to the patient self-denial and unwearying zeal brought to
+bear in favour of the poor children by the author.”—_Weekly Times_.
+
+“His cry for the protection for the helpless little ones is one that must
+assuredly command attention.”—_Daily Chronicle_.
+
+“This book is the record of a splendid service nobly done.  The author is
+likewise the hero of it.  The value of the book is enhanced by the
+careful and tasteful manner in which Messrs. Haughton have fulfilled
+their share of the undertaking.”—_Derby Reporter_.
+
+“This is a title of an interesting work.  The whole forms a most
+interesting record of a noble-hearted work.  We hope the book will meet,
+as it deserves, with an increasingly large circulation.”—_Derbyshire
+Advertiser_.
+
+“‘The Cry of the Children’ and ‘Our Canal Population’ are unique in many
+ways.  They have brought prominently before public attention two
+unsuspected blots upon our civilisation.  We wish any word of our’s could
+give still wider publicity to his self-denying labours.”—_Live Stock
+Journal_.
+
+“Mr. Smith writes with vehement energy, which he puts into everything he
+does.  Some will perhaps think that his language is occasionally too
+little measured, but then it is probable that a man of more delicacy of
+feeling and expression would have never undertaken, and we think it is
+certain that he would never have carried through, the work which Mr.
+George Smith has accomplished.  That work is of no small
+value.”—_Staffordshire Sentinel_.
+
+“A good deal of new matter is inserted in this edition, including an
+interesting account of the history and progress of the movement. . . .
+The volume is certainly worthy of a careful perusal.”—_Birmingham
+Gazette_.
+
+“In it is written the author’s account of his single-handed struggle for
+the emancipation of the poor children of the brick-yards—a struggle long
+and patiently sustained, and which at last, in 1872, met with its past
+merited reward in freeing 10,000 of these little ones from their dark
+slavery.”—_The Graphic_.
+
+“This is a deeply interesting book, both from the facts which it sets
+forth and the cause it advocates.”—_Christian Age_.
+
+“Every true philanthropist will read with deep interest Mr. Smith’s
+account of the history and the passing of the Act, which marks one of the
+brightest victories yet won over prejudice and self-interest in the
+United Kingdom.”—_Derby Mercury_.
+
+“This excellently got-up work will strike a cord of sympathy in the
+bosoms of all who are interested in the works of Christianity and
+philanthropy. . . .  Should find a place upon every book-shelf because
+its contents are of thrilling interest. . . .  The book is essentially a
+statement of facts, and no one can peruse its pages without feeling the
+impulse of the living spirit which breathes in this ‘Cry of the
+Children.’”—_Potteries Examiner_.
+
+“Mr. George Smith has, in his ‘Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards
+of England,’ raised issues too serious, and advanced pleas too
+passionate, to be treated with indifference.”—_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+“In the present volume, which contains a number of excellent woodcuts, we
+have gathered up the full story of the evils which used to prevail, which
+in the hands of a person of less moral courage and perseverance than Mr.
+Smith would have failed.”—_Leicester Daily Post_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Crown_ 8_vo_, 216 _pages_.  _Price_, _paper covers_, 1_s._; _post free_,
+    1_s._ 2_d._  _Cloth binding_, _with Portrait_, 2_s._, _post free_.
+
+
+
+Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.
+
+
+“A carefully prepared story of the public life of Mr. Gladstone in the
+several spheres of politics and literature.  It would be well if similar
+books to this were as sensibly compiled.  It is a handy and useful little
+book, honestly worth its price.”—_Christian World_.
+
+“Written with great fairness and impartiality, as well as with
+considerable literary ability.  It furnishes the reader with a key to the
+study of that which is undoubtedly one of the greatest characters of
+modern times.  We can hardly conceive of a more useful political
+publication at the present moment.  It is clear, pains-taking, and
+dispassionate.  We commend it to the favourable attention of all.”—_Leads
+Mercury_.
+
+“Those who desire to know what Mr. Gladstone’s life has been, and what
+are the objects to which he has devoted himself, what have been the
+growth of his political mind and the tendency of his political conduct,
+will do well to get this book.  It is neatly and simply written, and
+contains a great many facts which have a bearing even beyond the life of
+its subject.”—_Scotsman_.
+
+“No one can read this book without advantage.  The author has presented
+Mr. Gladstone in a manner easily recognisable by friends and foes alike.
+The volume forms an important chapter in Parliamentary history, extending
+over half a century.”—_Literary World_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+     _Bound in cloth_, _with four Illustrations_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+The Life of the Great African Traveller, Dr. LIVINGSTONE.  By J. M.
+MCGILCHRIST.
+
+
+“The appearance of this little work is very seasonable, and to young
+readers especially it will be very acceptable.”—_North British Daily
+Mail_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth binding_, _post free_, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Methodism in 1879: Impressions of the Wesleyan CHURCH AND ITS MINISTERS.
+
+
+“A new contribution to an important chapter of church history, and
+promises to be of much interest.”—_Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone_.
+
+“The remarks in this work on the general relations of the Methodists to
+the tendencies of the age are full of instruction.”—_Dean Stanley_.
+
+“We have read this book with considerable interest and pleasure, feelings
+which any reader who approaches it from the Church of England point of
+view can scarcely fail to share.”—_Spectator_.
+
+“Bearing, as it does throughout, the impress of thought and calm
+judgment, as well as of an intimate knowledge of the varied aspects of
+the subject dealt with, it should be of universal interest.”—_Morning
+Post_.
+
+“The author has rendered a splendid service to Methodism.  Much that the
+writer tells us with respect to the various agencies of Methodism is
+extremely interesting.”—_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+HAUGHTON’S POPULAR ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES.
+
+
+                          PRICE ONE PENNY EACH.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+Life of Her Majesty the Queen.
+
+
+“Written with great ability, and is full of interest.  It contains a
+complete review of the principal events of Her Majesty’s reign.  This
+biography should be circulated by thousands among the masses of the
+people.”—_Review_.
+
+
+Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort.
+
+
+“A grand biography of a grand man, and replete with sterling interest.
+It is as fascinating as a work of fiction.”—_Review_.
+
+
+Life of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
+
+
+“Very full, just, and interesting, and very brilliant is this account of
+the Prince of Wales.  His visits to the United States and to India are
+well and fully described.”—_Review_.
+
+
+Life of the Right, Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
+
+
+“The penny ‘Gladstone’ has a mass of facts in small bulk.”—_Liverpool
+Courier_.
+
+“Contains the leading events of Mr. Gladstone’s life in a small
+compass.”—_Echo_.
+
+“We can hardly conceive of a more useful political publication at the
+present moment.  It is clear, pains-taking, and dispassionate.  We
+commend it to the favourable attention of all.”—_Leeds Mercury_.
+
+“An admirably drawn sketch.”—_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+
+Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.
+
+
+“These penny biographies have a laudable spirit in common.  They are free
+from party bias.”—_Liverpool Courier_.
+
+
+Life of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.
+
+
+“Sets forth the principal events in the career of this remarkable
+man.”—_Review_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Recently Published_, _beautifully bound in cloth_, _bevelled boards_,
+                              _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+From the Curate to the Convent.
+
+
+“This comely volume is intended to open the eyes of Englishmen to the
+Romanising influence of the High Church, and to the wiles of the Jesuits,
+who are using the Establishment to their own ends.”—_Rev. C. H. Spurgeon
+in_ “_Sword and Trowel_.”
+
+“In this work the natural, logical, and most mischievous results of the
+confessional in our Church, are portrayed with fidelity and power.”—_The
+Standard_.
+
+“The book is the product of a master-mind, and ought to be in every
+Protestant family as well as in the school or parochial library of every
+parish.  We cannot speak of the work in too high terms.”  _The Gospel
+Magazine_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Now Ready_, _post free_, 3_s._ 6_d._, _handsomely bound_, _new edition_,
+                           _with Frontispiece_.
+
+
+
+Vestina’s Martyrdom: A Story of the Catacombs.  By MRS. EMMA RAYMOND
+PITMAN.
+
+
+“This Story of the Catacombs is readable and well-written.  The
+historical portion does not occupy any undue position, and the moral is
+good and sound.  The book is very suitable for Sunday-school
+libraries.”—_Christian World_.
+
+“One of the best stories of the kind we ever read—the very best, we
+think, of this particular era.  The volume abounds in deeply interesting
+matter, while the religious teaching is of the very simplest and
+purest.”—_Literary World_.
+
+“The description of Vestina’s martyrdom, or rather of her timely release
+from martyrdom, is simple and touching.  The present story will revive
+many interesting associations.”—_Athenæum_.
+
+“It is told in language of beauty and power.”—_Rock_.
+
+“Many of the descriptions are far beyond the common range of
+tale-writing.  The book is remarkably well-written.”—_Watchman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   _Now ready_, _handsomely bound in gilt cloth_, _crown_ 8_vo_, _with
+ full-page Illustrations and Medallion on cover_, 4_s._; _or_, _with gilt
+          edges_, _extra gilt cloth_, _for presentation_, 5_s._
+
+
+
+Profit and Loss: A Tale of Modern Life, for
+YOUNG PEOPLE.  By Mrs. EMMA RAYMOND PITMAN, Authoress of “Vestina’s
+Martyrdom,” “Margaret Mervyn’s Cross,” “Olive Chauncey’s Trust,” &c., &c.
+
+
+“This is evidently a tale in favour of Sunday-schools, but written with a
+freshness, a vivacity, and truthfulness, which must render it eminently
+calculated for usefulness, and must touch every heart.”—_Literary World_.
+
+“The story is interesting and well told.”—_Evangelical Magazine_.
+
+“The incidents are by no means of a commonplace character, and the
+heroine will certainly win the reader’s admiration, so that the book is
+likely to prove attractive and useful.”—_The Rock_.
+
+“The book is sure to have many readers.”—_Methodist Recorder_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+             _Beautifully bound_, _price_ 2_s._, _post free_.
+
+
+
+Sheen from my Thought-Waves.  By Rev. W. OSBORNE LILLEY.
+
+
+“The author walks on solid ground, and looks at men and things with the
+eye of a close observer and a thoughtful man.”—_U. M. F. Church
+Magazine_.
+
+“We think the author has done well to collect and re-issue these
+papers.”—_Christian Age_.
+
+“Nearly three hundred paragraphs, varying in length from a couple of
+lines to two or three pages, afford as many striking thoughts.  The
+points are pithy and taking.  Our advice is, ‘Buy the book and make free
+use of it.’”—_The Lay Preacher_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Just Published_.  _Price_ 1_s._ 6_d._, _in cloth_, _bevelled boards_.
+
+
+
+Comforting Words for the Weary, and Words
+OF COUNSEL AND WARNING, with Original Hymns.  By F. M. M.  With an
+Introduction, by the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Price_, _cloth boards_, 2_s._ 6_d._; _handsome binding_, 3_s._ 6_d._,
+                               _post free_.
+
+
+
+Leisure Hours with London Divines.  Second Edition.
+
+
+“The features of the London Divines in all denominations have been caught
+by an observant eye and reproduced by a faithful hand.  We cordially
+commend the book to those who desire to learn what the intellectual
+ecclesiastical life of London really means.”—_Standard_.
+
+“Theological portraits of very considerable value.”—_Leeds Mercury_.
+
+“There is a brilliancy about this book which only a scholar could
+impart.”—_Literary World_.
+
+“Written from an elevated standpoint.  In his eminently careful essays
+the author has furnished material for study such as might be vainly
+looked for in a more pretentious book.”—_Morning Post_.
+
+“Only a man naturally liberal-minded, and brought into frequent contact
+with intellects of the most diverse order, could have written such a
+work.”—_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+“A series of studies of eminent preachers in which the author deals with
+the nature and causes of the influence they exercise, and the distinctive
+principles which they advocate.  This work has been performed
+appreciatively and intelligently.”—_Scotsman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+Hanani: A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM SMITH, Father of GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.
+A Local Preacher.  By the Rev. Dr. GROSART, St. George’s, Blackburn,
+Lancashire.  Best Edition, Crown 8vo, toned paper, cloth, with Portrait,
+price 1s. 6d.; small Edition, cloth, with Portrait, price 1s.; cloth,
+flush, without Portrait, 8d.; paper cover, 6d.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   _Elegantly bound and illustrated_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 3_s._ _6d._
+
+
+
+From out the Deeps: A TALE OF CORNISH LIFE.
+By an Old Cornish Boy.  With Introduction by Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+“A vein of deep religious feeling runs throughout it, or, rather,
+religion pervades its every page.  The volume is tastefully ‘got up,’ and
+its matter excellent.”—_The Christian Miscellany_.
+
+“This is an admirable story, which we heartily commend for presents,
+school prizes, &c.”—_The Christian_.
+
+“The lessons taught by Mr. Christophers are excellent; his spirit is
+always admirable. . . .  Our readers had better get the
+book.”—_Spurgeon_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+     _Illustrated and beautifully bound_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+The Poets of Methodism.  By the Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+“This is a charming book.  Its exquisite getting-up is not inappropriate
+to its contents.”—_City Road Magazine_.
+
+“This is a thoroughly good book.  It is filled with life-like sketches of
+the men who are amongst the most endeared to the Methodist people.  It
+would be difficult to name any more acceptable gift-book than this work,
+for which we heartily thank Mr. Christophers.”—_Rev. Mark Guy Pearse_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                     _Bound in cloth_, _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+The Voyage of Life: HOMEWARD BOUND.  By a SEA CAPTAIN.
+
+
+This is intended as a companion-book for the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and
+therefore something new for the reading world.  Its originality will make
+it interesting to all classes of readers.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _In very large type_, _price_ 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+An Illustrated Edition of Precious Truths.
+By S. M. HAUGHTON.
+
+
+“We wish that a copy of this ‘PRECIOUS’ book could be placed in the hands
+of every one who is able to read, as it contains the very marrow of the
+‘GLORIOUS GOSPEL.’”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Cloth_, _boards_, _illustrated_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Annals of the Poor.  By LEGH RICHMOND.
+
+
+These short and simple annals have been translated into more than 50
+languages and blessed to hundreds of souls.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Remarkable Conversions.  By the Rev. JAMES FLEMING.
+
+
+“In each of these chapters a number of remarkable cases of conversion is
+given.  Some of them do indeed afford extraordinary proof of the
+long-suffering and infinite mercy of our God.  We are here shown a number
+of examples which should stimulate our hope and zeal to the utmost.  Well
+may the author call his book ‘Remarkable Conversions,’ and well may every
+reader have greater faith than ever in the Divine Word, ‘He is able to
+save to the uttermost.’”—_Living Waters_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Elegantly bound_, _cloth_, _boards_, _with Portrait_, _price_ 2_s._;
+                           _limp cloth_, 1_s._
+
+
+
+The Autobiography of Foolish Dick (RICHARD HAMPTON) THE CORNISH PILGRIM
+PREACHER; with Introduction and Notes by Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+“We hope this deeply interesting book will obtain a wide
+circulation.”—_Christian Age_.
+
+“This singular book is quite a little curiosity in its way.  The whole of
+the little volume combines instruction with interest in a very high
+degree, so that we can heartily commend it.”—_Spurgeon_.
+
+“A man of one talent, he put it out to usury, and it multiplied under the
+mighty hand of God, so that during his long itinerant ministry,
+multitudes were led to the Saviour. . . .  Those who would be fishers of
+men will find their souls kindled by the weird narrative of this strange,
+yet saintly man.”—_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+God’s way of Electing Souls; or, GLAD TIDINGS FOR EVERY ONE.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _with four full-page Illustrations_, _price_
+                                  2_s._
+
+
+
+The Glory-Land.  By J. P. HUTCHINSON, Author of “Footmarks of Jesus,”
+“The Singer in the Skies,” &c.
+
+
+“This is in every sense a beautiful volume.  To the spiritually-minded
+and the careworn, and, indeed, to the earnest inquirer, we commend it as
+a precious help.”—_Watchman_.
+
+“It will cheer many a mourner, and stimulate their aspirations after
+things unseen and eternal.”—_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Seeking after Peace.  A book for Inquirers after True Religion.  By M. M.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Pioneer Experiences in the Holy Life.  With Expository Chapters.  Edited
+by T. BOWMAN STEPHENSON, B.A., Hon. Director of the Children’s Home.
+
+
+“‘Pioneer Experiences’ consist of personal testimonies by eminent
+Christians of Europe and America, respecting the attainment of ‘The
+Higher Christian Life.’”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+         _Handsomely bound_, _with Illustrations_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Brave Seth.  By SARAH DOUDNEY.
+
+
+“We know of no better book than this to place in the hands of our young
+people to inculcate the importance of truthfulness, courage, and reliance
+upon God.  The incidents are thrilling, the lessons are unexceptionable,
+and the language and style are beautiful.  It reminds us, in its pathos
+and deeply interesting character, of ‘Jessica’s First Prayer.’”—_Living
+Waters_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Misunderstood Texts.  BY DR. MAHAN.
+
+
+“All who wish to have clear views of the doctrine taught by those who
+believe in _entire consecration_ should peruse this able, decided, and
+unanswerable volume.”—_Living Waters_.
+
+“This is an able book, and the teaching it embodies is that of the
+Wesleys, Fletcher, Clarke, Benson, Watson, and many others. . . .  We
+recommend young ministers to read the book.”—_The Watchman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Handsomely bound_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+The Children’s Treasury Text Book, interleaved with Writing-paper for
+Collecting the Autographs of Friends and Acquaintances.  It contains a
+Text of Scripture for Every Day in the Year, with an appropriate Verse of
+Poetry.
+
+
+The Rev. C. DUKES says of the “CHILDREN’S TREASURY TEXT BOOK:”—“I admire
+it very much, and were it left to my option, every young person in my
+circle and beyond it should have a copy.”
+
+A. L. O. E. writes:—“Accept my thanks for your truly beautiful and
+valuable book.  It appears to be a ‘Treasury’ indeed.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+      _Cloth_, _elegant binding_, _Illustrated_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+By the Still Waters.  Meditations and Hymns on the 23rd Psalm.  By the
+Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS and B. GOUGH.
+
+
+“The prose meditations of this excellent volume have all the sweetness
+and grace of poetry; and the poems contain the true spirit of devotional
+piety, with great power of poetic expression.  Every reader of this
+precious book must be greatly refreshed and blessed.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 2_s._ 6_d._  Printed on toned paper,
+illustrated, beautifully bound, red edges, 400 pages.
+
+
+“This is undoubtedly the cheapest edition of this marvellous book ever
+published.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+              _Uniform with the above_, _price_ 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Bunyan’s Holy War.  348 pages, with frontispiece, printed on toned paper,
+red edges.
+
+
+“Every one should read this most instructive volume.”
+
+“If the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did not exist, the ‘Holy War’ would be the
+best allegory that ever was written.”—LORD MACAULAY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+              _Uniform with the above_, _price_, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.  352 pages, well illustrated, printed on toned
+paper, red edges.
+
+
+“The arguments in this book are such as the plainest man can understand,
+and the facts should be constantly kept in remembrance by every
+Protestant.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Cloth_, _elegantly bound_, _with_ 150 _striking Illustrations_, _price_
+                                  2_s._
+
+
+
+Calisthenics, Drilling, and Deportment Simplified.  By DUNCAN CUNNINGHAM.
+
+
+This book is highly recommended by eminent medical gentlemen.  It is
+intended more especially for female teachers and parents, who are
+desirous that children under their care should possess a strong mind in a
+healthy body.
+
+The engravings are beautifully executed, the explanations extremely
+simple, and the words and music specially adapted to instruct and attract
+the young.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               _Crown_ 8_vo_, _cloth_, _gilt edges_, 3_s._
+
+
+
+From Egypt to Canaan; OR, FROM BONDAGE TO REST.  BY T. J. HUGHES.
+
+
+“This delightful book really drops pearls of thought from almost every
+page.”—_The Christian’s Pathway of Power_.
+
+“There are some books on which a special blessing rests, even beyond
+their apparent excellence, because they have been steeped in prayer, and
+we think that this is one of them.  We heartily commend it to the
+numerous young converts who are now being gathered into the Church of
+Christ.”—_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               HAUGHTON & CO., 10, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{8}  Since writing the foregoing concerning Mahmood or Mahmud, I came
+across the enclosed, taken from an article in the _Daily News_, January
+11, 1880, which confirms my statements as regards one of the main causes
+why the Gipsies or Indians left their native country:—“Ghuznee was the
+capital of Mahmud of Ghuznee, or Mahmud the Destroyer, as he is known in
+Eastern story, the first of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, and the
+only one who had his home in Afghanistan, though he was himself of Turki
+or Mongol nationality.  Seventeen times did he issue forth from his
+native mountains, spreading fire and sword over the plains of Hindustan,
+westward as far as the Ganges Valley, and southward to the shore of
+Gujerat.  Seventeen times did he return to Ghuznee laden with the spoil
+of Rajput kings and the shrines of Hindu pilgrimage.  In one of these
+expeditions his goal was the far-famed temple of Somnauth or Somnauth
+Patan in Gujerat.  Resistance was vain, and equally useless were the
+tears of the Brahmins, who besought him to take their treasures, but at
+least spare their idol.  With his own hand, and with the mace which is
+the counterpart of Excalibar in Oriental legend, he smote the face of the
+idol, and a torrent of precious stones gushed out.  When Keane’s army
+took Ghuznee in 1839, this mace was still to be seen hanging up over the
+sarcophagus of Mahmud, and the tomb was then entered through folding
+gates, which tradition asserted to be those of the Temple of Somnauth.
+Lord Ellenborough gave instructions to General Nott to bring back with
+him to India both the mace and the gates.  The latter, as is well-known,
+now lie mouldering in the lumber-room of the fort at Agra, for their
+authenticity is absolutely indefensible; but the mace could nowhere be
+found by the British plunderer.  Mahmud reigned from 997 to 1030 A.D.,
+and in his days Ghuznee was probably the first city in Asia.  The
+extensive ruins of his city stretch northwards along the Cabul road for
+more than two miles from the present town; but all that now remains
+standing are two lofty pillars or minarets, 400 yards apart, one bearing
+the name of Mahmud, the other that of his son Masaud.  Beyond these ruins
+again is the Roza or Garden, which surrounds the mausoleum of Mahmud.
+The building itself is a poor structure, and can hardly date back for
+eight centuries.  The great conqueror is said to rest beneath a marble
+slab, which bears an inscription in Cufic characters, thus interpreted by
+Major (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson: ‘May there be forgiveness of God upon
+him, who is the great lord, the noble Nizam-ud-din (Ruler of the Faith)
+Abul Kasim Mahmud, the son of Sabaktagin!  May God have mercy upon him!’
+The Ghuznevide dynasty founded by Mahmud lasted for more than a century
+after his death, though with greatly restricted dominions.  Finally, it
+was extinguished in 1152 by one of those awful acts of atrocity which are
+fortunately recorded only in the East.  Allah-ud-din, Prince of Ghore, a
+town in the north-western hills of Afghanistan, marched upon Ghuznee to
+avenge the death of two of his brothers.  The king was slain in battle,
+and the city given up to be sacked.  The common orders of the people were
+all massacred upon the spot; the nobles were taken to Ghore, and there
+put to death, and their blood used to cement the rising walls of the
+capital.”
+
+{176}  The “Czardas” is a solitary public-house, an institution which
+plays a considerable part in all romantic poems or romantic novels whose
+scene is laid in Hungary, as a fitting haunt for brigands, horse-thieves,
+Gipsies, Jews, political refugees, strolling players, vagabond poets, and
+other melodramatic personages.
+
+{218a}  A Black Govel.
+
+{218b}  Going a tinkering.
+
+{218c}  I’ll show you about, brother; I’m selling skewers.
+
+{219}  The fact of Ryley having at his death a caravan, pony, carpets,
+curtains, blankets, mirrors, china, crockery, metal pots and dishes, &c.,
+seems hardly, in my mind, to be in accord with his doing no work for
+years, smoking under railroad arches and loitering about beershops.  I
+expect, if the truth were known, the whole of his furniture and
+stock-in-trade could have been placed upon a wheelbarrow.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 28548-0.txt or 28548-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/5/4/28548
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/28548-0.zip b/28548-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..940f724
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-0.zip
diff --git a/28548-h.zip b/28548-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4de59af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h.zip
diff --git a/28548-h/28548-h.htm b/28548-h/28548-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1561ff3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/28548-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,13647 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html
+     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Gipsy Life, by George Smith</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;}
+    P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; }
+    H1, H2 {
+         text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 2em;
+		margin-bottom: 2em;
+         }
+    H3, H4, H5 {
+	text-align: left;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+	}
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+ table { border-collapse: collapse; }
+table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;}
+    td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;}
+    td p { margin: 0.2em; }
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute;
+               left: 92%;
+               font-size: smaller;
+               text-align: right;
+               color: gray;
+               }
+
+    div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; }
+    div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; }
+    div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%;
+                  margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid;
+                  border-bottom: 1px solid;}
+    div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; margin-left: 25%;
+		  border-top: 1px solid; }
+    .citation {vertical-align: super;
+               font-size: .8em;
+               text-decoration: none;}
+    img.floatleft { float: left; margin-right: 1em; }
+    img.floatright { float: right; margin-left: 1em; }
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gipsy Life, by George Smith
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Gipsy Life
+       being an account of our Gipsies and their children
+
+
+Author: George Smith
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 9, 2009  [eBook #28548]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1880 Haughton and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Frontispiece: Among the Gipsy children"
+title=
+"Frontispiece: Among the Gipsy children"
+src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>GIPSY LIFE:</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center">BEING AN ACCOUNT</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">of</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">OUR GIPSIES AND THEIR CHILDREN.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">with</span><br
+/>
+SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br />
+GEORGE SMITH, <span class="smcap">of Coalville</span>.</p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">london</span>:<br />
+HAUGHTON &amp; CO., 10, PATERNOSTER ROW.</p>
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">[<i>All Rights Reserved</i>.]</p>
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">1880.</p>
+<p><!-- page iv--><a name="pageiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+iv</span>I give my warmest thanks to <span class="smcap">W. H.
+Overend</span>, Esq., for the block forming the Frontispiece,
+which he has kindly presented to me on the condition that the
+picture occupies the position it does in this book; and also to
+the proprietor of the <i>Illustrated London News</i> for the
+blocks to help forward my work, the pictures of which appeared in
+his journal in November and December of last year and January in
+the present year, as found herein on pages 42, 48, 66, 76, 96,
+108, 118, 122, 174, 192, 236, 283.</p>
+<p>I must at the same time express my heart-felt thanks to the
+manager and proprietors of the <i>Graphic</i> for the blocks
+forming the illustrations on pages 1, 132, 170, 222, 228, 248,
+272, 277, and which appeared in their journal on March 13th in
+the present year, and which they have kindly presented to me to
+help forward my object, connected with which sketches, at the
+kind request of the Editor, I wrote the article.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">W. H. Overend</span>, Esq., was the artist
+for the sketches in the <i>Illustrated London News</i>, and <span
+class="smcap">Herbert Johnson</span>, Esq., was the artist for
+the sketches in the <i>Graphic</i>.</p>
+<p>I also tender my warmest thanks to the Press generally for the
+help rendered to me during the crusade so far, without which I
+should have done but little.</p>
+<h2><!-- page v--><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+v</span><span class="smcap">to the most honourable</span><br />
+THE PEERS AND MEMBERS<br />
+<span class="smcap">of the</span><br />
+HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT.</h2>
+<p>I have taken the liberty of humbly dedicating this work to
+you, the object of which is not to tickle the critical ears of
+ethnologists and philologists, but to touch the hearts of my
+countrymen on behalf of the poor Gipsy women and children and
+other roadside Arabs flitting about in our midst, in such a way
+as to command attention to these neglected, dark, marshy spots of
+human life, whose seedlings have been running wild among us
+during the last three centuries, spreading their poisonous
+influence abroad, not only detrimental to the growth of
+Christianity and the spread of civilisation, but to the present
+and eternal welfare of the children; and, what I ask for is, that
+the hand of the Schoolmaster may be extended towards the
+children; and that the vans and other temporary and movable
+abodes in which they live may be brought under the eye and
+influence of the Sanitary Inspector.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Very respectfully yours,<br />
+GEORGE SMITH,<br />
+<i>Of Coalville</i>.</p>
+<p><i>April</i> 30<i>th</i>, 1880.</p>
+<h2><!-- page vii--><a name="pagevii"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. vii</span>INDEX.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>Part I.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Rambles in
+gipsydom</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">page</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Origin of the Gipsies and their Names</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>The Daily News</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page8">8</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Travels of the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page9">9</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Acts of Parliament relating to the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page16">16</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page23">23</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,, <i>The Saturday Review</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page25">25</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Professor Bott on the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page29">29</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Changars of India</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page32">32</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Doms of India</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page33">33</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Sanseeas of India</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page35">35</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Nuts of India</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page36">36</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Grellmann on the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page39">39</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsies of Notting Hill</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page40">40</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rev. Charles Wesley</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page42">42</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Number of Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page44">44</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3><!-- page viii--><a name="pageviii"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. viii</span>Part II.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Commencement of
+the Crusade</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Work begun</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page48">48</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Letter to <i>The Standard</i> and <i>Daily
+Chronicle</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page51">51</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Leading Article in <i>The Standard</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page53">53</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Correspondence in <i>The Standard</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page59">59</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mr. Leland&rsquo;s Letter, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page60">60</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Reply</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Leicester Free Press</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>The Derby Daily Telegraph</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page70">70</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>The Figaro</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page73">73</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Letter in <i>The Daily News</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page75">75</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mr. Gorrie&rsquo;s Letter</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page78">78</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Reply</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page79">79</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Leading Article in <i>The Standard</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page82">82</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>May&rsquo;s Aldershot Advertiser</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page87">87</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>Hand and Heart</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page90">90</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>The Illustrated London News</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page91">91</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Leading Article in <i>The Daily News</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page92">92</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Social Science Congress Paper</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page95">95</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>Birmingham Daily Mail</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page102">102</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>The Weekly Dispatch</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page106">106</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>The Weekly Times</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page109">109</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>The Croydon Chronicle</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page117">117</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>Primitive Methodist</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page119">119</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>Illustrated London
+News</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page121">121</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>The Quiver</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page126">126</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Letter in <i>Daily News</i> and <i>Chronicle</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page127">127</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>Christian World</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page129">129</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,, <i>Sunday School Chronicle</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page132">132</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>Unitarian Herald</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page134">134</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&bdquo; <i>Weekly Times</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page135">135</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3><!-- page ix--><a name="pageix"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. ix</span>Part III.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">The Treatment
+the Gipsies have received in this Country</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Social History of our Country</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page142">142</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Acts of Parliament concerning the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page145">145</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Treatment of the Gipsies in Scotland, Spain, and
+Denmark</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page150">150</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Efforts put forth to improve their Condition</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page155">155</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>His Majesty George III. and the Dying Gipsy</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page161">161</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mr. Crabb at Southampton in 1827</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page164">164</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Fiction and the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page166">166</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Hubert Petalengro&rsquo;s Gipsy Trip to Norway</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page169">169</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Esmeralda&rsquo;s Song</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page174">174</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>George Borrow&rsquo;s Travels in Spain</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page177">177</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Romance and Poetry about the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page183">183</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Dean Stanley&rsquo;s Prize Poem</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page190">190</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>Part IV.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Gipsy Life in a
+Variety of Aspects</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Persecution, Missionary Efforts, and Romance</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page192">192</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Gipsy Contrast and <i>Punch</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page193">193</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Slang</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page195">195</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rees and Borrow&rsquo;s Description of the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page199">199</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Leland among the Russian Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page201">201</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Burning a Russian Fortune-teller</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page203">203</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Welsh Gipsy&rsquo;s Letter</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page208">208</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ryley Bosvil and his Poetry: a Sad Example</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page213">213</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Visit to Canning Town Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page220">220</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Article in <i>The Weekly Times</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page222">222</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Son&rsquo;s Visit to Barking Road</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page227">227</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mrs. Simpson, a Christian Gipsy</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page228">228</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3><!-- page x--><a name="pagex"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. x</span>Part V.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">The Sad
+Condition of the Gipsies, with Suggestions for their
+Improvement</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Beauty and Songsters</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page237">237</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Poetry</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page239">239</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Smart and Crofton</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page239">239</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Little Gipsy Girl&rsquo;s Letter</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page242">242</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Scotch Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page243">243</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Trickery</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page244">244</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Visit to the Gipsies at Kensal Green</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page248">248</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Fortune-telling and other Sins</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page249">249</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Wretched Condition of the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page254">254</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Hungarian Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page259">259</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Visit to Cherry Island</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page260">260</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Cleanliness and Food of the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page262">262</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Woman&rsquo;s Opinion upon Religion</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page264">264</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Faithfulness and Fidelity</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page264">264</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Visit to Hackney Marshes</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page266">266</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sickness among the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page270">270</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Woman&rsquo;s Funeral</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page271">271</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsies and the Workhouse</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page274">274</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Education of the Gipsy Children Sixty Years ago</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page274">274</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mission Work among the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page275">275</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Children upon Turnham Green and Wandsworth
+Common</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page276">276</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sad Condition of the Gipsy Children</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Hardships of the Gipsy Women</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page281">281</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Efforts put forth in Hungary and other Countries</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page282">282</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Things made by the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page284">284</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Pity for the Gipsies</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page285">285</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>What the State has done for the Thugs</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page286">286</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Remedy</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page287">287</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>My Reasons for Government Interference</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page289">289</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><!-- page xi--><a name="pagexi"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+xi</span>Illustrations.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">page</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><p>Frontispiece.&nbsp; Among the Gipsy
+Children.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Beauty</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gentleman Gipsy&rsquo;s Tent and his dog
+&ldquo;Grab&rdquo;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page42">42</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy&rsquo;s Home for Man and Wife and Six Children</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page48">48</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsies Camping among the Heath</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Quarters, Mary Place</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page76">76</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Farmer&rsquo;s Pig that does not like a Gipsy&rsquo;s
+Tent</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page96">96</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsies&rsquo; Winter Quarters, Latimer Road</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page108">108</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven
+Children, and in which &ldquo;Deliverance&rdquo; was born</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page118">118</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Knife Grinder&rsquo;s Home</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page122">122</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy Girl Washing Clothes</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page132">132</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Respectable Gipsy and his Family &ldquo;on the
+Road&rdquo;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page170">170</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Bachelor Gipsy&rsquo;s Bed-room</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page174">174</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Gipsy&rsquo;s Van, near Notting Hill</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page192">192</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her Pipe</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page222">222</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Inside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s Van&mdash;Mrs.
+Simpson&rsquo;s</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page228">228</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller&rsquo;s Van</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page236">236</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gipsy Fortune tellers Cooking their Evening Meal</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page248">248</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Outside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s Van</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page272">272</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Four Little Gipsies sitting for the Artist</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Top Bed-room in a Gipsy&rsquo;s Van</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page281">281</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page xii--><a
+name="pagexii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xii</span>
+<a href="images/p0b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Gipsy beauty who can neither read nor write"
+title=
+"A Gipsy beauty who can neither read nor write"
+src="images/p0s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+1</span>Part I.&mdash;Rambles in Gipsydom.</h2>
+<p>The origin of the Gipsies, as to who they are; when they
+became regarded as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel,
+ragamuffin vagabonds; the primary object they had in view in
+setting out upon their shuffling, skulking, sneaking, dark
+pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the point of the sword,
+or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing dark deeds of
+plunder, cruelty, and murder, or anxious to seek a haven of rest;
+the route by which they travelled, whether over hill and dale, by
+the side of the river and valley, skirting the edge of forest and
+dell, delighting in the jungle, or pitching their tent in the
+desert, following the shores of the ocean, or topping the
+mountains; whether they were Indians, Persians, Egyptians,
+Ishmaelites, Roumanians, Peruvians, Turks, Hungarians, Spaniards,
+or Bohemians; the end of their destination; their religious
+views&mdash;if any&mdash;their habits and modes of life have been
+during the last three or four centuries wrapped, surrounded, and
+encircled in mystery, according to some writers who have been
+studying the Gipsy character.&nbsp; They have been a theme upon
+which a &ldquo;bookworm&rdquo; could gloat, a chest of secret
+drawers into which the curious delight to pry, a difficult
+problem in Euclid for the mathematician to solve; and an
+unreadable book for the author.&nbsp; A conglomeration of
+languages for the <!-- page 2--><a name="page2"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 2</span>scholar, a puzzle for the historian,
+and a subject for the novelist.&nbsp; These are points which it
+is not the object of this book to attempt to clear up and settle;
+all it aims at, as in the case of my &ldquo;Cry of the Children
+from the Brick-yards of England,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Our Canal
+Population,&rdquo; is, to tell &ldquo;A Dark Chapter in the
+Annals of the Poor,&rdquo; little wanderers, houseless, homeless,
+and friendless in our midst.&nbsp; At the same time it will be
+necessary to take a glimpse at some of the leading features of
+the historical part of their lives in order to get, to some
+extent, a knowledge of the &ldquo;little ones&rdquo; whose
+pitiable case I have ventured to take in hand.</p>
+<p>Paint the words &ldquo;mystery&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;secrecy&rdquo; upon any man&rsquo;s house, and you at once
+make him a riddle for the cunning, envious, and crafty to try to
+solve; and this has been the case with the Gipsies for
+generations, and the consequence has been, they have trotted out
+kings, queens, princes, bishops, nobles, ladies and gentlemen of
+all grades, wise men, fools, and fanatics, to fill their coffers,
+while they have been standing by laughing in their sleeves at the
+foolishness of the foolish.</p>
+<p>In Spain they were banished by repeated edicts under the
+severest penalties.&nbsp; In Italy they were forbidden to remain
+more than two nights in the same place.&nbsp; In Germany they
+were shot down like wild beasts.&nbsp; In England during the
+reign of Elizabeth, it was felony, without the &ldquo;benefit of
+the clergy,&rdquo; to be seen in their company.&nbsp; The State
+of Orleans decreed that they should be put to death with fire and
+sword&mdash;still they kept coming.</p>
+<p>In the last century, however, a change has come over several
+of the European Governments.&nbsp; Maria Theresa in 1768, and
+Charles III. of Spain in 1783, took measures for the education of
+these poor outcasts in the habits of a civilised life with very
+encouraging results.&nbsp; The experiment is now being tried in
+Russia with signal success.&nbsp; The emancipation of the
+Wallachian Gipsies is a fact accomplished, and the best results
+are being achieved.</p>
+<p><!-- page 3--><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+3</span>The Gipsies have various names assigned to them in
+different countries.&nbsp; The name of Bohemians was given to
+them by the French, probably on account of their coming to France
+from Bohemia.&nbsp; Some derive the word Bohemians from the old
+French word &ldquo;Bo&euml;m,&rdquo; signifying a sorcerer.&nbsp;
+The Germans gave them the name of &ldquo;Ziegeuner,&rdquo; or
+wanderers.&nbsp; The Portuguese named them
+&ldquo;Siganos.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Dutch called them
+&ldquo;Heiden,&rdquo; or heathens.&nbsp; The Danes and Swedes,
+&ldquo;Tartars.&rdquo;&nbsp; In Italy they are called
+&ldquo;Zingari.&rdquo;&nbsp; In Turkey and the Levant,
+&ldquo;Tschingenes.&rdquo;&nbsp; In Spain they are called
+&ldquo;Gitanos.&rdquo;&nbsp; In Hungary and Transylvania, where
+they are very numerous, they are called &ldquo;Pharaoh
+Nepek,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Pharaoh&rsquo;s People.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+notion of their being Egyptian is entirely erroneous&mdash;their
+appearance, manners, and language being totally different from
+those of either the Copts or Fellahs; there are many Gipsies now
+in Egypt, but they are looked upon as strangers.</p>
+<p>Notwithstanding that edicts have been hurled against them,
+persecuted and hunted like vermin during the Middle Ages, still
+they kept coming.&nbsp; Later on, laws more merciful than in
+former times have taken a more humane view of them and been
+contented by classing them as &ldquo;vagrants and
+scoundrels&rdquo;&mdash;still they came.&nbsp; Magistrates,
+ministers, doctors, and lawyers have spit their spite at
+them&mdash;still they came; frowning looks, sour faces,
+buttoned-up pockets, poverty and starvation staring them in the
+face&mdash;still they came.&nbsp; Doors slammed in their faces,
+dogs set upon their heels, and ignorant babblers hooting at
+them&mdash;still they came; and the worst of it is they are
+reducing our own &ldquo;riff-raff&rdquo; to their level.&nbsp;
+The novelist has written about them; the preacher has preached
+against them; the drunkards have garbled them over in their
+mouths, and yelped out &ldquo;Gipsy,&rdquo; and stuttered
+&ldquo;scamp&rdquo; in disgust; the swearer has sworn at them,
+and our &ldquo;gutter-scum gentlemen&rdquo; have told them to
+&ldquo;stand off.&rdquo;&nbsp; These
+&ldquo;Jack-o&rsquo;-th&rsquo;-Lantern,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Will-o&rsquo;-th&rsquo;-Wisp,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Boo-peep,&rdquo; &ldquo;Moonshine Vagrants,&rdquo; <!--
+page 4--><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+4</span>&ldquo;Ditchbank Sculks,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hedgerow
+Rodneys,&rdquo; of whom there are not a few, are black spots upon
+our horizon, and are ever and anon flitting before our
+eyes.&nbsp; A motley crowd of half-naked savages, carrion eaters,
+dressed in rags, tatters, and shreds, usually called men, women,
+and children, some running, walking, loitering, traipsing,
+shouting, gaping, and staring; the women with children on their
+backs, and in their arms; old men and women tottering along
+&ldquo;leaning upon their staffs;&rdquo; hordes of children
+following in the rear; hulking men with lurcher dogs at their
+heels, sauntering along in idleness, spotting out their prey;
+donkeys loaded with sacks, mules with tents and sticks, and their
+vans and waggons carrying ill-gotten gain and plunder; and the
+question arises in the mind of those who take an interest in this
+singularly unfortunate race of beings: From whence came
+they?&nbsp; How have they travelled?&nbsp; By what routes did
+they travel?&nbsp; What is their condition, past and
+present?&nbsp; How are they to be dealt with in any efforts put
+forth to improve their condition?&nbsp; These are questions I
+shall in my feeble way endeavour to solve; at any rate, the two
+latter questions; the first questions can be dealt better with by
+abler hands than mine.</p>
+<p>I would say, in the first place, that it is my decided
+conviction that the Gipsies were neither more nor less, before
+they set out upon their pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of
+many thousands of low-caste, good for nothing, idle Indians from
+Hindustan&mdash;not ashamed to beg, with some amount of sentiment
+in their nature, as exhibited in their musical tendencies and
+love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances, without any
+true religious motives or influences.&nbsp; It may be worth while
+to notice that I have come to the conclusion that they were
+originally from India by observing them entirely in the light
+given to me years ago of the different characters of human beings
+both in Asia, Europe, and Africa.&nbsp; Their habits, manners,
+and customs, to me, is a sufficient test, without calling in the
+aid of the <!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 5</span>philologist to decide the point of
+their originality.&nbsp; I may here remark that in order to get
+at the real condition of the Gipsies as they are at the present
+day in this country, and not to have my mind warped or biassed in
+any way, I purposely kept myself in ignorance upon the subject as
+to what various authors have said either for or against them
+until I had made my inquiries and the movement had been afloat
+for several months.&nbsp; The first work touching the Gipsy
+question I ever handled was presented to me by one of the
+authors&mdash;Mr. Crofton&mdash;at the close of my Social Science
+Congress paper read at Manchester last October, entitled
+&ldquo;The Dialect of the English Gipsies,&rdquo; which work,
+without any disrespect to the authors&mdash;and I know they will
+overlook this want of respect&mdash;remained uncut for nearly two
+months.&nbsp; With further reference to their Indian origin, the
+following is an extract from &ldquo;Hoyland&rsquo;s Historical
+Survey,&rdquo; in which the author says:&mdash;&ldquo;The Gipsies
+have no writing peculiar to themselves in which to give a
+specimen of the construction of their dialect.&nbsp; Music is the
+only science in which the Gipsies participate in any considerable
+degree; they likewise compose, but it is after the manner of the
+Eastern people, extempore.&rdquo;&nbsp; Grellmann asserts that
+the Hindustan language has the greatest affinity with that of the
+Gipsies.&nbsp; He also infers from the following consideration
+that Gipsies are of the lowest class of Indians, namely, Parias,
+or, as they are called in Hindustan, Suders, and goes on to say
+that the whole great nation of Indians is known to be divided
+into four ranks, or stocks, which are called by a Portuguese
+name, Castes, each of which has its own particular
+sub-division.&nbsp; Of these castes, the Brahmins is the first;
+the second contains the Tschechterias, or Setreas; the third
+consists of the Beis, or Wazziers; the fourth is the caste of the
+above-mentioned Suders, who, upon the peninsula of Malabar, where
+their condition is the same as in Hindustan, are called Parias
+and Pariers.&nbsp; The first were appointed by Brahma to seek
+after knowledge, to give instruction, <!-- page 6--><a
+name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>and to take
+care of religion.&nbsp; The second were to serve in war.&nbsp;
+The third were, as the Brahmins, to cultivate science, but
+particularly to attend to the breeding of cattle.&nbsp; The caste
+of the Suders was to be subservient to the Brahmins, the
+Tschechterias, and the Beis.&nbsp; These Suders, he goes on to
+say, are held in disdain, and they are considered infamous and
+unclean from their occupation, and they are abhorred because they
+eat flesh; the three other castes living entirely on
+vegetables.&nbsp; Baldeus says the Parias or Suders are a filthy
+people and wicked crew.&nbsp; It is related in the &ldquo;Danish
+Mission Intelligencer,&rdquo; nobody can deny that the Parias are
+the dregs and refuse of all the Indians; they are thievish, and
+have wicked dispositions.&nbsp; Neuhof assures us, &ldquo;the
+Parias are full of every kind of dishonesty; they do not consider
+lying and cheating to be sinful.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Gipsy&rsquo;s
+solicitude to conceal his language is also a striking Indian
+trait.&nbsp; Professor Pallas says of the Indians round Astracan,
+custom has rendered them to the greatest degree suspicious about
+their language.&nbsp; Salmon says that the nearest relations
+cohabit with each other; and as to education, their children grow
+up in the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or
+instruction.&nbsp; The missionary journal before quoted says with
+respect to matrimony among the Suders or Gipsies, &ldquo;they act
+like beasts, and their children are brought up without restraint
+or information.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The Suders are fond of
+horses, so are the Gipsies.&rdquo;&nbsp; Grellmann goes on to say
+&ldquo;that the Gipsies hunt after cattle which have died of
+distempers in order to feed on them, and when they can procure
+more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day&rsquo;s
+consumption, they dry it in the sun.&nbsp; Such is the constant
+custom with the Suders in India.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;That the
+Gipsies and natives of Hindustan resemble each other in
+complexion and shape is undeniable.&nbsp; And what is asserted of
+the young Gipsy girls rambling about with their fathers, who are
+musicians, dancing with lascivious and indecent gesture to divert
+any person who is willing to give them a small <!-- page 7--><a
+name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>gratuity for so
+acting, is likewise perfectly Indian.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sonneratt
+confirms this in the account he gives of the dancing girls of
+Surat.&nbsp; Fortune-telling is practised all over the East, but
+the peculiar kind professed by the Gipsies, viz., chiromancy,
+constantly referring to whether the parties shall be rich or
+poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, &amp;c., is nowhere met with
+but in India.&nbsp; Sonneratt says:&mdash;&ldquo;The Indian smith
+carries his tools, his shop, and his forge about with him, and
+works in any place where he can find employment.&nbsp; He has a
+stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus is a pair of
+tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file.&nbsp; This is very much
+like Gipsy tinkers,&rdquo; &amp;c.&nbsp; It is usual for Parias,
+or Suders, in India to have their huts outside the villages of
+other castes.&nbsp; This is one of the leading features of the
+Gipsies of this country.&nbsp; A visit to the outskirts of
+London, where the Gipsies encamp, will satisfy any one upon this
+point, viz., that our Gipsies are Indians.&nbsp; In isolated
+cases a strong religious feeling has manifested itself in certain
+persons of the Bunyan type of character and countenance&mdash;a
+strong frame, with large, square, massive forehead, such as
+Bunyan possessed; for it should be noted that John Bunyan was a
+Gipsy tinker, with not an improbable mixture of the blood of an
+Englishman in his veins, and, as a rule, persons of this mixture
+become powerful for good or evil.&nbsp; A case in point, viz.,
+Mrs. Simpson and her family, has come under my own observation
+lately, which forcibly illustrates my meaning, both as regards
+the evil Mrs. Simpson did in the former part of her life, and for
+the last twenty years in her efforts to do good among persons of
+her class, and also among others, as she has travelled about the
+country.&nbsp; The exodus of the Gipsies from India may be set
+down, first, to famine, of which India, as we all know, suffers
+so much periodically; second, to the insatiable love of gold and
+plunder bound up in the nature of the Gipsies&mdash;the West,
+from an Indian point of view, is always looked upon as a land of
+gold, flowing with milk and honey; third, the hatred the Gipsies
+have for wars, <!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 8</span>and as in the years of 1408 and 1409,
+and many years previous to these dates, India experienced some
+terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of thousands of men,
+women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster Timur Beg
+in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by
+Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the
+Mohammedan faith, it is only natural to suppose that under those
+circumstances the Gipsies would leave the country to escape the
+consequences following those calamities, over-populated as it
+was, numbering close upon 200,000,000 of human beings. <a
+name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8"
+class="citation">[8]</a>&nbsp; I am inclined to think that it
+<!-- page 9--><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+9</span>would be hunger and starvation upon their heels that
+would be the propelling power to send them forward in quest of
+food.&nbsp; From Attock, Peshawur, Cabul, and Herat, they would
+tramp through Persia by Teheran, and enter the Euphrates Valley
+at Bagdad.&nbsp; From Calcutta, Madras, Seringapatam, Bangalore,
+Goa, Poonah, Hydrabad, Aurungabad, Nagpoor, Jabbulpoor, Benares,
+Allahabad, Surat, Simla, Delhi, Lahore, they would wander along
+to the mouth of the river Indus, and commence their journey at
+Hydrabad, and travelling by the shores of the Indian Ocean,
+stragglers coming in from Bunpore, Gombaroon, the commencement of
+the Persian Gulf, when they would travel by Bushino to
+Bassora.&nbsp; At this place they would begin to scatter
+themselves over some parts of Arabia, making their headquarters
+near Molah, Mecca, and other parts of the country, crossing over
+Suez, and getting into Egypt in large numbers.&nbsp; Others would
+take the Euphrates Valley route, which, by the way, is the route
+of the proposed railway to India.&nbsp; Tribes branching off at
+Kurnah, some to Bagdad, following the course of the river Tigris
+to Mosul and Diarbeker, and others would go to Jerusalem,
+Damuscus, and Antioch, till they arrived at Allepo and
+Alexandretta.&nbsp; Here may be considered the starting-point
+from which they spread over Asiatic Turkey in large numbers, till
+they arrived before Constantinople at the commencement of the
+fourteenth century.</p>
+<p><!-- page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+10</span>Straggling Gipsies no doubt found their way westward
+prior to the wars of Timur Beg, and in this view I am supported
+by the fact that two of our own countrymen&mdash;Fitz-Simeon and
+Hugh the Illuminator, holy friars&mdash;on their pilgrimage to
+the Holy Land in 1322, called at Crete, and there found some
+Gipsies&mdash;I am inclined to think only a few sent out as a
+kind of advance-guard or feeler, adopting the plan they have done
+subsequently in peopling Europe and England during the fifteenth
+and sixteenth centuries.</p>
+<p>Brand, in his observations in &ldquo;Popular
+Antiquities,&rdquo; is of opinion also that the Gipsies fled from
+Hindustan when Timur Beg ravaged India with a view of making
+Mohammedans of the heathens, and it is calculated that during his
+deeds of blood he butchered 500,000 Indians.&nbsp; Some writers
+suppose that the Gipsies, in order to escape the sword of this
+human monster, came into Europe through Egypt, and on this
+account were called English Gipsies.</p>
+<p>In a paper read by Colonel Herriot before the Royal Asiatic
+Society, he says that the Gipsies, or Indians&mdash;called by
+some Suders, by others Naths or Benia, the first signifying
+rogue, the second dancer or tumbler&mdash;are to be met in large
+numbers in that part of Hindustan which is watered by the Ganges,
+as well as the Malwa, Gujerat, and the Deccan.</p>
+<p>The religious crusades to the Holy Land commenced in the year
+1095 and lasted to 1270.&nbsp; It was during the latter part of
+the time of the Crusades, and prior to the commencement of the
+wars by Timur Beg, that the Gipsies flocked by hundreds of
+thousands to Asiatic Turkey.&nbsp; While the rich merchants and
+princes were trying to outvie each other in their costly
+equipages, grandeur, and display of gold in their pilgrimage to
+the Holy Land, and the tremendous death-struggles between
+Christianity, Idolatry, and Mohammedism, the Gipsies were busily
+engaged in singing songs and plundering, and in this work they
+were encouraged by the Persians as they passed through their
+territory.&nbsp; The Persians have always been friendly to these
+wandering, loafing Indians, for <!-- page 11--><a
+name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>we find that
+during the wars of India by Timur Beg, and other monsters
+previous, they were harbouring 20,000 of these poor low-caste and
+outcast Indians; and, in fact, the same thing may be said of the
+other countries they passed through on their way westward, for we
+do not read of their being persecuted in these countries to
+anything like the extent they have been in Europe.&nbsp; This, no
+doubt, arises from the affinity there is between the Indian,
+Persian, and Gipsy races, and the dislike the Europeans have
+towards idlers, loafers, liars, and thieves; and especially is
+this so in England.&nbsp; Gipsy life may find favour in the East,
+but in the West the system cannot thrive.&nbsp; A real Englishman
+hates the man who will not work, scorns the man who would tell
+him a lie, and would give the thief who puts his hands into his
+pocket the cat-o&rsquo;-nine-tails most unmercifully.&nbsp; The
+persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has
+been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves.&nbsp; John
+Bull dislikes keeping the idle, bastard children of other
+nations.&nbsp; He readily protects all those who tread upon
+English soil, but in return for this kindness he expects them,
+like bees, to be all workers.&nbsp; Drones, ragamuffins, and
+rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of the hive.&nbsp;
+If 20,000 Englishmen were to tramp all over India, Turkey,
+Persia, Hungary, Spain, America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South
+Africa, Germany, or France, in bands of from, say two to fifty
+men, women, and children, in a most wretched; miserable
+condition, doing little else but fiddling upon the national
+conscience and sympathies, blood-sucking the hardworking
+population, and frittering their time away in idleness,
+pilfering, and filth, I expect, and justly so, the inhabitants
+would begin to &ldquo;kick,&rdquo; and the place would no doubt
+get rather warm for Mr. John Bull and his motley flock.&nbsp; If
+the Gipsies, and others of the same class in this country, will
+begin to &ldquo;buckle-to,&rdquo; and set themselves out for real
+hard work, instead of cadging from door to door, they will find,
+notwithstanding they are called Gipsies, John Bull <!-- page
+12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+12</span>extending to them the hand of brotherhood and sympathy,
+and the days of persecution passed.</p>
+<p>One thing is remarkable concerning the Gipsies&mdash;we never
+hear of their being actually engaged in warfare.&nbsp; They left
+India for Asiatic Turkey before the great and terrible wars broke
+out during the fourteenth century, and before the great religious
+wars concerning the Mohammedan faith in Turkey, during the
+fourteenth century, they fled to Western Europe.&nbsp; Thus it
+will be seen that they &ldquo;would sooner run a mile than fight
+a minute.&rdquo;&nbsp; The idea of cold steel in open day
+frightens them out of their wits.&nbsp; Whenever a war is about
+to take place in the country in which they are located they will
+begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they
+will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is
+over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the
+prey.&nbsp; This feature is one of their leading characteristics;
+with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as
+long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens of fallen
+humanity.&nbsp; For a number of years prior to the capture of
+Constantinople by Mohammed II. in 1453 the Gipsies had commenced
+to wend their way to various parts of Europe.&nbsp; The 200,000
+Gipsies who had emigrated to Wallachia and Moldavia, their
+favourite spot and stronghold, saw what was brewing, and had
+begun to divide themselves into small bands.&nbsp; A band of 300
+of these wanderers, calling themselves Secani, appeared in 1417
+at L&uuml;neburg, and in 1418 at Basil and Bern in
+Switzerland.&nbsp; Some were seen at Augsberg on November 1,
+1418.&nbsp; Near to Paris there were to be seen numbers of
+Gipsies in 1424, 1426, and 1427; but it is not likely they
+remained long in Paris.&nbsp; Later on we find them at Arnheim in
+1429, and at Metz in 1430, Erfurt in 1432, and in Bavaria in
+1433.&nbsp; The reason they appeared at these places at those
+particular times, was, no doubt, owing to the internal troubles
+of France; for it was during 1429 that Joan of Arc raised the
+siege of Orleans.&nbsp; The Gipsies appearing <!-- page 13--><a
+name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>in small
+bands in various parts of the Continent at this particular time
+were, no doubt, as Mr. Groom says in his article in the
+&ldquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica,&rdquo; sent forward by the
+main body of Gipsies left behind in Asiatic and European Turkey,
+to spy out the land whither they were anxious to bend their ways;
+for it was in the year 1438, fifteen years before the terrible
+struggle by the Mohammedans for Constantinople, that the great
+exodus of Gipsies from Wallachia, Roumania, and Moldavia, for the
+golden cities of the West commenced.&nbsp; From the period of
+1427 to 1514, a space of about eighty-seven years&mdash;except
+spies&mdash;they were content to remain on the Continent without
+visiting our shores; probably from two causes&mdash;first, their
+dislike to crossing the water; second, the unsettled state of our
+own country during this period.&nbsp; For it should be remembered
+that the Wars of the Roses commenced in 1455, Richard III. was
+killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and in 1513 the Battle of
+Flodden took place in Scotland, in which the Scots were
+defeated.&nbsp; The first appearance of the Gipsies in large
+numbers in Great Britain was in Scotland in 1514, the year after
+the Battle of Flodden.&nbsp; Another remarkable coincidence
+connected with their appearance in this country came out during
+my inquiries; but whether there is any foundation for it further
+than it is an idea floating in my brain I have not yet been able
+to ascertain, as nothing is mentioned of it in any of the
+writings I have perused.&nbsp; It seems reasonable to suppose
+that the Gipsies, would retain and hand down some of their
+pleasant, as well as some of the bitter, recollections of India,
+which, no doubt, would at this time be mentioned to persons high
+in position&mdash;it should be noted that the Gipsies at this
+time were favourably received at certain head-quarters amongst
+merchants and princes&mdash;for we find that within fourteen
+years after the landing of the Indians upon our shores attempts
+were made to reach India by the North-east and North-west
+passages, which proved a disastrous affair.&nbsp; Then, again, in
+1579 Sir F. Drake&rsquo;s expedition set out <!-- page 14--><a
+name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>for
+India.&nbsp; In 1589 the Levant Company made a land expedition,
+and in all probability followed the track by which the Gipsies
+travelled from India to the Holy Land in the fourteenth century,
+by the Euphrates valley and Persian Gulf.</p>
+<p>Towards the end of the year 1417, in the Hanseatic towns on
+the Baltic coast and at the mouth of the Elbe, there appeared
+before the gates of L&uuml;neburg, and later on at Hamburg,
+L&uuml;beck, Wirmar, Rostock, and Stralsuna, a herd of swarthy
+and strange specimens of humanity, uncouth in form, hideous in
+complexion, and their whole exterior shadowed forth the lowest
+depths of poverty and degradation.&nbsp; A cloak made of the
+fragments of oriental finery was generally used to disguise the
+filth and tattered garments of their slight remaining
+apparel.&nbsp; The women and young children travelled in rude
+carts drawn by asses or mules; the men trudged alongside, casting
+fierce and suspicious glances on those they met, thief-like, from
+underneath their low, projecting foreheads and eyebrows; the
+elder children, unkempt and half-clad, swarmed in every
+direction, calling with shrill cries and monkey-like faces and
+grimaces to the passers-by to their feats of jugglery, craft, and
+deception.&nbsp; Forsaking the Baltic provinces the dusky band
+then sought a more friendly refuge in central Germany&mdash;and
+it was quite time they had begun to make a move, for their deeds
+of darkness had oozed out, and a number of them paid the penalty
+upon the gallows, and the rest scampered off to Meissen, Leipsic,
+and Herse.&nbsp; At these places they were not long in letting
+the inhabitants know, by their depredations, witchcraft, devilry,
+and other abominations, the class of people they had in their
+midst, and the result was their speedy banishment from Germany;
+and in 1418, after wandering about for a few months only, they
+turned their steps towards Switzerland, reaching Zurich on August
+1st, and encamped during six days before the town, exciting much
+sympathy by their pious tale and sorrowful appearance.&nbsp; In
+Switzerland the <!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 15</span>inhabitants were more gullible, and
+the soft parts of their nature were easily getatable, and the
+consequence was the Gipsies made a good thing of it for the space
+of four years.&nbsp; Soon after leaving Zurich, according to Dr.
+Mikliosch, the wanderers divided their forces.&nbsp; One
+detachment crossed the Botzberg and created quite a panic amongst
+the peaceable inhabitants of Sisteron, who, fearing and imagining
+all sorts of evils from these satanic-looking people, fed them
+with a hundred loaves, and induced them, for the good of their
+health, to make themselves miserably less.&nbsp; We next hear of
+them in Italy, in 1422.&nbsp; After leaving Asiatic Turkey, and
+in their wanderings through Russia and Germany, the Asiatic,
+sanctimonious, religious halo, borrowed from their idolatrous
+form and notions of the worship of God in the East, had suffered
+much from exposure to the civilising and Christianising
+influences of the West; and the result was their leaders decided
+to make a pilgrimage to Rome to regain, under the cloak of
+religion, some of the self-imagined lost prestige; and in this
+they were, at any rate, for a time, successful.&nbsp; On the 11th
+day of July, 1422, a leader of the Gipsies, named Duke Andrew,
+arrived at Bologna, with men, women and children, fully one
+hundred persons, carrying with them, as they alleged, a decree
+signed by the King of Hungary, permitting them, owing to their
+return to the Christian faith&mdash;stating at the same time that
+4,000 had been re-baptised&mdash;to rob without penalty or
+hindrance wherever they travelled during seven years.&nbsp; Here
+these long-faced, pious hypocrites were in clover, as a reward
+for their professed re-embracing Christianity.&nbsp; After the
+expiration of this term they told the open-mouthed inhabitants,
+as a kind of sweetener, that they were to present themselves to
+the Pope, and then return to India&mdash;aye, with the spoils of
+their lying campaign, gained by robbing and plundering all they
+came in contact with.&nbsp; The result of their deceitful, lying
+expedition to Rome was all they could wish, and they received a
+fresh passport from <!-- page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 16</span>. the Pope, asking for alms from his
+faithful flock on behalf of these wretches, who have been
+figuring before western nations of the world&mdash;sometimes as
+kings, counts, martyrs, prophets, witches, thieves, liars, and
+murderers; sometimes laying their misfortunes at the door of the
+King of Egypt, the Sultan of Turkey, religious persecution in
+India, the King of Hungary, and a thousand other Gorgios since
+them.&nbsp; Sometimes they would appear as renegade Christians,
+converted heathens, Roman Catholics, in fact, they have been
+everything to everybody; and, so long as the &ldquo;grist was
+coming to the mill,&rdquo; it did not matter how or by whom it
+came.</p>
+<p>By an ordinance of the State of Orleans in the year 1560 it
+was enjoined that all those impostors and vagabonds who go
+tramping about under the name of Bohemians and Egyptians should
+quit the kingdom, on penalty of the galleys.&nbsp; Upon this they
+dispersed into lesser companies, and spread themselves over
+Europe.&nbsp; They were expelled from Spain in 1591.&nbsp; The
+first time we hear of them in England in the public records was
+in the year 1530, when they were described by the statute 22 Hen.
+VIII., cap. 10, as &ldquo;an outlandish people calling themselves
+Egyptians.&nbsp; Using no craft nor seat of merchandise, who have
+come into this realm and gone from shire to shire, and place to
+place, in great company, and used great subtile, crafty means to
+deceive the people, bearing them in hand, that they by palmistry
+could tell men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s fortunes, and so many
+times by craft and subtilty have deceived the people of their
+money, and also have committed many heinous felonies and
+robberies.&nbsp; Wherefore they are directed to avoid the realm,
+and not to return under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of
+their goods and chattels; and upon their trials for any felony
+which they may have committed they shall not be entitled to a
+jury <i>de medietate lingu&aelig;</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; As if the
+above enactment was not sufficiently strong to prevent these
+wretched people multiplying in our midst and carrying on their
+abominable practices, <!-- page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 17</span>it was afterwards enacted by statutes
+1 and 2 Ph., and in c. 4 and 5 Eliz., cap. 20, &ldquo;that if any
+such person shall be imported into this kingdom, the importer
+shall forfeit &pound;40.&nbsp; And if the Egyptians themselves
+remain one month in this kingdom, or if any person being fourteen
+years old (whether natural-born subject or stranger), which hath
+been seen or found in the fellowship of such Egyptians, or which
+hath disguised him or herself like them, shall remain in the same
+one month, or if several times it is felony, without the benefit
+of the clergy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sir Matthew Hale informs us that at the Suffolk Assizes no
+less than thirteen Gipsies were executed upon these statutes a
+few years before the Restoration.&nbsp; But to the honour of our
+national humanity&mdash;which at the time of these executions
+could only have been in name and not in reality, for those were
+the days of bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and like sports, the
+practice of which in those dark ages was thought to be the
+highest pitch of culture and refinement&mdash;no more instances
+of this kind were thrown into the balance, for the public
+conscience had become somewhat awakened; the days of
+enlightenment had begun to dawn, for by statute 23, George III.,
+cap. 51, it was enacted that the Act of Eliz., cap. 20, is
+repealed; and the statute 17 George II., cap. 5, regards them
+under the denomination of &ldquo;rogues and vagabonds;&rdquo; and
+such is the title given to them at the present day by the law of
+the land&mdash;&ldquo;Rogues and Vagabonds.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow, in page 10 of his &ldquo;Bible in Spain,&rdquo; says:
+&ldquo;Shortly after their first arrival in England, which is
+upwards of three centuries since, a dreadful persecution was
+raised against them, the aim of which was their utter
+extermination&mdash;the being a Gipsy was esteemed a crime worthy
+of death, and the gibbets of England groaned and creaked beneath
+the weight of Gipsy carcases, and the miserable survivors were
+literally obliged to creep into the earth in order to preserve
+their lives.&nbsp; But these days passed by; their persecutors
+became weary of persecuting them; they <!-- page 18--><a
+name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>showed their
+heads from the caves where they had hidden themselves; they
+ventured forth increased in numbers, and each tribe or family
+choosing a particular circuit, they fairly divided the land
+amongst them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In England the male Gipsies are all dealers in horses
+[this is not exactly the case with the Gipsies of the present
+day], and sometimes employ their time in mending the tin and
+copper utensils of the peasantry; the females tell
+fortunes.&nbsp; They generally pitch their tents in the vicinity
+of a village or small town, by the roadside, under the shelter of
+the hedges and trees.&nbsp; The climate of England is well known
+to be favourable to beauty, and in no part of the world is the
+appearance of the Gipsies so prepossessing as in that
+country.&nbsp; Their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so;
+their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads
+rather low, and their hands and feet small.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The crimes of which these people were originally
+accused were various, but the principal were theft, sorcery, and
+causing disease among the cattle; and there is every reason for
+supposing that in none of these points they were altogether
+guiltless.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With respect to sorcery, a thing in itself impossible,
+not only the English Gipsies, but the whole race, have ever
+professed it; therefore, whatever misery they may have suffered
+on that account they may be considered as having called it down
+upon their own heads.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dabbling in sorcery is in some degree the province of
+the female Gipsy.&nbsp; She affects to tell the future, and to
+prepare philters by means of which love can be awakened in any
+individual towards any particular object; and such is the
+credulity of the human race, even in the more enlightened
+countries, that the profits arising from their practices are
+great.&nbsp; The following is a case in point:&mdash;Two females,
+neighbours and friends, were tried some years since in England
+for the murder of their husbands.&nbsp; It appeared that they
+were in love with the same individual, and <!-- page 19--><a
+name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>had
+conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman
+to work charms to captivate his affection.&nbsp; Whatever little
+effect the charm might produce, they were successful in their
+principal object, for the person in question carried on for some
+time a criminal intercourse with both.&nbsp; The matter came to
+the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking means to break off
+this connection, were respectively poisoned by their wives.&nbsp;
+Till the moment of conviction these wretched females betrayed
+neither emotion nor fear; but then their consternation was
+indescribable, when they afterwards confessed that the Gipsy who
+had visited them in prison had promised to shield them from
+conviction by means of her art.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poisoning cattle is exercised by them in two ways: by
+one, they merely cause disease in the animals, with the view of
+receiving money for curing them upon offering their
+services.&nbsp; The poison is generally administered by powders
+cast at night into the mangers of the animals.&nbsp; This way is
+only practised upon the larger cattle, such as horses and
+cows.&nbsp; By the other, which they practise chiefly on swine,
+speedy death is almost invariably produced, the drug administered
+being of a highly intoxicating nature, and affecting the
+brain.&nbsp; Then they apply at the house or farm where the
+disaster has occurred for the carcase of the animal, which is
+generally given them without suspicion, and then they feast on
+the flesh, which is not injured by the poison, it only affecting
+the head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In looking at the subject from a plain, practical,
+common-sense point of view&mdash;divested of
+&ldquo;opinions,&rdquo; &ldquo;surmises,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;technicalities,&rdquo; &ldquo;similarities,&rdquo; certain
+ethnological false shadows and philological mystifications, the
+little glow-worm in the hedge-bottom on a dark night, which our
+great minds have been running after for generations, and
+&ldquo;natural consequences,&rdquo; &ldquo;objects sought,&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;certain results&rdquo;&mdash;we shall find that the
+same thing has happened to the Gipsies, or Indians, centuries
+ago, that has happened to all nations at one <!-- page 20--><a
+name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>time or
+other.&nbsp; There can be no doubt but that terrible internal
+struggles took place, and hundreds of thousands of the
+inhabitants were butchered in cold blood, in India, during the
+tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; there can be
+no question, also, that the 200,000,000 inhabitants, in this
+over-populated country, would suffer, in various forms, the
+direst consequences of war, famine, and bloodshed; and, it is
+more than probable, that hundreds of thousands of the idle,
+low-caste Indians, too lazy to work, too cowardly to fight in
+open day, with no honourable ambition or true religious instincts
+in their nature, other than to aspire to the position similar to
+bands of Nihilists, Communists, Socialists, or Fenians of the
+present day, would emigrate to Wallachia, Roumania, or Moldavia,
+which countries, at that day, were looked upon as England is at
+the present time.&nbsp; The Gipsies, many centuries ago, as now,
+did not believe in yokes being placed round their necks.&nbsp;
+The fact of 200,000 of these emigrants, about whom, after all,
+there is not much mystery, emigrating to Wallachia in such large
+numbers, proves to my mind that there was a greater power behind
+them and before them than is usually supposed to be the case, and
+than that attending wandering minstrels, impelling them
+forward.&nbsp; Mohammedism, soldiers, and death would not be
+looked upon by the Gipsies as pleasant companions.&nbsp; By
+fleeing for their lives they escaped death, and Wallachia was to
+the Gipsies, for some time, what America has been to the
+Fenians&mdash;an ark of safety and the land of Nod.&nbsp; Many of
+the Gipsies themselves imagine that they are the descendants of
+Ishmael, from the simple fact that it was decreed by God, they
+say, that his descendants should wander about in tents, and they
+were to be against everybody, and everybody against them.&nbsp;
+This erroneous impression wants removing, or the Gipsies will
+never rise in position.</p>
+<p>In no country in the world is there so much caste feeling,
+devilish jealousy, and diabolical revenge manifested as in <!--
+page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+21</span>India.&nbsp; These are true types and traits of Indian
+character, especially of the lower orders and those who have lost
+caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians, Hungarians, and
+Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the
+Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts
+of India.&nbsp; Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have
+been trying to do for some time, outside their mystery boxes,
+with their thin, flimsy veil of romance and superstitious turn of
+their faces, will soon discover their Indian character.&nbsp; Of
+course their intermixture with Circassians and other nations, in
+the course of their travels from India, during five or six
+centuries, till the time they arrived at our doors, has brought,
+and is still bringing, to the surface the blighted flowers of
+humanity, whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the
+soil of Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia,
+Moldavia, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Italy, Germany, France,
+Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as the muddy
+stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for ages through
+various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this little
+dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a
+horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been fed and
+augmented by the dregs of English society from Sunday-schools and
+the hearthstones of pious parents.&nbsp; The different
+nationalities to be seen among the Gipsies, in their camps and
+tents, may be looked upon as so many bastard off-shoots from the
+main trunk of the trees that have been met with in their
+wanderings.</p>
+<p>In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation,
+is the old Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter
+rabble as in our own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and
+races, the diabolical Indian elements are easily recognisable in
+their wigwams.&nbsp; Then, again, their Indian origin can be
+traced in many of their social habits; among others, they squat
+upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and other
+nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers <!-- page
+22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>as
+being the ancestors of the Gipsies.&nbsp; Their tramping over the
+hills and plains of India, and exposure to all the changes of the
+climate, has no doubt fitted them, physically, for the kind of
+life they are leading in various parts of the world.&nbsp; To-day
+Gipsies are to be found in almost every part of the civilised
+countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the burning
+sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents.&nbsp; The
+treatment of the women and children by the men corresponds
+exactly with the treatment the women and children are receiving
+at the hands of the low-caste Indians.&nbsp; The Arabian women,
+the Turkish women, and Egyptian women, may be said to be queens
+when set up in comparison with the poor Gipsy woman in this
+country.&nbsp; In Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and some other Eastern
+nations, the women are kept in the background; but among the
+low-caste Indians and Gipsies the women are brought to the front
+divested of the modesty of those nations who claim to be the
+primogenitors of the Gipsy tribes and races.&nbsp; Among the
+lower orders of Indians, from whom the Gipsies are the outcome,
+most extraordinary types of characters and countenances are to be
+seen.&nbsp; Any one visiting the Gipsy wigwams of the present day
+will soon discover the relationship.</p>
+<p>In early life, as among the Indians, some of the girls are
+pretty and interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality,
+debauchery, idle and loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl
+soon becomes the coarse, vulgar woman, with the last trace of
+virtue blown to the winds.&nbsp; If any one with but little keen
+sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy&rsquo;s tent when the
+man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the
+low-caste Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his
+bench&mdash;all squatting upon the ground&mdash;he will not be
+long in coming to the conclusion that they are all pretty much of
+the same family.</p>
+<p>Ethnologists and philologists may find certain words used by
+the Gipsies to correspond with the Indian language, and this adds
+another proof to those I have already adduced; <!-- page 23--><a
+name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>but, to my
+mind, this, after the lapse of so many centuries, considering all
+the changes that have taken place since the Gipsies emigrated, is
+not the most convincing argument, any more than our forms of
+letters, the outcome of hieroglyphics, prove that we were once
+Egyptians.&nbsp; No doubt, there are a certain few words used by
+all nations which, if their roots and derivations were thoroughly
+looked into, a similarity would be found in them.&nbsp; As
+America, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa have been fields for
+emigrants from China and Europe during the last century, so, in
+like manner, Europe was the field for certain low-caste poor
+emigrants from India during the two preceding centuries, with
+this difference&mdash;the emigrants from India to Europe were
+idlers, loafers who sought to make their fortunes among the
+Europeans by practising, without work, the most subtle arts of
+double-dealing, lying, deception, thieving, and dishonesty, and
+the fate that attends individuals following out such a course as
+this has attended the Gipsies in all their wanderings; the
+consequence has been, the Gipsy emigrants, after their first
+introduction to the various countries, have, by their actions,
+disgusted those whom they wished to cheat and rob, hence the
+treatment they have received.&nbsp; This cannot be said of the
+emigrant from England to America and our own or other
+colonies.&nbsp; An English emigrant, on account of his open
+conduct, straightforward character, and industry, has been always
+respected.&nbsp; In any country an English emigrant enters, owing
+to his industrious habits, an improvement takes place.&nbsp; In
+the country where an Indian emigrant of the Gipsy tribe enters
+the tendency is the reverse of this, so far as their influence is
+concerned&mdash;downward to the ground and to the dogs they
+go.&nbsp; In these two cases the difference between civilisation
+and Christianity and heathenism comes out to a marked degree.</p>
+<p>In a leading article in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, July,
+1878, upon the origin and wanderings of the Gipsies, the
+following <!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 24</span>appears:&mdash;&ldquo;We next
+encounter them in Corfu, probably before 1346, since there is
+good reason to believe them to be indicated under the name of
+<i>homines vageniti</i> in a document emanating from the Empress
+Catharine of Valois, who died in that year; certainly, about
+1370, when they were settled upon a fief recognised as the
+<i>feudum Acinganorum</i> by the Venetians, who, in 1386,
+succeeded to the right of the House of Valois in the
+island.&nbsp; This fief continued to subsist under the lordship
+of the Barons de Abitabulo and of the House of Prosalendi down to
+the abolition of feudalism in Corfu in the beginning of the
+present century.&nbsp; There remain to be noted two important
+pieces of evidence relating to this period.&nbsp; The first is
+contained in a charter of Miracco I., Waiwode of Wallachia, dated
+1387, renewing a grant of forty &lsquo;tents&rsquo; of Gipsies,
+made by his uncle, Ladislaus, to the monastery of St. Anthony of
+Vodici.&nbsp; Ladislaus began to reign in 1398.&nbsp; The second
+consists in the confirmation accorded in 1398 by the Venetian
+governor of Nanplion of the privileges extended by his
+predecessors to the Acingani dwelling in that district.&nbsp;
+Thus we find Gipsies wandering through Crete in 1322, settled in
+Corfu from 1346, enslaved in Wallachia about 1370, protected in
+the Peloponnesus before 1398.&nbsp; Nor is there is any reason to
+believe that their arrival in those countries was a recent
+one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Niebuhr, in his travels through Arabia, met with hordes of
+these strolling Gipsies in the warm district of Yemen, and M.
+Sauer in like manner found them established in the frozen regions
+of Siberia.&nbsp; His account of them, published in 1802, shows
+the Gipsy to be the same in Northern Russia as with us in
+England.&nbsp; He describes them as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;I was
+surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the
+Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several
+roving companies of these people had strolled into the city of
+Tobolsk.&rdquo;&nbsp; The governor thought of establishing a
+colony of them, but they were too cunning for <!-- page 25--><a
+name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>the simple
+Siberian peasant.&nbsp; He placed them on a footing with the
+peasants, and allotted a portion of land for cultivation with a
+view of making them useful members of society.&nbsp; They
+rejected houses even in this severe climate, and preferred open
+tents or sheds.&nbsp; In Hungary and Transylvania they dwell in
+tents during the summer, and for their winter quarters make holes
+ten or twelve feet deep in the earth.&nbsp; The women, one writer
+says, &ldquo;deal in old clothes, prostitution, wanton dances,
+and fortune-telling, and are indolent beggars and thieves.&nbsp;
+They have few disorders except the measles and small-pox, and
+weaknesses in their eyes caused by the smoke.&nbsp; Their physic
+is saffron put into their soup, with bleeding.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
+Hungary, as with other nations, they have no sense of religion,
+though with their usual cunning and hypocrisy they profess the
+established faith of every country in which they live.</p>
+<p>The following is an article taken from the <i>Saturday
+Review</i>, December 13th, 1879:&mdash;&ldquo;It has been
+repeated until the remark has become accepted as a sort of truism
+that the Gipsies are a mysterious race, and that nothing is known
+of their origin.&nbsp; And a few years ago this was true; but
+within those years so much has been discovered that at present
+there is really no more mystery attached to the beginning of
+those nomads than is peculiar to many other peoples.&nbsp; What
+these discoveries or grounds of belief are we shall proceed to
+give briefly, our limits not permitting the detailed citation of
+authorities.&nbsp; First, then, there appears to be every reason
+for believing with Captain Richard Burton that the Jats of
+North-Western India furnished so large a proportion of the
+emigrants or exiles who, from the tenth century, went out of
+India westward, that there is very little risk in assuming it as
+an hypothesis, at least, that they formed the <i>Hauptstamm</i>
+of the Gipsies of Europe.&nbsp; What other elements entered into
+these, with whom we are all familiar, will be considered
+presently.&nbsp; These Gipsies came from India, where caste is
+established and callings are <!-- page 26--><a
+name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>hereditary
+even among out-castes.&nbsp; It is not assuming too much to
+suppose that, as they evinced a marked aptitude for certain
+pursuits and an inveterate attachment to certain habits, their
+ancestors had in these respects resembled them for ages.&nbsp;
+These pursuits and habits were, that:&mdash;They were tinkers,
+smiths, and farriers.&nbsp; They dealt in horses, and were
+naturally familiar with them.&nbsp; They were without
+religion.&nbsp; They were unscrupulous thieves.&nbsp; Their women
+were fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy.&nbsp; They ate
+without scruple animals which had died a natural death, being
+especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been
+&lsquo;butchered by God,&rsquo; is still regarded even by the
+most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy.&nbsp; They
+flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for
+these and similar detested callings that in several European
+countries they long monopolised them.&nbsp; They made and sold
+mats, baskets, and small articles of wood.&nbsp; They have shown
+great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats; and it is a
+rule almost without exception that there is hardly a travelling
+company of such performers, or a theatre in Europe or America, in
+which there is not at least one person with some Romany
+blood.&nbsp; Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they
+retain it longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals.&nbsp;
+They speak an Aryan tongue, which agrees in the main with that of
+the Jats, but which contains words gathered from other Indian
+sources.&nbsp; Admitting these as the peculiar pursuits of the
+race, the next step should be to consider what are the principal
+nomadic tribes of Gipsies in India and Persia, and how far their
+occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe.&nbsp; That
+the Jats probably supplied the main stock has been
+admitted.&nbsp; This was a bold race of North-Western India which
+at one time had such power as to obtain important victories over
+the caliphs.&nbsp; They were broken and dispersed in the eleventh
+century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them wandering to the
+West.&nbsp; They were without religion, <!-- page 27--><a
+name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>&lsquo;of the
+horse, horsey,&rsquo; and notorious thieves.&nbsp; In this they
+agree with the European Gipsy.&nbsp; But they are not habitual
+eaters of <i>mullo balor</i>, or &lsquo;dead pork;&rsquo; they do
+not devour everything like dogs.&nbsp; We cannot ascertain that
+the Jat is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and
+basket-maker, a rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a pedlar.&nbsp; We
+do not know whether they are peculiar in India among the Indians
+for keeping their hair unchanged to old age, as do pure-blood
+English Gipsies.&nbsp; All of these things are, however, markedly
+characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers, or
+Gipsies, in India.&nbsp; From this we
+conclude&mdash;hypothetically&mdash;that the Jat warriors were
+supplemented by other tribes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Next to the word Rom itself, the most interesting in
+Romany is Zingan, or Tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty
+different forms by the people of every country, except England,
+to indicate the Gipsy.&nbsp; An incredible amount of far-fetched
+erudition has been wasted in pursuing this philological
+<i>ignis-fatuus</i>.&nbsp; That there are leather-working and
+saddle-working Gipsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a
+fair basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar
+Gipsies of Jat affinity in the Punjab.&nbsp; Wonderful it is that
+in this war of words no philologist has paid any attention to
+what the Gipsies themselves say about it.&nbsp; What they do say
+is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in the form of a
+legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient.&nbsp;
+It is given as follows in &lsquo;The People of Turkey,&rsquo; by
+a Consul&rsquo;s Daughter and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane
+Poole, London, 1878:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Although the Gipsies are not
+persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy and disdain felt for them
+evinces itself in many ways, and appears to be founded upon a
+strange legend current in the country.&nbsp; This legend says
+that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and
+arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which
+a wheel was attached.&rsquo;&nbsp; From the context of this
+imperfectly <!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 28</span>told story, it would appear as if the
+Gipsies could not travel further until this wheel should
+revolve:&mdash;&lsquo;Nobody appeared to be able to turn it, till
+in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit presented
+himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the chief,
+whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only
+when he had married his sister Guin.&nbsp; The chief accepted the
+advice, the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after
+this incident became that of the combined names of the brother
+and sister, Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of
+Turkey at the present day.&rsquo;&nbsp; The legend goes on to
+state that, in consequence of this unnatural marriage, the
+Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a Mohammedan saint to wander
+for ever on the face of the earth.&nbsp; The real meaning of the
+myth&mdash;for myth it is&mdash;is very apparent.&nbsp; Chen is a
+Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while
+Guin is almost universally rendered <i>Gan</i> or
+<i>Kan</i>.&nbsp; <i>Kan</i> is given by George Borrow as meaning
+sun, and we have ourselves heard English Gipsies call it
+<i>kan</i>, although <i>kam</i> is usually assumed to be
+right.&nbsp; Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun.&nbsp; And it
+may be remarked in this connection that the Roumanian Gipsies
+have a wild legend stating that the sun was a youth who, having
+fallen in love with his own sister, was condemned as the sun to
+wander for ever in pursuit of her turned into the moon.&nbsp; A
+similar legend exists in Greenland and the island of Borneo, and
+it was known to the old Irish.&nbsp; It was very natural that the
+Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently
+wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with
+that of these luminaries.&nbsp; It may be objected by those to
+whom the term &lsquo;solar myth&rsquo; is as a red rag that this
+story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself.&nbsp; This
+will probably not be far to seek.&nbsp; If it can be found among
+any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted, until
+something better turns up, as the possible origin of the greatly
+disputed Zingan.&nbsp; It is quite <!-- page 29--><a
+name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>as plausible
+as Dr. Mikliosch&rsquo;s derivation from the Acingani&mdash;
+&#787;&Alpha;&tau;&sigma;&#943;y&alpha;&nu;&omicron;&iota;&mdash;&lsquo;an
+unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia and
+Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story
+came from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek
+name.&nbsp; And if the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan,
+or Zin-gan, in the East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever
+received such a name from the Gorgios in Europe.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Professor Bott, in his &ldquo;Die Zigeuner in Europa und
+Asien,&rdquo; speaks of the Gipsies or <i>L&uuml;ry</i> as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;In the great Persian epic, the
+&lsquo;Shah-Nameh&rsquo;&mdash;in &lsquo;Book of Kings,&rsquo;
+Firdusi&mdash;relates an historical tradition to the following
+effect.&nbsp; About the year 420 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>,
+Behr&acirc;m G&ucirc;r, a wise and beneficent ruler of the
+Sassanian dynasty, finding that his poorer subjects languished
+for lack of recreation, bethought himself of some means by which
+to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of a laborious
+life.&nbsp; For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King
+of Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a
+strict bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his
+subjects and transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such
+persons as could by their arts help to lighten the burden of
+existence, and lend a charm to the monotony of toil.&nbsp; The
+result was the importation of twelve thousand minstrels, male and
+female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as well as an
+ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living
+independently, they might provide his people with gratuitous
+amusement.&nbsp; But at the end of one year they were found to
+have neglected agricultural operations, to have wasted their seed
+corn, and to be thus destitute of all means of subsistence.&nbsp;
+Then Behr&acirc;m G&ucirc;r, being angry, commanded them to take
+their asses and instruments, and roam through the country,
+earning a livelihood by their songs.&nbsp; The poet concludes as
+follows:&mdash;&lsquo;The L&uuml;ry, agreeably to this mandate,
+now wander about the world in search of employment, <!-- page
+30--><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+30</span>associating with dogs and wolves, and thieving on the
+road, by day and by night.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; These words were
+penned nearly nine centuries ago, and correctly describe the
+condition of one of the wandering tribes of Persia at the present
+day, and they have been identified by some travellers as members
+of the Gipsy family.</p>
+<p>Dr. Von Bott goes on to say this:&mdash;&ldquo;The tradition
+of the importation of the L&uuml;ry from India is related by no
+less than five Persian or Arab writers: first, about the year 940
+by Hamza, an Arab historian, born at Ispahan; next, as we have
+seen, by Firdusi; in the year 1126 by the author of the
+&lsquo;Modjmel-al-Yevaryk;&rsquo; in the fifteenth century by
+Mirkhoud, the historian of the Sassanides.&nbsp; The transplanted
+musicians are called by Hamza <i>Zuth</i>, and in some
+manuscripts of Mirkhoud&rsquo;s history the same name occurs,
+written, according to the Indian orthography, <i>Djatt</i>.&nbsp;
+These words are undistinguishable when pronounced, and, in fact,
+may be looked upon as phonetically equivalent, the Arabic
+<i>z</i> being the legitimate representative of the Indian
+<i>dj</i>.&nbsp; Now Zuth or Zatt, as it is indifferently
+written, is one of the designations of the Syrian Gipsies, and
+Djatt is the tribal appellative of the ancient Indian race still
+widely diffused throughout the Punjab and Beloochistan.&nbsp;
+Thus we find that the modern L&uuml;ry, who may, without fear of
+error, be classed as Persian Gipsies, derive a traditional origin
+from certain Indian minstrels called by an Arab author of the
+tenth century <i>Zuth</i>, and by a Persian historian of the
+fifteenth, <i>Djatt</i>, a name claimed, on the one hand by the
+Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the
+other by a people dwelling in the valley of the
+Indus.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Djatts were averse to religious
+speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances; the Hindu
+was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions of
+caste.&nbsp; From a remote period there were Djatt settlements
+along the shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the
+route by which the Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I
+have before <!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 31</span>intimated, rather than endure the
+life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan task-masters.&nbsp;
+Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no
+disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran
+through their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a
+hedge-sparrow in spring-time would bring into action, and cause
+them to bound like wild asses to the lanes, commons, and
+moors.&nbsp; They have always refused to submit to the Mohammedan
+faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither Brahma nor
+Budda, and have never adopted any national religion
+whatever.&nbsp; The church of the Gipsies, according to a popular
+saying in Hungary, &ldquo;was built of bacon, and long ago eaten
+by the dogs.&rdquo;&nbsp; Captain Richard F. Burton wrote in
+1849, in his work called the &ldquo;Sindh, and the Races that
+Inhabit the Valley of the Indus:&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;It seems
+probable, from the appearance and other peculiarities of the
+race, that the Djatts are connected by consanguinity with that
+singular race, the Gipsies.&rdquo;&nbsp; Some writers have
+endeavoured to prove that the Gipsies were formerly Egyptians;
+but, from several causes, they have never been able to show
+conclusively that such was the case.&nbsp; The wandering Gipsies
+in Egypt, at the present day, are not looked upon by the
+Egyptians as in any way related to them.&nbsp; Then, again,
+others have tried to prove that the Gipsies are the descendants
+of Hagar; but this argument falls to the ground simply because
+the connecting links have not been found.&nbsp; The two main
+reasons alleged by Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this
+theory are, first, that the Ishmaelites are wanderers; second,
+that they are smiths, or workers in iron and brass.&nbsp; The
+Mohammedans claim Ishmael as their father, and certainly they
+would be in a better position to judge upon this point eleven
+centuries ago then we possibly can be at this late date.&nbsp;
+And so, in like manner, where it is alleged that the Gipsies
+sprang from, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and
+Hungary.</p>
+<p>The following are specimens of Indian characters, taken <!--
+page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+32</span>from &ldquo;The People of India,&rdquo; prepared under
+the authority of the Indian Government, and edited by Dr. Forbes
+Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S.&nbsp; In speaking
+of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable
+character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of
+the large class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to
+Hinduism and unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a
+miserable condition of life as outcasts from the more civilised
+communities.&nbsp; Changars are, in general, petty thieves and
+pickpockets, and have no settled vocation.&nbsp; They object to
+continuous labour.&nbsp; The women make baskets, beg, pilfer, or
+sift and grind corn.&nbsp; They have no settled places of
+residence, and live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary
+sheds outside villages.&nbsp; They are professedly Hindus and
+worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but they make offerings at
+Mohammedan shrines.&nbsp; They have private ceremonies, separate
+from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the
+aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the
+most ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of
+malignant demons and malicious sprites.&nbsp; They marry
+exclusively among themselves, and polygamy is common.&nbsp; In
+appearance, both men and women are repulsively mean and wretched;
+the features of the women in particular being very ugly, and of a
+strong aboriginal type.&nbsp; The Changars are one of the most
+miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper
+provinces.&nbsp; They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by
+others, never changing, never improving, never advancing in the
+social rank, scale, or utility&mdash;outcast and foul parasites
+from the earliest ages, and they so remain.&nbsp; The Changars,
+like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits, indulging freely in
+intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured hemp leaves,
+to a great extent.&nbsp; Their food can hardly be particularised,
+and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however,
+there are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and
+eaten; and at marriages <!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 33</span>and other domestic occurrences feasts
+are provided, which usually end in foul orgies.&nbsp; In the
+clothes and person the Changars are decidedly unclean, and
+indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the tribes can
+hardly be exceeded.</p>
+<p>The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the
+far Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry
+appear as the Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan.&nbsp; In
+&ldquo;The People of India,&rdquo; we are told that the
+appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a marked
+difference from those who surround them (in Behar).&nbsp; The
+Hindus admit their claim to antiquity.&nbsp; Their designation in
+the Shastras is Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater.&nbsp; They are
+wanderers, they make baskets and mats, and are inveterate
+drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings on it.&nbsp;
+They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling
+all dead bodies.&nbsp; They eat all animals which have died a
+natural death, and are particularly fond of pork of this
+description.&nbsp; &ldquo;Notwithstanding profligate habits, many
+of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and it is not till
+sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get
+white.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads,
+shepherds, and robbers.&nbsp; Travellers speak of them as
+&ldquo;Gipsies.&rdquo;&nbsp; A specimen which we have of their
+language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably
+an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English
+Gipsy, and be called pure Romany.&nbsp; Finally, the ordinary Dom
+calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or
+the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana.&nbsp; <i>D</i> in Hindustani
+is found as <i>r</i> in English Gipsy speech&mdash;<i>e.g.</i>,
+<i>doi</i>, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as
+<i>roi</i>.&nbsp; Now in common Romany we have, even in
+London:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rom</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Gipsy.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Romni</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>A Gipsy wife.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Romnipen</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gipsydom.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><!-- page 34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+34</span>Of this word <i>rom</i> we shall more to say.&nbsp; It
+may be observed that there are in the Indian <i>Dom</i> certain
+distinctly-marked and degrading features, characteristic of the
+European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of
+warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the
+caliphs.&nbsp; Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling
+corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness,
+does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jats.&nbsp; Yet
+the European Gipsies are all this, and at the same time
+&lsquo;horsey&rsquo; like the Jats.&nbsp; Is it not extremely
+probable that during the &ldquo;out-wandering&rdquo; the Dom
+communicated his name and habits to his fellow-emigrants?</p>
+<p>The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and
+other European Gipsies appears to link them with the L&uuml;ri of
+Persia.&nbsp; These are distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they
+are wanderers, thieves, fortune-tellers, and minstrels.&nbsp; The
+Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that about the year 420 <span
+class="smcap">a.d.</span>, Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent
+to Behram Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten
+thousand minstrels, male and female, called
+<i>L&uuml;ri</i>.&nbsp; Though lands were allotted to them, with
+corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable
+vagabonds.&nbsp; Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir
+Henry Pottinger says:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of
+Europe.&rdquo;&nbsp; [&ldquo;Travels in Beloochistan and
+Scinde,&rdquo; p. 153.]&nbsp; &ldquo;They speak a dialect
+peculiar to themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are
+notorious for kidnapping and pilfering.&nbsp; Their principal
+pastimes are drinking, dancing, and music. . . . They are
+invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and monkeys that are
+broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks.&nbsp; In
+each company there are always two or three members who profess .
+. . modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into
+every society.&rdquo;&nbsp; This account, especially with the
+mention of trained bears and monkeys, identifies them with the
+Ricinari, or bear-leading <!-- page 35--><a
+name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>Gipsies of
+Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania.&nbsp; A party of
+these lately came to England.&nbsp; We have seen these Syrian
+Ricinari in Egypt.&nbsp; They are unquestionably Gipsies, and it
+is probable that many of them accompanied the early migration of
+Jats and Doms.</p>
+<p>The following is the description of another low-caste,
+wandering tribe of Indians, taken from &ldquo;The People of
+India,&rdquo; called &ldquo;Sanseeas,&rdquo; vagrants of no
+particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi.&nbsp;
+The editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been
+vagrants from the earliest periods of Indian history.&nbsp; They
+may have accompanied Aryan immigrants or invaders, or they may
+have risen out of aboriginal tribes; but whatever their origin,
+they have not altered in any respect, and continue to prey upon
+its population as they have ever done, and will continue to do as
+long as they are in existence, unless they are forcibly
+restrained by our Government and converted, as the Thugs have
+been, into useful members of society.</p>
+<p>They are essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste
+fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible
+calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their
+hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence
+whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any
+disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the
+people.&nbsp; When they are not engaged in acts of crime, they
+are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the
+most abject poverty.&nbsp; The women and children have the true
+whine of the professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged
+bazaars, receiving charity and stealing what they can.&nbsp; They
+sell mock baubles in some instances, but only as a cloak to other
+enterprises, and as a pretence of an honest calling.&nbsp; The
+men are clever at assuming disguises; and being often intelligent
+and even polite in their demeanour, can become religious
+devotees, travelling merchants, or whatever they need to further
+their ends.&nbsp; They are perfectly unscrupulous and very daring
+in their proceedings.&nbsp; <!-- page 36--><a
+name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>The Sanseeas
+are not only Thugs and Dacoits, but kidnappers of children, and
+in particular of female children, who are readily sold even at
+very tender ages to be brought up as household slaves, or to be
+educated by professional classes for the purpose of
+prostitution.&nbsp; These crimes are the peculiar offence of the
+women members of the tribe.&nbsp; Generally a few families in
+company wander over the whole of Northern India, but are also
+found in the Deccan, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in
+association with Khimjurs, or a class of Dacoits, called
+Mooltanes.&nbsp; It is, perhaps, a difficult question for
+Government to deal with, but it is not impossible, as the Thugs
+have been employed in useful and profitable arts, and thus
+reclaimed from pursuits in which they have never known in regard
+to others the same instincts of humanity which exist among
+ourselves.&nbsp; Sanseeas have as many wives and concubines as
+they can support.&nbsp; Some of the women are good-looking, but
+with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of
+suspicion in their features which is repulsive.&nbsp; They are,
+as a class, in a condition of miserable poverty, living from hand
+to mouth, idle, disreputable, restless, without any settled
+homes, and for the most part without even habitations.&nbsp; They
+have no distinct language of their own, but speak a dialect of
+Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or <i>argot</i> terms of
+their own that is unintelligible to other classes.&nbsp; In
+&ldquo;The People of India&rdquo; mention is made of another
+class of wandering Indians, called Nuts, or N&acirc;ths, who
+correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like these, have no
+settled home.&nbsp; They are constant thieves.&nbsp; The men are
+clever as acrobats.&nbsp; The women attend their performances,
+and sing or play on native drums or tambourines.&nbsp; The Nuts
+do not mix with or intermarry with other tribes.&nbsp; They live
+for the most part in tents made of black blanket stuff, and move
+from village to village through all parts of the country.&nbsp;
+They are as a marked race, and generally distrusted wherever they
+go.</p>
+<p><!-- page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+37</span>They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats,
+fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in
+tents.&nbsp; They eat everything, except garlic.&nbsp; There are
+also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by travellers as
+&ldquo;Gipsies.&rdquo;&nbsp; They are travelling merchants or
+pedlars.&nbsp; Among all of these wanderers there is a current
+slang of the roads, as in England.&nbsp; This slang extends even
+into Persia.&nbsp; Each tribe has its own, but the general name
+for it is <i>Rom</i>.</p>
+<p>It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in
+Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded
+even by the Nats and Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and
+distinctly Gipsy.&nbsp; &ldquo;We have met,&rdquo; says one
+writer, &ldquo;in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of
+Calcutta.&nbsp; This man had in his youth lived with these
+wanderers, and been, in fact, one of them.&nbsp; He had also, as
+is common with intelligent Mohammedans, written his
+autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of the Indian Gipsy
+language.&nbsp; This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his
+English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so
+&lsquo;because she was tired of seeing a book lying about which
+she could not understand.&rsquo;&nbsp; With the assistance of an
+eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly familiar with both
+Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully examined.&nbsp; He
+declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, &lsquo;like
+English Gipsies here.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;People in India called
+them Trablus or Syrians, a misapplied word, derived from a town
+in Syria, which in turn bears the Arabic name for Tripoli.&nbsp;
+But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus, and not Syrian
+Gipsies.&nbsp; They had a peculiar language, and called both this
+tongue and themselves <i>Rom</i>.&nbsp; In it bread was called
+Manro.&rsquo;&nbsp; Manro is all over Europe the Gipsy word for
+<i>bread</i>.&nbsp; In English Romany it is softened into
+<i>maro</i> or <i>morro</i>.&nbsp; Captain Burton has since
+informed us that <i>manro</i> is the Afghan word for bread; but
+this our ex-Gipsy did not know.&nbsp; He merely said that he did
+not know it in any Indian dialect except that of the <!-- page
+38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>Rom,
+and that Rom was the general slang of the road, derived, as he
+supposed, from the Trablus.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These are, then, the very Gipsies of Gipsies in India.&nbsp;
+They are thieves, fortune-tellers, and vagrants.&nbsp; But
+whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the
+West we cannot establish.&nbsp; Their language and their name
+would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that
+the word Rom, like Dom, is one of wide dissemination, Dom being a
+Syrian Gipsy word for the race.&nbsp; And the very great majority
+of even English Gipsy words are Hindu, with an admixture of
+Persian, and not belonging to a slang of any kind.&nbsp; As in
+India, <i>churi</i> is a knife, <i>nak</i>, the nose,
+<i>balia</i>, hairs, and so on, with others which would be among
+the first to be furnished with slang equivalents.&nbsp; And yet
+these very Gipsies are <i>Rom</i>, and the wife is a
+<i>Romni</i>, and they use words which are not Hindu in common
+with European Gipsies.&nbsp; It is therefore not improbable that
+in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as they
+are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at
+least of the real stock.&nbsp; It is to be desired that some
+resident in India would investigate the Trablus.</p>
+<p>Grellmann in his German treatise on Gipsies,
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and
+chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in
+their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and
+kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding
+benefits with the most insidious malice.&nbsp; Fear makes them
+slavishly compliant when under subjection, but having nothing to
+apprehend, like other timorous people, they are cruel.&nbsp;
+Desire of revenge often causes them to take the most desperate
+resolutions.&nbsp; To such a degree of violence is their fury
+sometimes excited, that a mother has been known in the excess of
+passion to take her small infant by the feet, and therewith
+strike the object of her anger.&nbsp; They are so addicted to
+drinking as to sacrifice what is most necessary <!-- page 39--><a
+name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>to them that
+they may feast their palates with ardent spirits.&nbsp; Nothing
+can exceed the unrestrained depravity of manners existing among
+them.&nbsp; Unchecked by any idea of shame they give way to every
+libidinous desire.&nbsp; The mother endeavours by the most
+scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to
+sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the
+seducer of others.&nbsp; Laziness is so prevalent among them that
+were they to subsist by their own labour only, they would hardly
+have bread for two of the seven days in the week.&nbsp; This
+indolence increases their propensity to stealing and
+cheating.&nbsp; They seek to avail themselves of every
+opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires.&nbsp; Their
+universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity,
+ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery,
+thievishness, and cunning, though not deficient in capacity and
+cleverness, renders them people of no use in society.&nbsp; The
+boys will run like wild things after carrion, let it stink ever
+so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle, there
+these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest
+numbers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and
+violent their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the
+man who comes within their clutches, if he does not possess an
+amount of tact sufficient to cope with them.&nbsp; A man who
+desires to tackle the Gipsies must have his hands out of his
+pockets, &ldquo;all his buttons on,&rdquo; &ldquo;his head
+screwed upon the right place,&rdquo; and no fool, or he will be
+swamped before he leaves the place.&nbsp; This I experienced
+myself a week or two since.&nbsp; During the months of November
+and December of last year, my friend, the <i>Illustrated London
+News</i>, had a number of faithful sketches showing Gipsy life
+round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I
+have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &amp;c.,
+encouraged by the untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a
+clergyman, not overdone with too much wisdom and <!-- page
+40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+40</span>common sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N---
+Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the
+neighbour hood of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that
+the minister of Christ Church did it designedly, if he did, and
+with the idea of stopping the work of education among the Gipsy
+children&mdash;it is certain that this farthing rushlight has
+mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a friend wrote to
+me, stating that the next time I went to the neighbourhood of
+N--- Hill I &ldquo;must look out for a warm reception,&rdquo; to
+which I replied, that &ldquo;the sooner I had it the better, and
+I would go for it in a day or two;&rdquo; accordingly I went,
+believing in the old Book, &ldquo;Resist the devil and he will
+flee from thee.&rdquo;&nbsp; Upon my first approach towards them,
+I was met with sour looks, scowls, and not over polite language,
+but with a little pleasantry, chatting, and a few little things,
+such as Christmas cards, oranges to give to the children, the sun
+began to beam upon their countenances, and all passed off with
+smiles, good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a
+man who had the colour and expression upon his face of his
+satanic majesty from the regions below.&nbsp; It took me all my
+time to smile and say kind things while he was pacing up and down
+opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his eye like fire,
+step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge.&nbsp; He was speaking
+out in no unmistakable language, &ldquo;I should like to see you
+hung like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should,
+and I mean it from my heart.&rdquo;&nbsp; When I asked him to
+point out anything I had said or done that was not correct, he
+was in a fix, and all he could say was, that &ldquo;I would be
+likely to stop his game.&rdquo;&nbsp; Every now and then he would
+thrust his hands into his pockets, as if feeling for his
+clasp-knife, and then again, occasionally, he would give a shrug
+of the shoulders, as if he felt not at all satisfied.&nbsp; I
+felt in my pocket, and opened my small penknife.&nbsp; I thought
+it might do a little service in case he should &ldquo;close in
+upon me.&rdquo;&nbsp; Just to feel his pulse, and set his heart a
+beating, I told him, good-humouredly, that <!-- page 41--><a
+name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>&ldquo;I was
+not afraid of half-a-dozen better men than he was if they would
+come one at a time, but did not think I could tackle them all at
+once.&rdquo;&nbsp; This caused him to open his eyes wider than I
+had seen them before, as if in wonder and amazement at the kind
+of fellow he had come in contact with.&nbsp; I told him I was
+afraid that he would find me a queer kind of customer.&nbsp;
+Gipsies as a rule are cowards, and this feature I could see in
+his actions and countenance.&nbsp; However, after talking matters
+over for some time we parted friends, feeling thankful that the
+storm had abated.</p>
+<p>The Gipsies plan of attacking a house, town, city, or country
+for the sake of pillage, plunder, and gain remains the same
+to-day as it did eight centuries ago.&nbsp; They do not generally
+resort to open violence as the brigands of Spain, Turkey and
+other parts of the East.&nbsp; They follow out an organised
+system, at least, they go to work upon different lines.&nbsp; In
+the first place, they send a kind of advance-guard to find out
+where the loot and soft hearts lay and the weaknesses of those
+who hold them, and when this has been done they bring all the
+arts their evil disposition can devise to bear upon the weak
+points till they are successful.&nbsp; When Mahmood was returning
+with his victorious army from the war in the eleventh century
+with the spoils and plunder of war upon their backs, and while
+the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured away with
+the Gipsy girls&rsquo; &ldquo;witching eyes,&rdquo; the old
+Gipsies, numbering some hundreds, who where camping in the
+neighbourhood, bolted off with their war prizes; this so enraged
+Mahmood, after finding out that he had been sold by a lot of
+low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army after them
+and slew the whole band of these wandering Indians.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p42b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A gentleman gipsy&rsquo;s tent, and his dog, &ldquo;Grab,&rdquo;
+Hackney Marshes"
+title=
+"A gentleman gipsy&rsquo;s tent, and his dog, &ldquo;Grab,&rdquo;
+Hackney Marshes"
+src="images/p42s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Sometimes they will put on a hypocritical air of religious
+sanctity; at other times they will dress their prettiest girls in
+Oriental finery and gaudy colours on purpose to catch the unwary;
+at other times they will try to lay hold of the <!-- page 42--><a
+name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>sympathic by
+sending out their old women and tottering men dressed in rags;
+and at other times they will endeavour to lay hold of the
+benevolent by sending out women heavily laden with babies, and in
+this way they have Gipsyised and are still Gipsyising our own
+country from the time they landed in Scotland in the year 1514,
+until they besieged London now more than two centuries ago,
+planting their encampments in the most degraded parts on the
+outskirts of our great city; and this holds good of them even to
+this day.&nbsp; They are never to be seen living in the throng of
+a town or in the thick of a fight.&nbsp; In sketching the plan of
+campaigning for the day, the girls with pretty &ldquo;everlasting
+flowers&rdquo; go in one direction, the women with babies tackle
+the tradesmen and householders by selling skewers, clothes-pegs,
+and other useful things, but in reality to beg, and the old women
+with the assistance of the servant girls face the brass knockers
+through the back kitchen.&nbsp; The men are all this time either
+loitering about the tents or skulking down the lanes spotting out
+their game for the night, with their lurcher dogs at their
+heels.&nbsp; Thus the Gipsy lives and thus the Gipsy dies, and is
+buried like a dog; his tent destroyed, and his soul flown to
+another world to await the reckoning day.&nbsp; He can truthfully
+say as he leaves his tenement of clay behind, &ldquo;No man
+careth for my soul.&rdquo;&nbsp; Charles Wesley, no doubt, in his
+day, had seen vast numbers of these wandering English heathens in
+various parts of the country as he travelled about on his
+missionary tour, and it is not at all improbable but that they
+were in his mind when those soul-inspiring, elevating, and
+tear-fetching lines were penned by him in 1748, and first
+published by subscription in his &ldquo;Hymns and Sacred
+Poems,&rdquo; 2 vols., 1749, the profits of which enabled him to
+get a wife and set up housekeeping on his own account at
+Bristol.&nbsp; They are words that have healed thousands of
+broken hearts, fixed the hopes of the downcast on heaven, and
+sent the sorrowful on his way rejoicing; and they are words that
+will live as <!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 43</span>long as there is a Methodist family
+upon earth to lisp its song of triumph.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Come on, my partners in distress,<br />
+My comrades through the wilderness,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who still your bodies feel;<br />
+A while forget your griefs and fears,<br />
+And look beyond this vale of tears,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To that celestial hill.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Beyond the bounds of time and space,<br
+/>
+Look forward to that heavenly place,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The saints&rsquo; secure abode;<br />
+On faith&rsquo;s strong eagle-pinions rise,<br />
+And force your passage to the skies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And scale the mount of God.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Who suffer with our Master here,<br />
+We shall before His face appear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And by His side sit down;<br />
+To patient faith the prize is sure;<br />
+And all that to the end endure<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The cross, shall wear the crown.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is impossible to give anything like a correct number of
+Gipsies that are outside Europe.&nbsp; Many travellers have
+attempted to form some idea of the number, and have come to the
+conclusion that there were not less than 3,000 families in Persia
+in 1856, and in 1871 there were not less than 67,000 Gipsies in
+Armenia and Asiatic Turkey.&nbsp; In Egypt of one tribe only
+there are 16,000.&nbsp; With regard to the number of Gipsies
+there are in America no one has been able to compute; but by this
+time the number must be considerable, for stragglers have been
+wending their way there from England, Europe, and other parts of
+the world for some time.</p>
+<p>Mikliosch, in 1878, stated that there are not less than
+700,000 in Europe.&nbsp; Turkey, previous to the war with Russia,
+104,750, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1874 contained 9,537.&nbsp;
+Servia in 1874 had 24,691; in 1873 Montenegro <!-- page 44--><a
+name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>had 500, and
+in Roumania there are at the present time from 200,000 to
+300,000.&nbsp; According to various official estimates in Austria
+there are about 10,000, and in 1846 Bohemia contained 13,500, and
+Hungary 159,000.&nbsp; In Transylvania in 1850 there were 78,923,
+and in Hungary proper there were in 1864, 36,842.&nbsp; In Spain
+there are 40,000; in France from 3,000 to 6,000; in Germany and
+Italy, 34,000; Scandinavia, 1,500; in Russia they numbered in
+1834, 48,247, exclusive of Polish Gipsies.&nbsp; Ten years later
+they numbered 1,427,539, and in 1877 the number is given as
+11,654.&nbsp; It seems somewhat strange that the number of
+Gipsies should be in 1844, 1,427,539, and thirty-five years later
+the number should have been reduced to 11,654.&nbsp; Presuming
+these figures to be correct, the question arises, What has become
+of the 1,415,885 during the last thirty-five years?</p>
+<p>As regards the number of Gipsies in England, Hoyland in his
+day, 1816, calculated that there were between 15,000 and 18,000,
+and goes on to say this:&mdash;&ldquo;It has come to the
+knowledge of the writer what foundation there has been for the
+report commonly circulated that a member of Parliament had stated
+in the House of Commons, when speaking on some question relating
+to Ireland, that there were not less than 36,000 Gipsies in Great
+Britain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To make up such an aggregate the numerous hordes must
+have been included who traverse most of the nation with carts and
+asses for the sale of earthenware, and live out of doors great
+part of the year, after the manner of the Gipsies.&nbsp; These
+potters, as they are commonly called, acknowledge that Gipsies
+have intermingled with them, and their habits are very
+similar.&nbsp; They take their children along with them on
+travel, and, like the Gipsies, regret that they are without
+education.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Hoyland says that he endeavoured to
+obtain the number of pot-hawking families of this description who
+visited the earthenware manufactories at Tunstall, Burslem,
+Longport, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, <!-- page 45--><a
+name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>Fenton,
+Longton, and other places in Staffordshire, but without
+success.</p>
+<p>Borrow, in his time, 1843, put the number as upwards of
+10,000.&nbsp; The last census shows that there were under 4,000;
+but then it should be borne in mind that the Gipsies decidedly
+objected to their numbers being taken.&nbsp; Their reason for
+taking this step and putting obstacles in the way of the
+census-takers has never been stated, except that they looked upon
+it with a superstitious regard and dislike, the same as they look
+upon photographers, painters, and artists, as kind of
+<i>Bengaw</i>, for whom Gipsy models will sit for
+<i>soonakei</i>, <i>Roopeno</i>, or even a
+<i>posh-hovi</i>.&nbsp; They told me that during the day the
+census was taken they made it a point to always be upon the move,
+and skulking about in the dark.&nbsp; The census returns for the
+number of canal-boatmen gives under 12,000.&nbsp; The Duke of
+Richmond stated in the House of Lords, August 8, 1877, that there
+were between 29,000 and 80,000 canal boatmen.&nbsp; The number I
+published in the daily papers in 1873, viz., 100,000 men, women,
+and children is being verified as the Canal Boats Act is being
+put into operation.</p>
+<p>At a pretty good rough estimate I reckon there are at least
+from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom.&nbsp; Apart
+from London, if I may take ten of the Midland counties as a fair
+average, there are close upon 3,000 Gipsy families living in
+tents and vans in the by-lanes, and attending fairs, shows,
+&amp;c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and four
+children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched
+abodes called domiciles, this would show us 18,000; and judging
+from my own inquiries and observation, and also from the reliable
+statements of others who have mixed among them, there are not
+less than 2,000 on the outskirts of London in various nooks,
+corners, and patches of open spaces.&nbsp; Thus it will be seen,
+according to this statement, we shall have 1,000 Gipsies for
+every 1,750,000 of the inhabitants in our great London; and this
+proportion will be fully borne out throughout the rest of the
+country; <!-- page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 46</span>so taking either the Midland counties
+or London as an average, we arrive at pretty much the same
+number&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, 15,000 to 20,000 in our midst, and
+moving about from place to place.&nbsp; Upon Leicester Race
+Course, at the last races, I counted upwards of ninety tents,
+vans, and shows; connected with each there would be an average of
+man, woman, and three children.&nbsp; A considerable number of
+Gipsies would also be at Nottingham, for the Goose Fair was on
+about the same time.&nbsp; One gentleman tells me that he has
+seen as many as 5,000 Gipsies collected together at one time in
+the North of England.</p>
+<p>Of this 20,000, 19,500 cannot read a sentence and write a
+letter.&nbsp; The highest state of their education is to make
+crosses, signs, and symbols, and to ask people to tell them the
+names of the streets, and read the mile-posts for them.&nbsp; The
+full value of money they know perfectly well.&nbsp; Out of this
+20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering about
+the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the
+alphabet.&nbsp; The others mostly will tell you that they have
+&ldquo;finished their education,&rdquo; and when questioned on
+the point and asked to put three letters together, you put them
+into a corner, and they are as dumb as mutes.&nbsp; Of the whole
+number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds might be
+attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of
+education in this way.&nbsp; Then, again, we have some 1,500 to
+2,000 families of our own countrymen travelling about the country
+with their families selling hardware and other goods, from
+Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, the
+Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing towns, from
+London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children
+running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told
+me, the little education they receive in the winter.</p>
+<p>Caravans will be moving about in our midst with &ldquo;fat
+babies,&rdquo; &ldquo;wax-work models,&rdquo; &ldquo;wonders of
+the age,&rdquo; &ldquo;the greatest giant in the world,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;a living skeleton,&rdquo; &ldquo;the <!-- page 47--><a
+name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>smallest man
+alive,&rdquo; &ldquo;menageries,&rdquo; &ldquo;wild beast
+shows,&rdquo; &ldquo;rifle galleries,&rdquo; and like things
+connected with these caravans; there will be families of
+children, none of whom, or at any rate but very few of them, are
+receiving an education and attending any school, and living
+together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van.&nbsp;
+In addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of
+school age &ldquo;on the road&rdquo; tramping with their parents,
+who sleep in common lodging-houses, and who might be brought
+under educational supervision on the plan I shall suggest later
+on in this book.&nbsp; Altogether, with the Gipsies, we have a
+population of over 30,000 outside our educational and sanitary
+laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with
+our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I was a bruised reed<br />
+Pluck&rsquo;d from the common corn,<br />
+Play&rsquo;d on, rude-handled, worn,<br />
+And flung aside, aside.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Dr.
+Grosart</span>, &ldquo;Sunday at Home.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><!-- page 48--><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+48</span>Part II.<br />
+Commencement of the Gipsy Crusade.</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p48b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Gipsy&rsquo;s home for man, wife,  and six children, Hackney
+Wick"
+title=
+"A Gipsy&rsquo;s home for man, wife,  and six children, Hackney
+Wick"
+src="images/p48s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>When as a lad I trudged along in the brick-yards, now more
+than forty years ago, I remember most vividly that the popular
+song of the <i>employ&eacute;s</i> of that day was</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;When lads and lasses in their best<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were dress&rsquo;d from top to toe,<br />
+In the days we went a-gipsying<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A long time ago;<br />
+In the days we went a-gipsying,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A long time ago.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Every &ldquo;brick-yard lad&rdquo; and &ldquo;brick-yard
+wench&rdquo; who would not join in singing these lines was always
+looked upon as a &ldquo;stupid donkey,&rdquo; and the consequence
+was that upon all occasions, when excitement was needed as a
+whip, they were &ldquo;struck up;&rdquo; especially would it be
+the case when the limbs of the little brick and clay carrier
+began to totter and were &ldquo;fagging up.&rdquo;&nbsp; When the
+task-master perceived the &ldquo;gang&rdquo; had begun to
+&ldquo;slinker&rdquo; he would shout out at the top of his voice,
+&ldquo;Now, lads and wenches, strike up with the:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In the days we went a-gipsying, a
+long time ago.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And as a result more work was ground out of the little English
+slave.&nbsp; Those words made such an impression upon me at the
+time that I used to wonder what &ldquo;gipsying&rdquo;
+meant.&nbsp; Somehow or other I imagined that it was connected
+with fortune-telling, thieving and stealing in one form or other,
+especially as the lads used to sing it with &ldquo;gusto&rdquo;
+<!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+49</span>when they had been robbing the potato field to have
+&ldquo;a potato fuddle,&rdquo; while they were &ldquo;oven
+tenting&rdquo; in the night time.&nbsp; Roasted potatoes and cold
+turnips were always looked upon as a treat for the
+&ldquo;brickies.&rdquo;&nbsp; I have often vowed and said many
+times that I would, if spared, try to find out what
+&ldquo;gipsying&rdquo; really was.&nbsp; It was a puzzle I was
+always anxious to solve.&nbsp; Many times I have been like the
+horse that shies at them as they camp in the ditch bank, half
+frightened out of my wits, and felt anxious to know either more
+or less of them.&nbsp; From the days when carrying clay and
+loading canal-boats was my toil and &ldquo;gipsying&rdquo; my
+song, scarcely a week has passed without the words</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;When lads and lasses in their best<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were dress&rsquo;d from top to toe,<br />
+In the days we went a-gipsying<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A long time ago,&rdquo;</p>
+<p>ringing in my ears, and at times when busily engaged upon
+other things, &ldquo;In the days we went a-gipsying&rdquo; would
+be running through my mind.&nbsp; In meditation and solitude; by
+night and by day; at the top of the hill, and down deep in the
+dale; in the throng and battle of life; at the deathbed scene;
+through evil report and good report these words, &ldquo;In the
+days we went a-gipsying,&rdquo; were ever and anon at my
+tongue&rsquo;s end.&nbsp; The other part of the song I quickly
+forgot, but these words have stuck to me ever since.&nbsp; On
+purpose to try to find out what fortune-telling was, when in my
+teens I used to walk after working hours from Tunstall to Fenton,
+a distance of six miles, to see &ldquo;old Elijah Cotton,&rdquo;
+a well-known character in the Potteries, who got his living by
+it, to ask him all sorts of questions.&nbsp; Sometimes he would
+look at my hands, at other times he would put my hand into his,
+and hold it while he was reading out of the Bible, and burning
+something like brimstone-looking powder&mdash;the forefinger of
+the other hand had to rest upon a particular passage or verse; at
+other times he would give me some of this <!-- page 50--><a
+name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+50</span>yellow-looking stuff in a small paper to wear against my
+left breast, and some I had to burn exactly as the clock struck
+twelve at night, under the strictest secrecy.&nbsp; The stories
+this fortune-teller used to relate to me as to his wonderful
+power over the spirits of the other world were very amusing, aye,
+and over &ldquo;the men and women of this
+generation.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was frequently telling me that he had
+&ldquo;fetched men from Manchester in the dead of the night
+flying through the air in the course of an hour;&rdquo; and this
+kind of rubbish he used to relate to those who paid him their
+shillings and half-crowns to have their fortunes told.&nbsp; My
+visits lasted for a little time till he told me that he could do
+nothing more, as I was &ldquo;not one of his sort.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Like Thomas called Didymus, &ldquo;hard of belief.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Except an occasional glance at the Gipsies as I have passed them
+on the road-side, the subject has been allowed to rest until the
+commencement of last year, when I mentioned the matter to my
+friends, who, in reply, said I should find it a difficult task;
+this had the effect of causing a little hesitation to come over
+my sensibilities, and in this way, between hesitation and doubt,
+matters went on till one day in July last year, when the voice of
+Providence and the wretched condition of the Gipsy children
+seemed to speak to me in language that I thought it would be
+perilous to disregard.&nbsp; On my return home one evening I
+found a lot of Gipsies in the streets; it struck me very forcibly
+that the time for action had now arrived, and with this view in
+mind I asked Moses Holland&mdash;for that was his name, and he
+was the leader of the gang&mdash;to call into my house for some
+knives which required grinding, and while his mate was grinding
+the knives, for which I had to pay two shillings, I was getting
+all the information I could out of him about the Gipsy
+children&mdash;this with some additional information given to me
+by Mr. Clayton and several other Gipsies at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
+together with a Gipsy woman&rsquo;s tale to my wife, mentioned in
+my &ldquo;Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards <!-- page
+51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>of
+England,&rdquo; brought forth my first letter upon the condition
+of the poor Gipsy children as it appeared in the <i>Standard</i>,
+<i>Daily Chronicle</i>, and nearly every other daily paper on
+August 14th of last year:&mdash;&ldquo;Some years since my
+attention was drawn to the condition of these poor neglected
+children, of whom there are many families eking out an existence
+in the Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire lanes.&nbsp;
+Two years since a pitiful appeal was made in one of our local
+papers asking me to take up the cause of the poor Gipsy children;
+but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one with
+time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue.&nbsp;
+Sir, a few weeks since our legislators took proper steps to
+prevent the maiming of the little show children, who are put
+through excruciating practices to please a British public, and
+they would have done well at the same time if they had taken
+steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant&rsquo;s life
+having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children,
+dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church
+bells&mdash;if living under the body of an old cart, protected by
+patched coverlets, can be called living in tents&mdash;on the
+roadside in the midst of grass, sticks, stones, and mud; and they
+would have done well also if they had put out their hand to
+rescue from idleness, ignorance, and heathenism our roadside
+arabs, <i>i.e.</i>, the children living in vans, and who attend
+fairs, wakes, &amp;c.&nbsp; Recently I came across some of these
+wandering tribes, and the following facts gleaned from them will
+show that missionaries and schoolmasters have not done much for
+them.&nbsp; Moses Holland, who has been a Gipsy nearly all his
+life, says he knows about two hundred and fifty families of
+Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties and thinks that a similar
+proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom.&nbsp;
+He has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of
+five miles.&nbsp; He thinks there will be an average of five
+children in each tent.&nbsp; He has seen as many as ten or twelve
+children in some tents, and not many of <!-- page 52--><a
+name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>them able to
+read or write.&nbsp; His child of six months old&mdash;with his
+wife ill at the same time in the tent&mdash;sickened, died, and
+was &lsquo;laid out&rsquo; by him, and it was also buried out of
+one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar,
+last January.&nbsp; When the poor thing died he had not sixpence
+in his pocket.&nbsp; In shaking hands with him as we parted his
+face beamed with gladness, and he said that I was the first who
+had held out the hand to him during the last twenty years.&nbsp;
+At another time later on I came across Bazena Clayton, who said
+that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive,
+several of them being born in a roadside tent.&nbsp; She says
+that she was married out of one of these tents; and her brother
+died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.&nbsp; This poor woman knows about three
+hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern
+counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies
+travelling in Lincolnshire at the present time.&nbsp; She said
+she could not read herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in
+twenty can.&nbsp; She has travelled all her life.&nbsp; Her
+mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother
+of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent.&nbsp; A
+Gipsy lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate
+for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and
+game-preserves.&nbsp; They sell a few clothes-lines and
+clothes-pegs, but they seldom use such things themselves.&nbsp;
+Washing would destroy their beauty.&nbsp; Telling fortunes to
+servant girls and old maids is a source of income to some of
+them.&nbsp; They sleep, but in many instances lie crouched
+together, like so many dogs, regardless of either sex or
+age.&nbsp; They have blood, bone, muscle, and brains, which are
+applied in many instances to wrong purposes.&nbsp; To have
+between three and four thousand men and women, and fifteen
+thousand children classed in the census as vagrants and
+vagabonds, roaming all over the country, in ignorance and evil
+training, that carries peril with it, is not a pleasant look-out
+for the future; and I <!-- page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 53</span>claim on the grounds of justice and
+equity, that if these poor children, living in vans and tents and
+under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places, they
+shall be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act
+of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the Compulsory
+Clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and
+civilised as other children.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The foregoing letter, as it appeared in the <i>Standard</i>,
+brought forth the following leading article upon the subject the
+following day, August 15th, in which the writer
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;We yesterday published a letter from Mr.
+George Smith, whose efforts to ameliorate and humanise the
+floating and transitory population of our canals and navigable
+rivers have already borne good fruit, in which he calls attention
+to the deserted and almost hopeless lot of English Gipsy
+children.&nbsp; Moses Holland&mdash;the Hollands are a Gipsy
+family almost as old as the Lees or the Stanleys, and a Holland
+always holds high rank among the &lsquo;Romany&rsquo;
+folk&mdash;assures Mr. Smith that in ten of the Midland counties
+he knows some two hundred and fifty families of Gipsies, and that
+none of their children can read or write.&nbsp; Bazena Clayton,
+an old lady of caste, almost equal to that of a Lee or a Holland,
+confirms the story.&nbsp; She has lived in tents all her
+life.&nbsp; She was born in a tent, married from a tent, has
+brought up a family of sixteen children, more or less, under the
+same friendly shelter, and expects to breathe her last in a
+tent.&nbsp; That she can neither read nor write goes without
+saying; although doubtless she knows well enough how to
+&lsquo;kair her patteran,&rsquo; or to make that strange cross in
+the dust which a true Gipsy alway leaves behind him at his last
+place of sojourn, as a mark for those of his tribe who may come
+upon his track.&nbsp; &lsquo;Patteran,&rsquo; it may be remarked,
+is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own
+&lsquo;path;&rsquo; and the least philological raking among the
+chaff of the Gipsy dialect will show their secret <i>argot</i> to
+be, as Mr. Leland calls it, &lsquo;a curious old tongue, not
+merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in <!-- page 54--><a
+name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>point of age
+an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient
+language.&rsquo;&nbsp; No Sanscrit or even Greek scholar can fail
+to be struck by the fact that, in the Gipsy tongue, a road is a
+&lsquo;drum,&rsquo; to see is to &lsquo;dicker,&rsquo; to get or
+take to &lsquo;lell,&rsquo; and to go to &lsquo;jall;&rsquo; or,
+after instances so pregnant, to agree with Professor von
+Kogalnitschan that &lsquo;it is interesting to be able to study a
+Hindu dialect in the heart of Europe.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Smith,
+however, being a philanthropist rather than a philologist, takes
+another view of the question.&nbsp; His anxiety is to see the
+Gipsies&mdash;and especially the Gipsy
+children&mdash;reclaimed.&nbsp; &lsquo;A Gipsy,&rsquo; he reminds
+us, &lsquo;lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally
+locate for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields,
+and game-preserves.&nbsp; They sell a few clothes-lines and
+clothes-pegs; but they seldom use such things themselves.&nbsp;
+Washing would destroy their beauty . . . To have between three
+and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand
+children, classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds,
+roaming all over the country in ignorance and evil training, is
+not a pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim that if these
+poor children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are
+to be allowed to live in these places, they shall be registered
+in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, so that the
+children may be brought under the Education Acts, and become
+Christianised and civilised.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Smith, it is to be feared, hardly appreciates the
+insuperable difficulty of the task he proposes.&nbsp; The true
+Gipsy is absolutely irreclaimable.&nbsp; He was a wanderer and a
+vagabond upon the face of the earth before the foundations of
+Mycen&aelig; were laid or the plough drawn to mark out the walls
+of Rome; and such as he was four thousand years ago or more, such
+he still remains, speaking the same tongue, leading the same
+life, cherishing the same habits, entertaining the same wholesome
+or unwholesome hatred of all civilisation, and now, as then,
+utterly devoid of even the simplest rudiments of religious
+belief.&nbsp; His whole attitude of mind is <!-- page 55--><a
+name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+55</span>negative.&nbsp; To him all who are not Gipsies, like
+himself, are &lsquo;Gorgios,&rsquo; and to the true Gipsy a
+&lsquo;Gorgio&rsquo; is as hateful as is a &lsquo;cowan&rsquo; to
+a Freemason.&nbsp; It would be interesting to speculate whether,
+when the Romany folk first began their wanderings, the
+&lsquo;Gorgios&rsquo; were not&mdash;as the name would seem to
+indicate&mdash;the farmers or permanent population of the earth;
+and whether the nomad Gipsy may not still hate the
+&lsquo;Gorgio&rsquo; as much as Cain hated Abel, Ishmael Isaac,
+and Esau Jacob.&nbsp; Certain in any case it is that the Gipsy,
+however civilised he may appear, remains, as Mr. Leland describes
+him, &lsquo;a character so entirely strange, so utterly at
+variance with our ordinary conceptions of humanity, that it is no
+exaggeration whatever to declare that it would be a very
+difficult task for the best writer to convey to the most
+intelligent reader any idea of such a nature.&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+true Gipsy is, to begin with, as devoid of superstition as of
+religion.&nbsp; He has no belief in another world, no fear of a
+future state, nor hope for it, no supernatural object of either
+worship or dread&mdash;nothing beyond a few old stories, some
+Pagan, some Christian, which he has picked up from time to time,
+and to which he holds&mdash;much as a child holds to its fairy
+tales&mdash;uncritically and indifferently.&nbsp; Ethical
+distinctions are as unknown to him as to a kitten or a
+magpie.&nbsp; He is kindly by nature, and always anxious to
+please those who treat him well, and to win their
+affection.&nbsp; But the distinction between affection and esteem
+is one which he cannot fathom; and the precise shade of
+<i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i> is as absolutely unintelligible to
+him as was the Hegelian antithesis between <i>nichts</i> and
+<i>seyn</i> to the late Mr. John Stuart Mill.&nbsp; To make the
+true Gipsy we have only to add to this an absolute contempt for
+all that constitutes civilisation.&nbsp; The Gipsy feels a house,
+or indeed anything at all approaching to the idea of a permanent
+dwelling, to amount to a positive restraint upon his
+liberty.&nbsp; He can live on hedgehog and acorns&mdash;though he
+may prefer a fowl and potatoes not strictly his own.&nbsp;
+Wherever a hedge gives shelter he will roll himself <!-- page
+56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>up
+and sleep.&nbsp; And it is possibly because he has no property of
+his own that he is so slow to recognise the rights of property in
+others.&nbsp; But above all, his tongue&mdash;the weird, corrupt,
+barbarous Sanscrit &lsquo;patter&rsquo; or &lsquo;jib,&rsquo;
+known only to himself and to those of his blood&mdash;is the
+keynote of his strange life.&nbsp; In spite of every effort that
+has been made to fathom it, the Gipsy dialect is still
+unintelligible to &lsquo;Gorgios&rsquo;&mdash;a few experts such
+as Mr. Borrow alone excepted.&nbsp; But wherever the true Gipsy
+goes he carries his tongue with him, and a Romany from Hungary,
+ignorant of English as a Chippeway or an Esquimaux, will
+&lsquo;patter&rsquo; fluently with a Lee, a Stanley, a Locke, or
+a Holland, from the English Midlands, and make his
+&lsquo;rukkerben&rsquo; at once easily understood.&nbsp; Nor is
+this all, for there are certain strange old Gipsy customs which
+still constitute a freemasonry.&nbsp; The marriage rites of
+Gipsies are a definite and very significant ritual.&nbsp; Their
+funeral ceremonies are equally remarkable.&nbsp; Not being
+allowed to burn their dead, they still burn the dead man&rsquo;s
+clothes and all his small property, while they mourn for him by
+abstaining&mdash;often for years&mdash;from something of which he
+was fond, and by taking the strictest care never to even mention
+his name.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are we to do with children in whom these strange
+habits and beliefs, or rather wants of belief, are as much part
+of their nature as is their physical organisation?&nbsp; Darwin
+has told us how, after generations had passed, the puppy with a
+taint of the wolf&rsquo;s blood in it would never come straight
+to its master&rsquo;s feet, but always approach him in a
+semicircle.&nbsp; Not Kuhleborhn nor Undine herself is less
+susceptible of alien culture than the pure-blooded Gipsy.&nbsp;
+We can domesticate the goose, we can tame the goldfinch and the
+linnet; but we shall never reclaim the guinea-fowl, or accustom
+the swallow to a cage.&nbsp; Teach the Gipsy to read, or even to
+write; he remains a Gipsy still.&nbsp; His love of wandering is
+as keen as is the instinct of a migratory bird for its annual
+passage; and exactly as the prisoned cuckoo <!-- page 57--><a
+name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>of the first
+year will beat itself to death against its bars when September
+draws near, so the Gipsy, even when most prosperous, will never
+so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any
+one place.&nbsp; His mind is not as ours.&nbsp; A little of our
+civilisation we can teach him, and he will learn it, as he may
+learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or the
+multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously
+dispose of the stones in a cherry tart.&nbsp; But the lesson sits
+lightly on him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as
+ever.&nbsp; Already, indeed, our Gipsies are leaving us.&nbsp;
+They are not dying out, it is true.&nbsp; They are making their
+way to the Far West, where land is not yet enclosed, where game
+is not property, where life is free, and where there is always
+and everywhere room to &lsquo;hatch the tan&rsquo; or put up the
+tent.&nbsp; Romany will, in all human probability, be spoken on
+the other side of the Atlantic years after the last traces of it
+have vanished from amongst ourselves.&nbsp; We begin even now to
+miss the picturesque aspects of Gipsy life&mdash;the tent, the
+strange dress, the nomadic habits.&nbsp; English Gipsies are no
+longer pure and simple vagrants.&nbsp; They are tinkers, or
+scissor-grinders, or basket-makers, or travel from fair to fair
+with knock-&rsquo;em-downs, or rifle galleries, or itinerant
+shows.&nbsp; Often they have some ostensible place of
+residence.&nbsp; But they preserve their inner life as carefully
+as the Jews in Spain, under the searching persecution of the
+Inquisition, preserved their faith for generation upon
+generation; and even now it is a belief that when, for the sake
+of some small kindness or gratuity, a Gipsy woman has allowed her
+child to be baptised, she summons her friends, and attempts to
+undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting the infant to some
+weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the original
+import of which is in all probability a profound mystery to
+her.&nbsp; There is a quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a
+prosperous horse-dealer, who, becoming wealthy, came up to town,
+and, amongst other sights, was shown a goldsmith&rsquo;s
+window.&nbsp; His sole <!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 58</span>remark was that the man must be a big
+thief indeed to have so many spoons and watches all at
+once.&nbsp; The expression of opinion was as na&iuml;ve and
+artless as that of Blucher, when observing that London was a
+magnificent city &lsquo;for to sack.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s benevolent intentions speak for themselves.&nbsp;
+But if he hopes to make the Gipsy ever other than a Gipsy, to
+transform the Romany into a Gorgio, of to alter habits of life
+and mind which have remained unchanged for centuries, he must be
+singularly sanguine, and must be somewhat too disposed to
+overlook the marvellously persistent influences of race and
+tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rather than the cause of the children should suffer by
+presenting garbled or one-sided statements, I purpose quoting the
+letters and articles upon the subject as they have
+appeared.&nbsp; To do otherwise would not be fair to the authors
+or just to the cause I have in hand.&nbsp; The flattering
+allusions and compliments relating to my humble self I am not
+worthy of, and I beg of those who take an interest in the cause
+of the little ones, and deem this book worthy of their notice, to
+pass over them as though such compliments were not there.&nbsp;
+The following are some of the letters that have appeared in the
+<i>Standard</i> in reply to mine of the 14th instant.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;B. B.&rdquo; writes on August 16th:&mdash;&ldquo;Would you
+allow an Irish Gipsy to express his views touching George
+Smith&rsquo;s letter of this date in your paper?&nbsp; Without in
+the least desiring to warp his efforts to improve any of his
+fellow-creatures, it seems to me that the poor Gipsy calls for
+much less sympathy, as regards his moral and social life, than
+more favoured classes of the community.&nbsp; Living under the
+body of an old cart, &lsquo;within the sound of church
+bells,&rsquo; in the midst of grass, sticks, and stones, by no
+means argues moral degradation; and if your correspondent looks
+up our criminal statistics he will not find one Gipsy registered
+for every five hundred criminals who have not only been within
+hearing of the church bells but also listening to the
+preacher&rsquo;s voice.&nbsp; It should be remembered <!-- page
+59--><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>that
+the poor Gipsy fulfils a work which is a very great convenience
+to dwellers in out-of-the-way places&mdash;brushes, baskets,
+tubs, clothes-stops, and a host of small commodities, in
+themselves apparently insignificant, but which enable this tribe
+to eke out a living which compares very favourably with the
+hundreds of thousands in our large cities who set the laws of the
+land as well as the laws of decency at defiance.&nbsp; As to
+education&mdash;well, let them get it, if possible; but it will
+be found they possess, as a rule, sufficient intelligence to
+discharge the duties of farm-labourers; and already they are
+beginning to supply a felt want to the agriculturist whose
+educated assistant leaves him to go abroad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An Old Woman&rdquo; writes as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;In
+the article on Gipsies in the <i>Standard</i> of to-day I was
+struck with the truth of this; remark&mdash;&lsquo;He is kindly
+by nature, and always anxious to please those who treat him well,
+and to win their affections.&rsquo;&nbsp; I can give you one
+instance of this in my own family, although it happened long,
+long ago.&nbsp; The Boswell tribe of Gipsies used to encamp once
+a year near the village in which my grandfather (my
+mother&rsquo;s father), who was a miller and farmer, lived; and
+there grew up a very kindly feeling between the head of the tribe
+and my grandfather and his family.&nbsp; Some of the Gipsies
+would often call at my grandfather&rsquo;s house, where they were
+always received kindly, and oftener still, on business or
+otherwise, at the mill, to see &lsquo;Pe-tee,&rsquo; as they
+called my grandfather, whose Christian name was Peter.&nbsp; Once
+upon a time my grandfather owed a considerable sum of money, and,
+alas! could not pay it; and his wife and children were much
+distressed.&nbsp; I believe they feared he would be
+arrested.&nbsp; Everything is known in a village; and the news of
+what was feared reached the Gipsies.&nbsp; The idea of their
+friend Pe-tee being in such trouble was not borne quietly; the
+chief and one or two more appeared at the farm-house, asking to
+see my grandmother.&nbsp; They told her they had come to pay my
+<!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+60</span>grandfather&rsquo;s debt; &lsquo;he should never be
+distressed for the money,&rsquo; they said, &lsquo;as long as
+they had any.&rsquo;&nbsp; I believe some arrangement had been
+made about the debt, but nevertheless my grandmother felt just as
+grateful for the kindness.&nbsp; The head of the tribe wore
+guineas instead of buttons to his coat, and when his daughter was
+married her dowry was measured in guineas, in a pint
+measure.&nbsp; I suppose, as in the old ballad of &lsquo;The
+Beggar of Bethnal Green,&rsquo; the suitor would give measure for
+measure.&nbsp; The villagers all turned out to gaze each year
+when they heard the &lsquo;Boswell gang&rsquo; were coming down
+the one long street; the women of the tribe, fine, bold,
+handsome-looking women, in &lsquo;black beaver bonnets, with
+black feathers and red cloaks,&rsquo; sometimes quarrelled, and
+my mother, then a girl, saw the procession several times stop in
+the middle of the village, and two women (sometimes more) would
+fall out of the ranks, hand their bonnets to friends, strip off
+cloak and gown, and fight in their &lsquo;shift&rsquo; sleeves,
+using their fists like men.&nbsp; The men of the tribe took no
+notice, stood quietly about till the fight was over, and then the
+whole bevy passed on to their camping-ground.&nbsp; My
+grandfather never passed the tents without calling in to see his
+friends, and it would have been an offence indeed if he had not
+partaken of some refreshment.&nbsp; Two or three times my mother
+accompanied him, and whenever and wherever they met her they were
+always very kind and respectful to &lsquo;Pe-tee&rsquo;s little
+girl.&rsquo;&nbsp; In after years, when visiting her native
+village, she often inquired if it was known what had become of
+the tribe; at last she heard from some one it was thought they
+had settled in Canada: at any rate they had passed away for ever
+from that part of England.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Leland wrote as follows in the <i>Standard</i>, August
+19:&mdash;&ldquo;As you have kindly cited my work on the English
+Gipsies in your article on them, and as many of your readers are
+giving their opinions on this curious race, perhaps you will
+permit me to make a few remarks on the subject.&nbsp; <!-- page
+61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>Mr.
+Smith is one of those honest philanthropists whom it is the duty
+of every one to honour, and I for one, honour him most sincerely
+for his kind wishes to the Romany; but, with all my respect, I do
+not think he understands the travellers, or that they require
+much aid from the &lsquo;Gorgios,&rsquo; being quite capable of
+looking out for themselves.&nbsp; A <i>tacho Rom</i>, or real
+Gipsy, who cannot in an emergency find his ten, or even twenty,
+pounds is a very exceptional character.&nbsp; As I have, even
+within a few days, been in company, and on very familiar footing
+with a great number of Romanys of different families of the dark
+blood who spoke the &lsquo;jib&rsquo; with unusual accuracy, I
+write under a fresh impression.&nbsp; The Gipsy is almost
+invariably strong and active, a good rough rider and pedestrian,
+and knowing how to use his fists.&nbsp; He leads a very hard
+life, and is proud of his stamina and his pluck.&nbsp; Of late
+years he <i>kairs</i>, or &lsquo;houses,&rsquo; more than of old,
+particularly during the winter, but his life at best requires
+great strength and endurance, and this must, of course, be
+supported by a generous diet.&nbsp; In fact, he lives well, much
+better than the agricultural labourer.&nbsp; Let me explain how
+this is generally done.&nbsp; The Gipsy year may be said to begin
+with the races.&nbsp; Thither the dark children of Chun-Gwin,
+whether pure blood, <i>posh an&rsquo; posh</i> (half-and-half),
+or <i>churedis</i>, with hardly a drop of the <i>kalo-ratt</i>,
+flock with their cocoa-nuts and the balls, which have of late
+taken the place of the <i>koshter</i>, or sticks.&nbsp; With them
+go the sorceresses, old and young, who pick up money by
+occasional <i>dukkerin</i>, or fortune-telling.&nbsp; Other small
+callings they also have, not by any means generally
+dishonest.&nbsp; Wherever there is an open pic-nic on the Thames,
+or a country fair, or a regatta at this season, there are
+Romanys.&nbsp; Sometimes they appear looking like petty farmers,
+with a bad, or even a good, horse or two for sale.&nbsp; While
+summer lasts this is the life of the poorer sort.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This merry time over, they go to the <i>Livinengro
+tem</i>, or hop-land&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, Kent.&nbsp; Here they
+work hard, not neglecting <!-- page 62--><a
+name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>the beer-pot,
+which goes about gaily.&nbsp; In this life they have great
+advantages over the tramps and London poor.&nbsp; Hopping over,
+they go, almost <i>en masse</i>, or within a few days, to London
+to buy French and German baskets, which they get in
+Houndsditch.&nbsp; Of late years they send more for the baskets
+to be delivered at certain stations.&nbsp; Some of them make
+baskets themselves very well, but, as a rule, they prefer to buy
+them.&nbsp; While the weather is good they live by selling
+baskets, brooms, clothes-lines, and other small wares.&nbsp; Most
+families have their regular &lsquo;beats&rsquo; or rounds, and
+confine themselves to certain districts.&nbsp; In winter the men
+begin to <i>chiv the kosh</i>, or cut wood&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>,
+they make butchers&rsquo; skewers and clothes-pegs.&nbsp; Even
+this is not unprofitable, as a family, what between manufacturing
+and selling them, can earn from twelve to eighteen shillings a
+week.&nbsp; With this and begging, and occasional jobs of honest
+hard work which they pick up here and there, they contrive to
+feed well, find themselves in beer, and pay, as they now often
+must, for permission to camp in fields.&nbsp; Altogether they
+work hard and retire early.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Considering the lives they lead, Gipsies are not
+dishonest.&nbsp; If a Gipsy is camped anywhere, and a hen is
+missing for miles around, the theft is always at once attributed
+to him.&nbsp; The result is that, being sharply looked after by
+everybody, and especially by the police, they cannot act like
+their ancestors.&nbsp; Their crimes are not generally of a
+heinous nature.&nbsp; <i>Chiving a gry</i>, or stealing a horse,
+is, I admit, looked upon by them with Yorkshire leniency, nor do
+they regard stealing wood for fuel as a great sin.&nbsp; In this
+matter they are subject to great temptation.&nbsp; When the
+nights are cold&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Could anything be more alluring<br />
+Than an old hedge?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;As for Gipsy lying, it is so peculiar that it would be
+hard to explain.&nbsp; The American who appreciates the phrase
+&lsquo;to sit down and swap lies&rsquo; would not be taken in by
+a <!-- page 63--><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+63</span>Romany <i>chal</i>, nor would an old salt who can spin
+yarns.&nbsp; They enjoy hugely being lied unto, as do all Arabs
+or Hindus.&nbsp; Like many naughty children, they like successful
+efforts of the imagination.&nbsp; The old <i>dyes</i>, or
+mothers, are &lsquo;awful beggars,&rsquo; as much by habit as
+anything; but they will give as freely as they will take, and
+their guest will always experience Oriental hospitality.&nbsp;
+They are very fond of all gentlemen and ladies who take a real
+interest in them, who understand them, and like them.&nbsp; To
+such people they are even more honest than they are to one
+another.&nbsp; But it must be a real <i>aficion</i>, not a merely
+amateur affectation of kindness.&nbsp; Owing to their entire
+ignorance of ordinary house and home life, they are like children
+in many respects, though so shrewd in others.&nbsp; Among the
+Welsh Gipsies, who are the most unsophisticated and the most
+purely Romany, I have met with touching instances of gratitude
+and honesty.&nbsp; The child-like ingenuity which some of them
+manifested in contriving little gratifications for myself and for
+Professor E. H. Palmer, who had been very kind to them, were as
+na&iuml;ve as amiable.&nbsp; I have observed that some Gipsies of
+the more rustic sort loved to listen to stories, but, like
+children, they preferred those which they had heard several times
+and learned to like.&nbsp; They knew where the laugh ought to
+come in.&nbsp; The Gipsy is both bad and good, but neither his
+faults nor his virtues are exactly what they are supposed to
+be.&nbsp; He is certainly something of a scamp&mdash;and,
+<i>nomen est omen</i>, there is a tribe of Scamps among
+them&mdash;but he is not a bad scamp, and he is certainly a most
+amusing and eccentric one.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is not the least use in trying to ameliorate the
+condition of the Gipsy while he remains a traveller.&nbsp; He
+will tell you piteous stories, but he will take care of
+himself.&nbsp; As Ferdusi sings:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Say what you will and do what you
+can,<br />
+No washing e&rsquo;er whitens the black Zingan.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;The only kindness he requires is a little charity and
+<!-- page 64--><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+64</span>forgiveness when he steals wood or wires a hare.&nbsp;
+All wrong doubtless; but something should be allowed to one whose
+ancestors were called &lsquo;dead-meat eaters&rsquo; in the
+Shastras.&nbsp; Should the reader wish to reform a Gipsy, let him
+explain to the Romany that the days for roaming in England are
+rapidly passing away.&nbsp; Tell him that for his
+children&rsquo;s sake he had better rent a cheap cottage; that
+his wife can just as well peddle with her basket from a house as
+from a waggon, and that he can keep a horse and trap and go to
+the races or hopping &lsquo;genteely.&rsquo;&nbsp; Point out to
+him those who have done the same, and stimulate his ambition and
+pride.&nbsp; As for suffering as a traveller he does not know
+it.&nbsp; I once asked a Gipsy girl who was sitting as a model if
+she liked the <i>drom</i> (road) best, or living in a
+house.&nbsp; With sparkling eyes and clapping her hands she
+exclaimed, &lsquo;oh, the road! the road!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Beerbohm writes under date August 19th:&mdash;&ldquo;In
+reading yesterday&rsquo;s article on the customs and
+idiosyncrasies of Gipsies I was struck by the similarity they
+present to many peculiarities I have observed among the
+Patagonian Indians.&nbsp; To those curious in such matters it may
+be of interest to know that the custom of burning all the goods
+and chattels of a deceased member of the tribe prevails among the
+Patagonians as among the Gipsies; and the identity of custom is
+still further carried out, inasmuch as with the former, as with
+the latter, the name of the deceased is never uttered, and all
+allusion to him is strictly avoided.&nbsp; So much so, that in
+those cases when the deceased has borne some cognomen taken from
+familiar objects, such as &lsquo;Knife,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Wool,&rsquo; &lsquo;Flint,&rsquo; &amp;c., the word is no
+longer used by the tribe, some other sound being substituted
+instead.&nbsp; This is one of the reasons why the Tshuelche
+language is constantly fluctuating, but few of the words
+expressing a proper meaning, as chronicled by Fitzroy and Darwin
+(1832), being now in use.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Rev. Mr. Hewett writes to the <i>Standard</i>, under date
+August 19th, to say that he baptised two Gipsy children in <!--
+page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+65</span>1871.&nbsp; One might ask, in the language of one of the
+&ldquo;Old Book,&rdquo; &ldquo;What are these among so
+many?&rdquo;&nbsp; The following letter from Mr. Harrison upon
+the subject appeared on August 20th:&mdash;&ldquo;I have just
+returned from the head-quarters of the Scotch
+Gipsies&mdash;Yetholm (Kirk), a small village nestling at the
+foot of the Cheviots in Roxburghshire.&nbsp; Here I saw the abode
+of the Queen, a neat little cottage, with well-trimmed garden in
+front.&nbsp; Inside all was a perfect pattern of neatness, and
+the old lady herself was as clean &lsquo;as a new
+pin.&rsquo;&nbsp; As I passed the cottage a carriage and pair
+drove up, and the occupants, four ladies, alighted and entered
+the cottage.&nbsp; I was afterwards told that they were much
+pleased with their visit, and that, in remembrance of it, each of
+the four promised to send a new frock to the Queen&rsquo;s
+grandchild.&nbsp; The Queen&rsquo;s son (&lsquo;the
+Prince,&rsquo; as he is called) I saw at St. James&rsquo;s Fair,
+where he was swaggering about in a drunken state, offering to
+fight any man.&nbsp; I believe he was subsequently locked
+up.&nbsp; In the month of August there are few Gipsies resident
+in Yetholm: they are generally on their travels selling
+crockeryware (the country people call the Gipsies
+&lsquo;muggers,&rsquo; from the fact that they sell mugs),
+baskets made of rushes, and horn spoons, both of which they
+manufacture themselves.&nbsp; I have a distinct recollection of
+Will Faa, the then King of the Gipsies.&nbsp; He was 95 when I
+knew him, and was lithe and strong.&nbsp; He had a keen hawk eye,
+which was not dimmed at that extreme age.&nbsp; He was considered
+both a good shot and a famous fisher.&nbsp; There was hardly a
+trout hole in the Bowmont Water but he knew, and his company used
+to be eagerly sought by the fly-fishers who came from the
+South.&nbsp; My opinion of the Gipsies&mdash;and I have seen much
+of them during the last forty years&mdash;is that they are a
+lazy, dissolute set of men and women, preferring to beg, or
+steal, or poach, to work, and that, although many efforts have
+been made (more especially by the late Rev. Mr. Baird, of
+Yetholm), to settle them, they are irreclaimable.&nbsp; There are
+but two policemen in <!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 66</span>Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm, but
+sometimes the assistance of some of the townsfolk is required to
+bring about order in that portion of the village in which the
+Gipsies reside.&nbsp; I may say that the townsfolk do not
+fraternise with the Gipsies, who are regarded with the greatest
+suspicion by the former.&nbsp; Ask a townsman of Yetholm what he
+thinks of the Gipsies, and he will tell you they are simply
+vagabonds and impostors, who lounge about, and smoke, and drink,
+and fight.&nbsp; In fact, they are the very scum of the human
+race; and, what is more singular, they seem quite satisfied to
+remain as they are, repudiating every attempt at
+reformation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;F. G. S.&rdquo; writes:&mdash;&ldquo;One of your
+correspondents suggests that the silence of the Gipsies
+concerning their dead is carried so far as to consign them to
+nameless graves.&nbsp; In my churchyard there is a headstone,
+&lsquo;to the memory of Mistress Paul Stanley, wife of Mr. Paul
+Stanley, who died November, 1797,&rsquo; the said Mistress
+Stanley having been the Queen of the Stanley tribe.&nbsp; In my
+childhood I remember that annually some of the members of the
+tribe used to come and scatter flowers over the grave; and when
+my father had restored the stone, on its falling into decay, a
+deputation of the tribe thanked him for so doing.&nbsp; I have
+reason to think they still visit the spot, to find, I am sorry to
+say, the stone so decayed now as to be past restoration, and I
+would much like to see another with the same inscription to mark
+the resting-place of the head of a leading tribe of these
+interesting people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p66b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Gipsies Camping among the Heath near London"
+title=
+"Gipsies Camping among the Heath near London"
+src="images/p66s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>To these letters I replied as under, on August
+21st:&mdash;&ldquo;The numerous correspondents who have taken
+upon themselves to reply to my letter that appeared in your issue
+of the 14th inst., and to show up Gipsy life in some of its
+brightest aspects, have, unwittingly, no doubt, thoroughly
+substantiated and backed up the cause of my young
+clients&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, the poor Gipsy children and our
+roadside arabs&mdash;so far as they have gone, as a reperusal of
+the letters will show the most casual observer of our
+hedge-bottom heathens of <!-- page 67--><a
+name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+67</span>Christendom.&nbsp; At the same time, I would say the
+tendency of some of the remarks of your correspondents has
+special reference to the adult Gipsies, roamers and ramblers,
+and, consequently, there is a fear that the attention of some of
+your readers may be drawn from the cause of the poor uneducated
+children, living in the midst of sticks, stones, ditches, mud,
+and game, and concentrated upon the &lsquo;guinea buttons,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;black-haired Susans,&rsquo; &lsquo;red cloaks,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;scarlet hoods,&rsquo; the cunning craft of the old men,
+the fortune-telling of the old women, the &lsquo;sparkling
+eyes&rsquo; and &lsquo;clapping of hands,&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;twopenny hops&rsquo; of the young women, who certainly can
+take care of themselves, just as other un-Christianised and
+uncivilised human beings can.&nbsp; I do not profess&mdash;at any
+rate, not for the present&mdash;to take up the cause of the men
+and women ditch-dwelling Gipsies in this matter; I must leave
+that part of the work to fiction writers, clergymen, and
+policemen, abler hands than mine.&nbsp; I may not be able, nor do
+I profess, to understand the singular number of the masculine
+gender of <i>dad</i>, <i>chavo</i>, <i>tikeno</i>, <i>moosh</i>,
+<i>gorjo</i>, <i>raklo</i>, <i>rakli</i>, <i>pal palla</i>; the
+feminine gender <i>dei</i>, <i>tikeno</i>, <i>chabi</i>,
+<i>joovel</i>, <i>gairo</i>, <i>rakle</i>, <i>raklia</i>, <i>pen
+penya</i>, or the plural of the masculine gender <i>dada</i>,
+<i>chavi</i>, and the feminine gender <i>deia</i>, <i>chavo</i>;
+but, being a matter of fact kind of man&mdash;out of the region
+of romance, fantastical notions, enrapturing imagery, nicely
+coloured imagination, clever lying and cleverer deception,
+beautiful green fields, clear running rivulets, the singing of
+the wood songster, bullfinch, and wren, in the midst of woodbine,
+sweetbriar, and roses&mdash;with an eye to observe, a heart to
+feel, and a hand ready to help, I am led to contemplate, aye, and
+to find out if possible, the remedy, though my friends say it is
+impossible&mdash;just because it is impossible it becomes
+possible, as in the canal movement&mdash;for the wretched
+condition of some eight to ten thousand little Gipsy children,
+whose home in the winter is camping half-naked in a hut, so
+called, in the midst of &lsquo;slush&rsquo; and snow, on the
+borders of a picturesque <!-- page 68--><a
+name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>ditch and
+roadside, winterly delights, Sunday and week day alike.&nbsp; The
+tendency of human nature is to look on the bright side of things;
+and it is much more pleasant to go to the edge of a large swamp,
+lie down and bask in the summer&rsquo;s sun, making
+&lsquo;button-holes&rsquo; of daisies, buttercups, and the like,
+and return home and extol the fine scenery and praise the
+richness of the land, than to take the spade, in shirt-sleeves
+and heavy boots, and drain the poisonous water from the roots of
+vegetation.&nbsp; Nevertheless, it has to be done, if the
+&lsquo;strong active limbs&rsquo; and &lsquo;bright sparkling
+eyes&rsquo; are to be turned to better account than they have
+been in the past.&nbsp; It is not creditable to us as a Christian
+nation, in size compared with other nations not much larger than
+a garden, to have had for centuries these heathenish tribes in
+our midst.&nbsp; It does not speak very much for the power of the
+Gospel, the zeal of the ministers of Christ&rsquo;s Church, and
+the activity of the schoolmaster, to have had these plague spots
+continually flitting before our eyes without anything being done
+to effect a cure.&nbsp; It is true something has been done.&nbsp;
+One clergyman, who has &lsquo;had opportunities of observing
+them,&rsquo; if not brought in daily contact with them, tells us
+that some eight or nine years since he publicly baptised two
+Gipsy children.&nbsp; Another tells us that some time since he
+baptised many Gipsy children, as if baptism was the only thing
+required of the poor children for the duties and responsibilities
+of life and a future state.&nbsp; Better a thousand times have
+told us how many poor roadside arabs and Gipsy children they have
+taken by the hand to educate and train them, so as to be able to
+earn an honest livelihood, instead of &lsquo;cadging&rsquo; from
+door to door, and telling all sorts of silly stories and
+lies.&nbsp; How many poor children&rsquo;s lives have been
+sacrificed at the hands of cruelty, starvation, and neglect, and
+buried under a clod without the shedding of a tear, it is fearful
+to contemplate.&nbsp; The idlers, loafers, rodneys, mongrels,
+gorgios, and Gipsies are increasing, and will increase, in our
+midst, unless we put our hand <!-- page 69--><a
+name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>upon the
+system, from the simple fact that by packing up with wife and
+children and &lsquo;taking to the road,&rsquo; he thus escapes
+taxes, rent, and the School-board officer.&nbsp; This they see,
+and a &lsquo;few kind words&rsquo; and &lsquo;gentle
+touches&rsquo; will never cause them to see it in any other
+light.&nbsp; The sooner we get the ideal, fanciful, and romantic
+side of a vagrant&rsquo;s and vagabond&rsquo;s life removed from
+our vision, and see things as they really are, the better it will
+be for us.&nbsp; For the life of me I cannot see anything
+romantic in dirt, squalor, ignorance, and misery.&nbsp; Ministers
+and missionaries have completely failed in the work, for the
+simple reason that they have never begun it in earnest;
+consequently, the schoolmaster and School-board officer must
+begin to do their part in reclaiming these wandering tribes, and
+this can only be done in the manner stated by me in my previous
+letter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the <i>Leicester Free Press</i> the following appeared on
+August 16th:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is
+earning the title of the Children&rsquo;s Friend.&nbsp; His
+&lsquo;Cry of the Brick-yard Children&rsquo; rang through
+England, and issued in measures being adopted for their
+protection.&nbsp; His description of the canal-boat children has
+also resulted in legislation for their relief.&nbsp; Now I see
+Mr. Smith has put in a good word for Gipsy children.&nbsp; It
+will surprise a good many who seldom see or hear of these
+Gipsies, except perhaps at the races, to find how numerous they
+are even in this county.&nbsp; I do not think the number is at
+all exaggerated.&nbsp; A few days ago while driving down a rural
+lane in the country I &lsquo;interviewed&rsquo; one of these
+children, who had run some hundreds of yards ahead, in order to
+open a gate.&nbsp; At first the young, dark-eyed, swarthy damsel
+declared she did not know how many brothers and sisters she had,
+but on being asked to mention their names she rattled them over,
+in quick succession, giving to each Christian name the surname of
+Smith&mdash;thus, Charley Smith, Emma Smith, Fanny Smith, Bill
+Smith, and the like, till she had enumerated either thirteen or
+fifteen juvenile Smiths, all of whom lived with their parents in
+a tent which was <!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 70</span>pitched not far from the side of the
+lane.&nbsp; Of education the child had had none, but she said she
+went to church on a Sunday with her sister.&nbsp; This is a
+sample of the kind of thing which prevails, and in his last
+generous movement Mr. Smith, of Coalville, will be acting a good
+part to numerous children who, although unable to claim
+relationship, rejoice in the same patronymic as
+himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the <i>Derby Daily Telegraph</i>, under date August 16th,
+the following leading article was published:&mdash;&ldquo;When
+the social history of the present generation comes to be written
+a prominent place among the list of practical philanthropists
+will be assigned to George Smith, of Coalville.&nbsp; The man is
+a humanitarian to the manner born.&nbsp; His character and
+labours serve to remind us of the broad line which separates the
+real apostle of benevolence from what may be termed the
+&lsquo;professional&rsquo; sample.&nbsp; George Smith goes about
+for the purpose of doing good, and&mdash;he does it.&nbsp; He
+does not content himself with glibly talking of what needs to be
+done, and what ought to be done.&nbsp; He prefers to act upon the
+spirit of Mr. Wackford Squeers&rsquo; celebrated educational
+principle.&nbsp; Having discovered a sphere of Christian duty he
+goes and &lsquo;works&rsquo; it.&nbsp; Few more splendid
+monuments of practical charity have been reared than the
+amelioration of the social state of our canal population&mdash;an
+achievement which has mainly been brought about by Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s indomitable perseverance and self-denial.&nbsp; A
+few years ago we were accustomed to speak of the dwellers in
+these floating hovels as beings who dragged out a degraded
+existence in a far-off land.&nbsp; We were gloomily told that
+they could not be reached.&nbsp; Orators at fashionable
+missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as irreclaimable
+heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from
+impenetrable fastnesses.&nbsp; Mr. George Smith may be credited
+with having broken down this discreditable state of things.&nbsp;
+He brought us face to face with this unfortunate section of our
+fellow-creatures, with what result it is not <!-- page 71--><a
+name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>necessary to
+say.&nbsp; The sympathies of the public were effectually roused
+by the narratives which revealed to us the deplorable depths of
+human depravity into which vast numbers of English people had
+fallen.&nbsp; The sufferings of the children in the gloomy,
+pestiferous cabins used for &lsquo;living&rsquo; purposes
+especially excited the country&rsquo;s pity.&nbsp; At this
+present moment the lot of these poor waifs is far from being
+inviting, but it is vastly different from what it was a short
+time back.&nbsp; It was only a few days ago that the Duke of
+Richmond, in reply to no less a personage than the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, announced that express arrangements had been made by
+the Government to meet the educational requirements of the once
+helpless and neglected victims.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Smith has now embarked upon a fresh crusade against
+misery and ignorance.&nbsp; He has turned his attention from the
+&lsquo;water Gipsies&rsquo; to their brethren ashore.&nbsp; He
+has already began to busy himself with the condition of
+&lsquo;our roadside arabs,&rsquo; as he calls them.&nbsp; We fear
+Mr. Smith in prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to
+perform a serious act of disenchantment.&nbsp; The ideal Gipsy is
+destined to be scattered to the winds by the unvarnished picture
+which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to our vision.&nbsp;
+He does not pretend to show us the romantic,
+fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in
+the imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy
+species.&nbsp; Those of our readers who have formed their notions
+of Gipsy life upon the strength of the assurances which have been
+given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers
+will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine
+and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the
+dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found,
+upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the
+Gipsy tent.&nbsp; Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic
+period of the world&rsquo;s history the picturesque and jovial
+rascality which novelist and poet have insisted in connecting
+with the Ishmaelites is stamped ruthlessly out of <!-- page
+72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>being
+by force of circumstances, it is barely possible to say.&nbsp;
+Perhaps Gipsies, in common with other tribes of the romantic
+past, have gradually become denuded of their old
+attractiveness.&nbsp; It is, we confess, rather difficult to
+believe that Bamfylde Moore Carew (wild, restless fellow though
+he was) would persistently have linked his lot with that of the
+poor, degraded, poverty-stricken wretches whom Mr. Smith has
+taken in hand.&nbsp; Perchance it happens that our old heroes of
+song and story have, so far as England is concerned, deteriorated
+as a consequence of the money-making, business-like atmosphere
+that they are compelled to breathe, and that with more favoured
+climes they are to be seen in much of their primitive
+glory.&nbsp; In Hungary, for instance, it is declared that Gipsy
+life is pretty much what it is represented to be in our own
+glowing pages of fiction.&nbsp; The late Major Whyte-Melville, in
+a modern story declared to be founded on fact, introduces us to a
+company of these continental wanderers who, with their beautiful
+Queen, seem to invest the scenes from our old friend, &lsquo;The
+Bohemian Girl,&rsquo; with something akin to probability.&nbsp;
+But there is, of course, a limit to even Mr. Smith&rsquo;s
+labours.&nbsp; Hungary is beyond his jurisdiction.&nbsp; He does
+not pretend to carry his experience of the Gipsies further than
+the Midlands.&nbsp; Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and our
+neighbouring counties have offered him the examples he requires
+with his new campaign.&nbsp; The lot of the roamers who eke out a
+living in the adjacent lanes and roadways is, he explains to us,
+as pitiful as anything of the sort well could be.&nbsp; The tent
+of the Gipsy he finds to be as filthy and as repulsive as the
+cabin of the canal-boat.&nbsp; Human beings of both sexes and of
+all ages are huddled together without regard to comfort.&nbsp; As
+a necessary sequence the women and children are the chief
+sufferers in a social evil of this sort.&nbsp; The men are able
+to rough it, but the weaker sex and their little charges are
+reduced to the lowest paths of misery.&nbsp; Children are born,
+suffer from disease, and die in the canvas hovels; and are
+committed to the dust by the <!-- page 73--><a
+name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+73</span>roadside.&nbsp; One old woman told Mr. Smith &lsquo;that
+she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several
+of them being born in a roadside tent.&nbsp; She says that she
+was married out of one of these tents; and her brother died and
+was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.&rsquo;&nbsp; The experience of this old crone
+is akin to that of most of her class.&nbsp; She also tells Mr.
+Smith that she could not read herself, and she did not believe
+one in twenty could.&nbsp; Morally, as well as from a sanitary
+point of view, Gipsy life, as it really exists, is a social
+plague-spot, and consequently a social danger.&nbsp; Especially
+does this contention apply to the children, of whom Mr. Smith
+estimates that there are ten thousand roaming over the face of
+the country as vagrants and vagabonds.&nbsp; It is to be hoped
+many months will not be allowed to elapse before this difficulty
+is seriously and successfully grappled with.&nbsp; Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s counsel as to the children is that &lsquo;living in
+vans and tents and under old carts, if they are to be allowed to
+live in these places they should be registered in a manner
+analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children
+may be brought under the compulsory clauses of the Education
+Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other
+children.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Duke of Richmond and his department
+may do much to facilitate Mr. Smith&rsquo;s crusade without
+temporising with the prejudices of red-tapeism.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>Figaro</i> writes August 27th:&mdash;&ldquo;Our old friend
+having successfully tackled the brick-yard children, and the
+floating waifs and strays of our barge population, has now taken
+the little Gipsies in hand, with a view of bringing them under
+the supervision of the School Board system now general in this
+country.&nbsp; He is a bold and energetic man, but we are bound
+to say we doubt a little whether he will be able to tame the
+offspring of the merry Zingara, and pass them all through the
+regulation educational standard.&nbsp; Should he succeed, we
+shall be thenceforth surprised at nothing, but be quite prepared
+to hear that Mr. Smith has <!-- page 74--><a
+name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>become
+chairman of a society for changing the spots of the leopard, or
+honorary director of an association for changing the
+Ethiopian&rsquo;s skin!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following letter from the Rev. J. Finch, a rural dean,
+appeared in the <i>Standard</i>, August 30th:&mdash;&ldquo;The
+following facts may not be without some interest to those who
+have read the letters which have recently appeared in the pages
+of the <i>Standard</i> respecting Gipsies.&nbsp; During the
+thirty years I have been rector of this parish, members of the
+Boswell family have been almost constantly resident here.&nbsp; I
+buried the head of the family in 1874, who died at the age of
+87.&nbsp; He was a regular attendant at the parish church, and
+failed not to bow his head reverently when he entered within the
+House of God.&nbsp; His burial was attended by several sons
+resident, as Gipsies, in the Midland counties, and a headstone
+marks the grave where his body rests.&nbsp; I never saw, or
+heard, any harm of the man.&nbsp; He was a quiet and inoffensive
+man, and worked industriously as a tinman within a short time of
+his death.&nbsp; If he had rather a sharp eye for a little gift,
+that is a trait of character by no means confined to
+Gipsies.&nbsp; One of his daughters was married here to a member
+of the Boswell tribe, and another, who rejoiced in the name of
+Britannia, I buried in her father&rsquo;s grave two years
+ago.&nbsp; After his death she and her mother removed to an
+adjoining parish, where she was confirmed by Bishop Selwyn in
+1876.&nbsp; Regular as was the old man at church, I never could
+persuade his wife to come.&nbsp; In 1859 I baptized, privately,
+an infant of the same tribe, whose parents were travelling
+through the parish, and whose mother was named Elvira.&nbsp;
+Great was the admiration of my domestics at the sight of the
+beautiful lace which ornamented the robe in which the child was
+brought to my house.&nbsp; Clearly there are Gipsies, and those
+of a well-known tribe, glad to receive the ministrations of the
+Church.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I next turned my steps towards London, having heard <!-- page
+75--><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>that
+Gipsies were to be found in the outskirts of this Babylon.&nbsp;
+I set off early one morning in quest of them from my lodgings,
+not knowing whither; but my earliest association came to my
+relief.&nbsp; Knowing that Gipsies are generally to be found in
+the neighbourhood of brick-yards, I took the &rsquo;bus to
+Notting Hill, and after asking the policeman, for neither
+clergyman or other ministers could tell me where they were to be
+found, I wended my way to Wormwood Scrubs, and the following
+letter, which appeared in the <i>Daily News</i>, September 6th of
+last year, is the outcome of that &ldquo;run out,&rdquo; and is
+as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;It has been the custom for years&mdash;I
+might almost say centuries&mdash;when speaking of the Gipsies, to
+introduce in one form or other during the conversation either
+&lsquo;the King of the Gipsies,&rsquo; &lsquo;the Queen,&rsquo;
+or some other member of &lsquo;the Royal Family.&rsquo;&nbsp; It
+may surprise many of your readers who cling to the romantic side
+of a Gipsy&rsquo;s life, and shut their eyes to the fearful
+amount of ignorance, wretchedness, and misery there is amongst
+them, to say that this extraordinary being is nothing but a
+mythological jack-o&rsquo;-th&rsquo;-lantern, phantom of the
+brain, illusion, the creation of lying tongues practising the art
+of deception among some of the &lsquo;green horns&rsquo; in the
+country lanes, or on the village greens.&nbsp; It is true there
+are some &lsquo;horse-leeches&rsquo; among the Gipsies who have
+got fat out of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the
+British public, who delight in calling them either &lsquo;the
+King,&rsquo; &lsquo;Queen,&rsquo; &lsquo;Prince,&rsquo; or
+&lsquo;Princess.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is true also that there are vast
+numbers of the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink
+of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important
+personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being
+made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of
+straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the
+&lsquo;king,&rsquo; &lsquo;queen,&rsquo; or some member of the
+&lsquo;royal family&rsquo; is being married or visiting them; and
+nothing pleases the poor, ignorant Gipsies better than to get the
+bystanders, with mouths open, <!-- page 76--><a
+name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>to believe
+their tales and lies.&nbsp; I should think that there is scarcely
+a county in England but what a Gipsy king&rsquo;s or
+queen&rsquo;s wedding has not taken place there within the last
+twenty years.&nbsp; There was one in Bedfordshire not long since;
+another at Epping Forest; and the last I heard of this wonderful
+airy being was that he had taken up his head-quarters at the
+Royal Hotel, Liverpool, and a carriage with eight wheels and six
+piebald horses had been presented to him as a wedding present
+from the Gipsies.&nbsp; Gipsy &lsquo;kings,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;queens,&rsquo; and &lsquo;princes,&rsquo; their marriages
+and deaths, are innumerable among the &lsquo;royal
+family.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is equally believing in moonshine and
+air-bubbles to believe that the Gipsies never speak of their
+dead.&nbsp; There is a beautiful headstone put in a little
+churchyard about two and a half miles from Barnet in memory of
+the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members
+of the family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his
+memory in Hanwell Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by
+the cunning, crafty Gipsies as &lsquo;dazzlers,&rsquo; to enable
+them more readily to practise the art of lying and deception upon
+their gullible listeners.&nbsp; Then again, with reference to the
+Gipsies having a religion of their own.&nbsp; There is not a word
+of truth in this imaginative notion prevalent in the minds or
+some who have been trying to study their habits.&nbsp; Excepting
+the language of some of the old-fashioned real Gipsies, and a few
+other little peculiarities, any one studying the real hard facts
+of a Gipsy&rsquo;s life with reference to the amount of
+ignorance, and everything that is bad among them, will come to
+the conclusion that there is much among them to compare very
+unfavourably with the most neglected in our back streets and
+slums.&nbsp; Of course, there are some good among them, as with
+other &lsquo;ragamuffin&rsquo; ramblers.&nbsp; The following
+particulars, related to me by a well-known Gipsy woman in the
+neighbourhood of &lsquo;Wormwood Scrubs&rsquo; and the
+&lsquo;North Pole,&rsquo; remarkable for her truthfulness,
+honesty, and uprightness, will tend <!-- page 77--><a
+name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>to show that
+my previous statement as regards the amount of ignorance
+prevalent among the poor Gipsy children has not been
+over-stated.&nbsp; She has had six brothers and one sister, all
+born in a tent, and only one of the eight could read a
+little.&nbsp; She has had nine children born in a tent, four of
+whom are alive, and only one could read and write a little.&nbsp;
+She has seventeen grandchildren, and only two of them can read
+and write a little, and thinks this a fair average of other Gipsy
+children.&nbsp; She tells me that she got a most fat living for
+more than twenty years by telling lies and fortunes to
+servant-girls, old maids, and young men, mostly out of a book of
+which she could not read a sentence, or tell a letter.&nbsp; She
+said she had heard that I had taken up the cause of the poor
+Gipsy children to get them educated, and, with hands uplifted and
+tears in her eyes, which left no doubt of her meaning, said,
+&lsquo;I do hope from the bottom of my heart that God will bless
+and prosper you in the work till a law is passed, and the poor
+Gipsy children are brought under the School Board, and their
+parents compelled to send them to school as other people
+are.&nbsp; The poor Gipsy children are poor, ignorant things, I
+can assure you.&rsquo;&nbsp; She also said &lsquo;Does the Queen
+wish all our poor Gipsy children to be educated?&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+told her that the Queen took special interest in the children of
+the working-classes, and was always pleased to hear of their
+welfare.&nbsp; Again, with tears trickling down her face, she
+said, &lsquo;I do thank the Lord for such a good Queen, and for
+such a noble-hearted woman.&nbsp; I do bless her.&nbsp; Do Thou,
+&lsquo;Lord, bless her!&rsquo;&nbsp; After some further
+conversation, and taking dinner with her in her humble way in the
+van, she said she hoped I would not be insulted if she offered
+me, as from a poor Gipsy woman, a shilling to help me in the work
+of getting a law passed to compel the Gipsies to send their
+children to school.&nbsp; I took the shilling, and, after making
+her a present of a copy of the new edition of my &lsquo;Cry of
+the Children from the Brick-yards of England,&rsquo; which she
+wrapped in a <!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 78</span>beautiful white cloth, and after a
+shake of the hand, we parted, hoping to meet again on some future
+day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The foregoing letter brought forth the following letter from
+Mr. Daniel Gorrie, and appeared in the <i>Daily News</i> under
+date September 13th, as under:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith,
+Coalville, Leicester, whose letter on the above subject appears
+in your impression to-day, succeeded so well in his efforts on
+behalf of the poor slave-children of the Midland brick-yards,
+that it is to be hoped he will attain equal success in drawing
+attention to the pitiful condition of the Gipsy children, who are
+allowed to grow up as ignorant as savages that never saw the face
+nor heard the voice of a Christian missionary.&nbsp; In one of
+the late Thomas Aird&rsquo;s poems, entitled &lsquo;A Summer
+Day,&rsquo; there are some lines which, with your permission, I
+should like to quote, that are in perfect accord with Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s wise and kindly suggestion.&nbsp; The lines are
+these:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled
+sward,<br />
+Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped;<br />
+And there they&rsquo;ll sleep the summer night away.<br />
+By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood<br />
+Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest<br />
+Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire.<br />
+Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws<br />
+And meek provisions of this ancient State.<br />
+Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,<br />
+To let so many of her sons grow up<br />
+In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?<br />
+True, we are jealous, free, and hate constraint<br />
+And every cognisance, o&rsquo;er private life;<br />
+Yet, not to name a higher principle,<br />
+&rsquo;Twere but an institute of wise police<br />
+That every child, neglected of its own,<br />
+State claimed should be, State seized and taught and trained<br
+/>
+To social duty and to Christian life.<br />
+Our liberties have limbs, manifold;<br />
+So let the national will, which makes restraint<br />
+Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,<br />
+Power-arm the State to do the large design.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 79--><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+79</span>&ldquo;The above lines, I may add, were written by the
+poet (in losing whom Mr. Thomas Carlyle lost one of his oldest
+and most valued friends) many, many years before the Education
+Acts now in force came into existence.&nbsp; As many parents
+might not like the idea of Gipsy children attending the same
+Board schools as their own, would it not be possible to establish
+special schools in those parts of the Midland counties where
+Gipsies &lsquo;most do congregate&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To which I replied as under, in the <i>Daily News</i> bearing
+date September 13th:&mdash;&ldquo;In reply to Mr. Gorrie&rsquo;s
+letter which appears in your issue of this morning, I consider
+that it would be unwise and impracticable to build separate
+schools for either the brick-yard, canal-boat, Gipsy, or other
+children moving about the country, in tents, vans, &amp;c., for
+their use solely; especially would it be so in the case of Gipsy
+children and roadside arabs.&nbsp; What I have been and am still
+aiming at is the education of these children, not by isolating
+them from other working-classes&mdash;colliers, potters,
+ironworkers, factory hands, tradesmen, &amp;c.&mdash;but by
+bringing them in daily contact with the children of these
+parents, and also under some of the influences of our little
+missionary civilisers who are brought up and receiving some of
+their education in drawing-rooms, and whose parents cannot afford
+to send them to boarding-schools, colleges, &amp;c., and have to
+content themselves by having their children educated at either
+the national, British, or Board schools.&nbsp; I confess that it
+is not pleasant to hear that our children have picked up vulgar
+words at school; and it requires patience, care, and watchfulness
+on the part of parents to counteract some of the downward
+tendencies resulting from an uneven mixing of children brought up
+and educated under such influences.&nbsp; Better by far put up
+with these little ills than others we know not of, the outcome of
+ignorance.&nbsp; On the other hand, it is pleasing to note how
+glad the parents of Gipsy, canal-boat, and brick-yard children
+are when their children pick up &lsquo;fine words&rsquo; and
+become more &lsquo;gentlerified&rsquo; by mixing with <!-- page
+80--><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+80</span>children higher up the social scale.&nbsp; Bad habits,
+words, and actions are generally picked up between school
+times.&nbsp; It would be well for us to rub down class feeling
+among children as much as possible as regards their
+education.&nbsp; The children of brick-makers, canal-boatmen, and
+Gipsies are of us and with us, and must be taken hold of,
+educated, and elevated in things pertaining to their future
+welfare.&nbsp; The &lsquo;turning up of the nose,&rsquo; by those
+whose duty, education, and privilege should have taught them
+better things, at these poor children has had more to do in
+bringing about their pitiable and ignorant condition than can be
+imagined.&nbsp; The Canal Boats Act, if wisely carried out, will
+before long bring about the education of the canal-boat children;
+and in order to bring the Gipsy children, show children, and
+other roadside arabs under the Education Acts, I am seeking to
+have all movable habitations, <i>i.e.</i>, tents, vans, shows,
+&amp;c., in which the families live who are earning a living by
+travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in
+the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled &lsquo;by hook
+or by crook&rsquo; to send their children to school at the place
+wherever they may be temporarily located, be it national,
+British, or Board school.&nbsp; The education of these children
+should be brought about at all risks and inconveniences, or we
+may expect a blacker page in the social history of this country
+opening to our view than we have seen for many a long
+day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following leading article upon Gipsies and other tramps of
+a similar class appeared in the <i>Standard</i>, September 10th,
+1879, and as it relates to the subject I have in hand I quote it
+in full:&mdash;&ldquo;Not only in his &lsquo;Uncommercial
+Traveller,&rsquo; but in many other scattered passages of his
+works, Dickens, who for many years lived in Kent, has described
+the intolerable nuisance inflicted by tramps upon residents in
+the home counties, and has sketched the natural history of the
+sturdy vagabond who infests our roads and highways from early
+spring to late <!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 81</span>autumn, with a minuteness and power
+of detail worthy of a Burton.&nbsp; The subject of vagabondage is
+not, however, confined in its interest to the Metropolis and its
+adjacent parts.&nbsp; In the United States the habitual beggar
+has become as serious a nuisance, and, indeed, source of positive
+danger, as he was once amongst ourselves; and in the State of
+Pennsylvania more especially it has been found necessary to pass
+what may be described as an Habitual Vagrants Act for his
+suppression.&nbsp; That the terms of this enactment should be
+excessively severe is hardly matter of astonishment, when we bear
+in mind the fate of little Charley Ross.&nbsp; Early in the year
+1874 a couple of men who were travelling up and down the country
+in a waggon stole from the home of his parents in Germantown,
+Pennsylvania, a boy of some seven years named Charley Ross.&nbsp;
+They then sent letters demanding a large sum of money for his
+restoration.&nbsp; The ransom increased, until no less than
+twenty thousand dollars was insisted upon.&nbsp; While the
+parents, on the one hand, were attempting to raise the money, and
+while the police were endeavouring to arrest the kidnappers, all
+negotiations fell through.&nbsp; The two men believed to have
+been concerned in the abduction were shot down in the act of
+committing a burglary on Rhode Island, and from that day to this
+the fate of Charley Ross has remained a mystery.&nbsp; Under
+these circumstances, public opinion has naturally run high, and
+it has been provided that any habitual tramp making his way from
+place to place, without earning an honest livelihood, shall be
+liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve
+months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission,
+who carry fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure
+either persons or property, shall be put to work in the common
+penitentiary for a period of three years.&nbsp; Pennsylvania in
+this is but reverting to the old law of England in the Tudor
+days.&nbsp; In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were whipped at
+the cart&rsquo;s tail, without distinction of either sex or
+age.&nbsp; The whipping-post, <!-- page 82--><a
+name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>together with
+the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament of every parish green, and
+it was not until the year 1791 that the whipping of women was
+expressly forbidden by statute.&nbsp; There were other enactments
+even more severe.&nbsp; By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and
+marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines,
+wandering about the realm, were held <i>ipso facto</i> guilty of
+felony, and hundreds of such offenders were publicly
+executed.&nbsp; Another act of the same kind was directed against
+Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen who had
+been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if
+he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Pleas of the Crown&rsquo; we learn that at one Suffolk
+Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were executed on the
+strength of this barbarous act, and without any other reason or
+cause whatever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ancient severity of our Statute Book has long since
+been modified, and the worst that can now befall &lsquo;idle
+persons and vagabonds, such as wake on the night and sleep on the
+day, and haunt customable taverns and ale-houses, and routs
+about; and no man wot from whence they come ne whither they
+go,&rsquo; is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions
+of the Vagrant Act.&nbsp; Under this comprehensive statute are
+swept together as into one common net a vast variety of petty
+offenders, of whom some are deemed &lsquo;idle and disorderly
+persons,&rsquo; other &lsquo;rogues and vagabonds,&rsquo; and
+others again &lsquo;incorrigible rogues.&rsquo;&nbsp; Under one
+or other of these heads are unlicensed hawkers or pedlars;
+persons wandering abroad to beg or causing any child to beg;
+persons lodging in any outhouse or in the open air, not having
+any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account
+of themselves; persons playing or betting in the public street;
+and notorious thieves loitering about with intent to commit a
+felony.&nbsp; At the present period of the year the country in
+the neighbourhood not of the Metropolis alone, but of all large
+towns, is filled with offenders of this kind.&nbsp; Indeed, the
+sturdy tramp renders the country to a <!-- page 83--><a
+name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>very great
+extent unsafe for ladies who have ventured to go about without
+protection.&nbsp; Ostensibly he is a vendor of combs, or
+bootlaces, or buttons, or is in quest of a hop-picking job, or is
+a discharged soldier or sailor, or a labourer out of
+employment.&nbsp; But whatever may be his pretence, his mode of
+procedure is more or less the same.&nbsp; If he can come upon a
+roadside cottage left in the charge of a woman, or possibly only
+of a young girl, he will demand food and money, and if the demand
+be not instantly complied with will never hesitate at
+violence.&nbsp; Indeed, when we remember how many horrible
+outrages have within the last few years been committed by
+ruffians of this kind, it is quite easy to understand the
+severity necessary in less civilised times.&nbsp; Only recently
+the Spaniard Garcia murdered an entire family in Wales; and some
+few years ago, at Denham, near Uxbridge, a small household was
+butchered for the sake of a few shillings and such little plunder
+as the humble cottage afforded.&nbsp; And although grave crimes
+of this kind are happily rare, and tend to become rarer, petty
+violence is far from uncommon.&nbsp; Many ladies resident in the
+country can tell how they have been beset upon the highway by
+sturdy tramps of forbidding aspect, to whom, in despair, they
+have given alms to an amount which practically made the
+solicitation an act of brigandage.&nbsp; The farmer&rsquo;s wife
+and the bailiff tell us how haystacks are converted into
+temporary lodging-houses, chickens stolen, and outbuildings
+plundered.&nbsp; Only too often the rogues are in direct league
+with the worst offenders in London.&nbsp; Whitechapel supplies a
+large contingent of the Kentish hop-pickers, and the
+&lsquo;traveller&rsquo; who is ostensibly in search of a
+haymaking or hopping job is, as often as not, spying out the
+land, and planning profitable burglaries to be carried out in
+winter with the aid of his colleagues.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is
+picturesque.&nbsp; A romantic imagination pictures him as a sort
+of peripatetic philosopher, with more of Jacques in him than of
+Autolycus; living in constant communion with <!-- page 84--><a
+name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>Nature;
+sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the scantiest fare;
+slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging to be
+allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as
+purposeless as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as
+destitute of all worldly ends and aims as are the very violets of
+the hedge-row.&nbsp; &AElig;sthetic enthusiasm of this kind is
+apt to be severely checked by the prosaic realities of actual
+existence.&nbsp; The tramp, like the noble savage, is a relic of
+uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to
+dispense.&nbsp; There is no appreciation of the country about
+him; no love of Nature for its own sake.&nbsp; In winter he
+becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he almost always proves
+himself turbulent and disorderly.&nbsp; As soon as it becomes
+warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a
+thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from
+&lsquo;the Union&rsquo; and takes to &lsquo;the
+roads.&rsquo;&nbsp; From town to town he begs or steals his way,
+safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest
+workhouse must always provide him with gratuitous board and
+lodging.&nbsp; Work of any kind, although he vigorously pretends
+to be in &lsquo;want of a job,&rsquo; is utterly abhorrent to
+him.&nbsp; Home county farmers, led by that unerring instinct
+which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the
+tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the
+<i>bon&acirc;-fide</i> &lsquo;harvester,&rsquo; in quest of
+honest employment.&nbsp; The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler
+of the roads&mdash;a cousin-german of the
+&lsquo;beach-comber,&rsquo; who is the plague of consuls and
+aversion of merchant skippers.&nbsp; In almost every port of any
+size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose
+pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage,
+but who are, in reality, living from hand to mouth.&nbsp;
+Captains know only too well that the true
+&lsquo;beach-comber&rsquo; is always incompetent, often
+physically unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous.&nbsp;
+When his other resources fail, he throws himself upon the nearest
+consul of the nation to which he may claim to belong, and a very
+<!-- page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+85</span>considerable sum is yearly wasted in providing such
+ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert is the
+land of their birth.&nbsp; Harbour-masters and port authorities
+generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind
+somewhat summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers
+are ill-advised if they do not follow the good example thus set,
+and show the tramp as little mercy as possible.&nbsp; Leniency,
+indeed, of any kind he simply regards as weakness.&nbsp; He would
+be a highwayman if the existing conditions of society allowed it,
+and if he had the necessary personal courage.&nbsp; As it is, he
+is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our
+roads.&nbsp; Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is
+with the genuine Gipsies.&nbsp; He has taken to it from choice,
+and the true-bred Romany will always regard him with contempt, as
+a mere migratory gaol bird, who knows no tongue of the roads
+beyond the cant or &lsquo;kennick&rsquo; of thieves&mdash;a
+Whitechapel <i>argot</i>, familiarity with which at once tells
+its own tale.&nbsp; Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient
+to keep the nuisance in check, if only it be resolutely
+administered.&nbsp; The tramp, however, trades upon spurious
+sympathy.&nbsp; There will always be weak-minded folk to pity the
+poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for
+sleeping under a haystack&mdash;forgetting that this interesting
+offender is, as a rule, no better than a common thief at large,
+who will steal whatever he can lay his hands on, and who makes
+our lanes and pleasant country byways unpleasant, if not actually
+dangerous.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The foregoing article upon Gipsies and tramps brought from a
+correspondent in the <i>Standard</i>, under date September 12th,
+the following letter:&mdash;&ldquo;I have just been reading the
+article in your paper on the subject of tramps.&nbsp; If you
+could stand at my gate for one day, you would be astonished to
+see the number of tramps passing through our village, which is on
+the high road between two of the principal towns in South
+Yorkshire; and the same may be <!-- page 86--><a
+name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>said of any
+place in England situated on the main road, or what was formerly
+the coach road.&nbsp; We seldom meet tramps in town, except
+towards evening, when they come in for the casual ward.&nbsp;
+They spend their day in the country, passing from one town to
+another, and to those who reside near the high road, as I do,
+they are an intolerable nuisance.&nbsp; A tramp in a ten mile
+journey, which occupies him all day, will frequently make 1s. 6d.
+or 2s. a day, besides being supplied with food, and the more
+miserable and wretched he can make himself appear, the more
+sympathy he will get, and if he is lucky enough to meet a
+benevolent old lady out for her afternoon drive he will get 6d.
+or 1s. from her.&nbsp; She will say &lsquo;Poor man,&rsquo; and
+then go home thinking how she has helped &lsquo;that poor,
+wretched man&rsquo; on his way.&nbsp; Tramps are a class of
+people who never have worked, and who never will, except it be in
+prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they
+will continue to be, as you say in your article, &lsquo;A blot
+upon the country and an eyesore on our roads.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a
+tramp is to threaten him with the police, and I am quite sure if
+every householder would make a rule never to relieve tramps with
+money, and only those who are crippled, with food, the number
+would soon be decreased.&nbsp; If people have any old clothes or
+spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon find in
+their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity
+than the highway tramp.&nbsp; I do not recommend anybody to find
+a tramp even temporary employment, unless they can stand over him
+and then see the man safe off the premises, and even then he may
+come again at night as a burglar; but I am sure work could be
+found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our corporations or on the
+highways, where, under proper supervision, these idle vagabonds
+would be made to earn an honest living.&nbsp; You will find that
+nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character,
+and although they may say they <!-- page 87--><a
+name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>&lsquo;want
+work,&rsquo; they really do not mean it.&nbsp; Not long ago I
+caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from a
+little girl who was taking it to her father at his work.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Poor man! he must have been very hungry,&rsquo; I fancy I
+hear the benevolent old lady saying.&nbsp; Of course, during the
+last year we have had many men &lsquo;on the road&rsquo; who are
+really in search of work, but I always tell them that there is as
+much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a
+situation in view they should not go tramping from town to
+town.&nbsp; Many of them have no characters to produce, and I
+expect when they find &lsquo;tramping&rsquo; is such a pleasant
+and easy mode of living they will join the ranks and become
+roadsters also.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In <i>May&rsquo;s Aldershot Advertiser</i>, September 13th,
+1879, the following is a leading article upon the condition of
+Gipsies:&mdash;&ldquo;The incoming of September reminds us that
+in the hop districts this is the season of advent of those
+British nomads&mdash;the Gipsies, the only class for whom there
+is so little legislation, or with whose actions and habits,
+lawless as they are, the agents of the law so seldom
+interfere.&nbsp; The miners of the Black Country owe the
+suppression of juvenile labour and the short time law to the long
+exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler.&nbsp; The
+brickmaker may no longer debase and ruin, both morally and
+physically, his child of the tender age of nine or ten years, by
+turning it&mdash;boy or girl&mdash;into the brick-yard to toil,
+shoeless and ragged, at carrying heavy lumps on its head.&nbsp;
+The canal population&mdash;they who are born and die in the
+circumscribed hole at the end of a barge, dignified by the name
+of &lsquo;cabin,&rsquo; are just now receiving the special
+attention of Mr. Smith, of Coalville, and certainly, excepting
+the section of whom I am writing, there is not to be found in
+privileged England a people so utterly debased and regardless of
+the characteristics of civilised life.&nbsp; The Factory Act
+prevents the employing of boys or girls under a certain age, and
+secures for those who are legally employed a sufficient time <!--
+page 88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+88</span>for recreation.&nbsp; But who cares for, or thinks
+about, the wandering Romany?&nbsp; True, Police-Constable Argus
+receives authority by which he, <i>sans
+c&eacute;r&eacute;monie</i>, commands them to &lsquo;move
+on,&rsquo; should he come across any by the roadside in his
+diurnal or nocturnal perambulations.&nbsp; But it often occurs
+that the object for which they &lsquo;camped&rsquo; in the spot
+has been accomplished.&nbsp; The farmer&rsquo;s hedge has been
+made to supply them with fuel for warmth and for culinary
+purposes; his field has been trespassed upon, and fodder stolen
+for their overworked and cruelly-treated quadrupeds; so, the
+&lsquo;move on&rsquo; simply means a little inconvenience
+resulting from their having to transfer their paraphernalia to
+another &lsquo;camp ground&rsquo; not far off.&nbsp; They also
+enjoy certain immunities which are withheld from other
+classes.&nbsp; Excepting that some of them pay for a
+hawker&rsquo;s licence, they roam about as they list, untaxed and
+uncontrolled, though the earnings of most of them amount to a
+considerable sum every year; as they are free from the
+conventional rule which requires the house-dwelling population,
+often at great inconvenience, to &lsquo;keep up
+appearances,&rsquo; it often happens that the wearer of the most
+tattered garments earns the most money.&nbsp; They can and do
+live sparingly, and spend lavishly.&nbsp; The labour which they
+choose is the most remunerative kind.&nbsp; Ploughing or
+stone-breaking is not the employment, which the Gipsy usually
+seeks!&nbsp; He takes the cream and leaves the skimmed milk for
+the cottier, and having done all there is to do of the kind he
+chooses, he is off to some other money-making industry.&nbsp; A
+Gipsy will make four harvests in one year; first he goes
+&lsquo;up the country,&rsquo; as he calls going into Middlesex,
+for &lsquo;peas-hacking.&rsquo;&nbsp; That over, he goes into
+Sussex (Chichester&mdash;&rsquo;wheat-fagging&rsquo; or tying),
+and on that being done, returns toward Hampshire&mdash;North
+Hants&mdash;to &lsquo;fag&rsquo; or tie, and that being done he
+enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a
+&lsquo;bin&rsquo; in one of the gardens).&nbsp; Some idea of his
+gross earnings may be obtained from the following fact:&mdash;Two
+able-bodied men, an old woman of <!-- page 89--><a
+name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>about 75
+years of age, and two women, earned on a farm in one harvest, no
+less than &pound;42.&nbsp; After that, they went hop-picking,
+and, in answer to my question, &lsquo;How much will they earn
+there?&rsquo; the farmer, who is a hop-grower, said, &lsquo;More
+than they have here.&rsquo;&nbsp; These operations were performed
+in less than a quarter of the year.&nbsp; In the places through
+which they pass to their work they sell what they can, and at
+night pitch their tent or draw their van on some common or waste
+land, buy no corn for their horses, nor spend any money for coal
+or wood.&nbsp; If they locate themselves on the margin of a wood,
+and make a prolonged sojourn, the uproar, the screams, the cries
+of &lsquo;murder&rsquo; heard from their rendezvous</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Make night hideous.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>All this, and more, they do with impunity.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is
+only the Gipsies quarrelling.&rsquo;&nbsp; No inspector of
+nuisances pays them a visit; the tax-gatherer knows not their
+whereabouts; the rate-collector troubles them not with any
+&lsquo;demand note;&rsquo; their children are not provided with
+proper and necessary education, yet no school attendance officer
+serves them with a summons.&nbsp; Their existence is not known
+officially, saving the time a census is taken, when, at the
+<i>expense of the house-dwellers</i>, a registry is made of
+them.&nbsp; Not a farthing do they contribute to the government,
+imperial or local, though many of them are in a position to do
+it, and can, without inconvenience, find from &pound;40 to
+&pound;80; or &pound;100 for a new-travelling van when they want
+one.&nbsp; Overcrowding and numerous indecencies exist in galore
+among them, yet no representative of the Board of Health troubles
+himself about the number of cubic feet of air per individual
+there may be in their tent or van.&nbsp; Is this neglect,
+indifference, obliviousness, or do the authorities believe that
+the impurities and unsanitary exhalements are sufficiently
+oxidised to prevent any disease?&nbsp; It is worthy of remark
+that they are not liable to the epidemics which afflict
+others.&nbsp; The loss of a <!-- page 90--><a
+name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>pony from a
+common simultaneously with their exodus is a suspicious fact
+occasionally.&nbsp; They live in defiance of social, moral,
+civil, and natural law, a disgrace to the legislature.&mdash;J.
+W. B.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the <i>Hand and Heart</i>, September 19th of last year, the
+editor says, with reference to our roadside
+arabs:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts
+to better the condition of the wretched canal population have met
+deserved success, draws attention to the state of another
+neglected class.&nbsp; Parliament, he says, which has lately been
+reforming so many things, would have done well to consider the
+case of the Gipsies, &lsquo;our roadside arabs.&rsquo;&nbsp; Of
+the idleness, ignorance, heathenism, and general misery
+prevailing among these strange people he gives some curious
+instances.&nbsp; One old man, whose acquaintance Mr. Smith made,
+calculates that &lsquo;there are about 250 families of Gipsies in
+ten of the Midland counties, and thinks that a similar proportion
+will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom.&nbsp; He has
+seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five
+miles.&nbsp; He thinks there will be an average of five children
+in each tent.&nbsp; He has seen as many as ten or twelve children
+in some tents, and not many of them able to read or write.&nbsp;
+His child of six months old&mdash;with his wife ill at the same
+time in the tent&mdash;sickened, died, and was &ldquo;laid
+out&rdquo; by him, and it was also buried out of one of those
+wretched abodes on the roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last
+January.&nbsp; When the poor thing died he had not sixpence in
+his pocket.&rsquo;&nbsp; An old woman bore similar
+testimony.&nbsp; &lsquo;She said that she had had sixteen
+children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born
+in a roadside tent.&nbsp; She says that she was married out of
+one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a
+tent at Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch.&nbsp; This poor woman
+knows about three hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the
+Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself, so she says, four
+lots <!-- page 91--><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+91</span>of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the present
+time.&nbsp; She said she could not read herself, and thinks that
+not one Gipsy in twenty can.&nbsp; She has travelled all her
+life.&nbsp; Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few,
+is the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a
+tent.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mr. Smith&rsquo;s conclusion (which will not
+be disputed) is that &lsquo;to have between three and four
+thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children
+classed in the Census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over
+the country, in ignorance and evil training that carries peril
+with it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He contends that &lsquo;if these poor children, living in vans
+and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these
+places, they should be registered in a manner analogous to the
+Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought
+under the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become
+Christianised and civilised as other children.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The <i>Illustrated London News</i>, October 4th,
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;Among the papers to be read at Manchester is
+one on the condition of the Gipsy children and roadside
+&lsquo;arabs&rsquo; in our midst, by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester.&nbsp; Here, indeed, is a gentleman who is
+certainly neither a dealer in crotchets nor a rider of
+hobbies.&nbsp; Mr. Smith has done admirable service on behalf of
+the poor children on board our barges and canal-boats, and the
+even more pitiable boys and girls in our brick-fields; and to his
+philanthropic exertions are mainly due the recent amendments in
+the Factory Acts regulating the labour of young children.&nbsp;
+He has now taken the case of the juvenile &lsquo;Romanies&rsquo;
+in hand; and I wish him well in his benevolent crusade.&nbsp; Mr.
+Smith has obligingly sent me a proof of his address, from which I
+gather that, owing to a superstitious dislike which the Gipsies
+entertain towards the Census, and the successfully cunning
+attempts on their part to baffle the enumerators, it is only by
+conjecture and guesswork that we can form any idea of the number
+of Bohemians in this country.&nbsp; The <!-- page 92--><a
+name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>result of Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption
+that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from
+15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and &lsquo;arab&rsquo;&mdash;that is to
+say, tramp&mdash;children roaming about the country
+&lsquo;outside the educational laws and the pale of
+civilisation.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following leading article, relating to my paper upon
+&ldquo;The Condition of the Gipsy Children,&rdquo; appears in the
+<i>Daily News</i>, October 6th:&mdash;&ldquo;At the Social
+Science Congress Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, will to-morrow
+open a fresh campaign of philanthropy.&nbsp; The philanthropic
+Alexander is seldom in the unhappy condition of his Macedonian
+original, and generally has plenty of worlds remaining ready to
+be conquered.&nbsp; Brick-yards and canal-boats have not
+exhausted Mr. Smith&rsquo;s energies, and the field he has now
+entered upon is wider and perhaps harder to work than either of
+these.&nbsp; Mr. Smith desires to bring the Gipsy children under
+the operation of the Education Act.&nbsp; Education and Gipsies
+seem at first sight to be words mutually contradictory.&nbsp;
+Amid the mass of imaginative fiction, idle speculation, and
+deliberate forgery that has been set afloat on the subject of the
+Gipsies, one thing has been made tolerably clear, and that is the
+intense aversion which the pure bred Gipsy has to any of the
+restraints of civilised life.&nbsp; Whether those restraints take
+the form of orderly and cleanly living in houses of brick and of
+stone, or of military service, or of school attendance, is pretty
+much a matter of indifference to him.&nbsp; Schools, indeed, may
+be regarded from the Gipsy point of view as not merely irksome,
+but useless institutions.&nbsp; Our most advanced places of
+technical education do not teach fortune-telling, or that
+interesting branch of the tinker&rsquo;s art which enables the
+practitioner in mending one hole in a kettle to make two.&nbsp;
+Except for music the Gipsies do not seem to have much aptitude
+for the arts; they are more or less indifferent to literature;
+and business, except of certain dubious kinds, is a detestable
+thing to them.&nbsp; Their vagrant habits, on the other hand,
+enable them, without much difficulty, to evade <!-- page 93--><a
+name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>the great
+commandment which has gone forth, that all the English world
+shall be examined.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy
+one.&nbsp; We may pass over those degenerate members of the race
+who have elected to pitch permanent tents in the slums and
+rookeries of great towns, because, in the first place, they are
+degenerate, and in the second, their children ought to be within
+reach of School Board visitors who do their duty
+diligently.&nbsp; It is only the Gipsy proper who has the
+opportunity of evading this vigilance.&nbsp; His opportunity is
+an excellent one, and he fully avails himself of it.&nbsp; Gipsy
+households, if they can be so called, are of the most fluid, not
+to say intangible character.&nbsp; The partnerships between men
+and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit of
+aliases and double names make identification still more
+difficult.&nbsp; As a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and
+though the hardships to which young children are exposed thin it
+considerably, the proportion of children to adults is still very
+large.&nbsp; Hawking, their chief ostensible occupation, cannot
+legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and until that
+time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and loaf
+about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices.&nbsp; Idleness
+and ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined
+to represent things falsely, are the parents of every sort of
+vice, and the average Gipsy child would appear to be brought up
+in a condition which is the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of both.&nbsp;
+It is true that Gipsies do not very often make their appearance
+in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the cunning
+with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their
+well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to
+the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise.&nbsp;
+Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know
+that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be
+paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered
+with, will go.&nbsp; Interference with them is apt to bring down
+a <!-- page 94--><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+94</span>visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the &lsquo;red
+cock,&rsquo; whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a
+stray chicken here and a vanished blanket there.&nbsp; So the
+Ishmaelites are left pretty much alone to wander about from
+roadside patch to roadside patch to pick up a living somehow or
+other, and to exist in the condition of undisturbed freedom and
+filth which appears to be all that they desire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The gloss has long been taken off the picture which
+imaginative persons used to varnish for themselves as to the
+Romany.&nbsp; Nor, perhaps is any country in Europe so little
+fitted for these gentry as ours.&nbsp; England is every year
+becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not
+enclosed are more and more carefully looked after.&nbsp; Whether
+in our climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory
+is a question not easy to answer.&nbsp; But even if we admit that
+it might have been merry in good greenwood under the conditions
+picturesquely described in ballads, the admission does not extend
+to the present day.&nbsp; There is no good greenwood now, except
+a few insignificant patches, which are pretty sharply preserved;
+and the killing of game, except on a small scale and at
+considerable risk, is difficult.&nbsp; The cheapness of modern
+manufactures has interfered a good deal with the various trades
+of mending, mankind having made up their minds that it is better
+to buy new things and throw them away when they fail than to have
+them patched and cobbled.&nbsp; Fortune-telling is a resource to
+some extent, but even this is meddled with by the Gorgio and his
+laws.&nbsp; The <i>raison d&rsquo;&ecirc;tre</i> of the vagabond
+Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes
+on the likelihood of his practices becoming more and more
+undisguisedly criminal is obvious.&nbsp; The best way to prevent
+this is, of course, to catch him young and educate him.&nbsp; A
+century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of the race might have
+made this difficult, if not impossible.&nbsp; But it is clear
+that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during
+their four centuries of residence in England, <!-- page 95--><a
+name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>other
+influences have been sufficient to work upon them.&nbsp; If they
+can live in towns at all, they can live in them after the manner
+of civilised townsmen.&nbsp; A Gipsy at school suggests odd
+ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate some
+day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that
+promising South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took
+off his trousers (as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from
+his feet), and began vigorously to kill colonists.&nbsp; But it
+is by no means certain that this would be the case.&nbsp; The old
+order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any rate, become
+something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance.&nbsp;
+It has ceased to be even picturesque.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following is a copy of my paper upon the &ldquo;Condition
+of Gipsy Children,&rdquo; as read by me before the Social Science
+Congress, held at Manchester on October 7th, 1879.&nbsp; Although
+it was at the &ldquo;fag end&rdquo; of the session, and the last
+paper but two, it was evident the announcement in the papers that
+my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a little
+interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began
+to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr.
+Haviland, it was manifest I was to be honoured with a large
+audience, so much so, that, before I had proceeded very far with
+it, the hall was nearly full of merchant princes&mdash;who could
+afford to leave their bags of gold and cotton&mdash;and ladies
+and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale of
+neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called
+&ldquo;Gipsies&rsquo; children.&rdquo;&nbsp; Dr. Gladstone, of
+the London School Board, opened the discussion and said that he
+could, from his own observation and knowledge of the persons I
+had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my remarks.&nbsp; Dr.
+Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other
+gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous
+feeling of those present that something should be done to remedy
+this sad state of things; and the chairman said that the result
+of my labours with regard to the Gipsies would be that something
+<!-- page 96--><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+96</span>would be done in the way of legislation.&nbsp; The paper
+caused some excitement in the country, and was copied lengthily
+into many of the daily papers, including the <i>Leicester Daily
+Post</i>, <i>Leicester Daily Mercury</i>, <i>Nottingham
+Guardian</i>, <i>Nottingham Journal</i>, <i>Sunday School
+Chronicle</i>, <i>Record</i>, and others nearly in full, and was
+read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As it is not in my power to open out a painful subject
+in the flowery language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in
+musical sounds of the highest pitch of refinement, culture, and
+sentiment, I purpose following out very briefly the same course
+on the present occasion as I adopted on the three times I have
+had the honour to address the Social Science Congress with
+reference to the brick-yard and canal-boat children&mdash;viz.,
+that of attempting to place a few serious, hard, broad dark facts
+in a plain, practical, common-sense view, so as to permeate your
+nature till they have reached your hearts and consciences, and
+compelled you to extend the hand of sympathy and help to rescue
+my young clients from the dreadful and perilous condition into
+which they have fallen through long years of neglect.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p96b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Farmer&rsquo;s Pig that does not like a Gipsy&rsquo;s Tent"
+title=
+"A Farmer&rsquo;s Pig that does not like a Gipsy&rsquo;s Tent"
+src="images/p96s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;Owing to a superstitious regard and dislike the Gipsies
+had towards the Census, and their endeavours to evade being
+taken, no correct number has been arrived at; and it is only by
+guess work and conjecture we can form any idea of the number of
+Gipsies there are in this country.&nbsp; The Census puts the
+number at between 4,000 and 5,000.&nbsp; A gentleman who has
+lived and moved among them many years writes me to say that there
+cannot be less than 2,000 in the neighbourhood of London, whose
+Paradises are in the neighbourhood of Wormwood Scrubs, Notting
+Hill Pottery, New Found Out, Kensal Green, Battersea, Dulwich
+Common, Lordship Lane, Mitcham Common, Barnes Common, Epping
+Forest, Cherry Island, and like places.&nbsp; A gentleman told me
+some time since that he gave a tea to over 150 Gipsies residing
+in the neighbourhood of Kensal Green.&nbsp; A Gipsy woman who has
+moved about all her life says she knows about 300 families <!--
+page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+97</span>in ten of the Midland counties.&nbsp; Another Gipsy, in
+a different part of England, tells me a similar story, and says
+the same proportion will be borne out all over the country.&nbsp;
+Of hawkers, auctioneers, showmen, and others who live in caravans
+with their families, there would be, at a rough calculation, not
+less than 3,000 children; taking these things along with others,
+and the number given in the Census, it may be fairly assumed that
+I am under the mark when I state that there are not less than
+4,000 Gipsy men and women, and 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and other
+children moving about the country outside the educational laws
+and the pale of civilisation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some few Gipsies who have arrived at what they consider
+the highest state of a respectable and civilised life, reside in
+houses which, in 99 cases out of 100, are in the lowest and most
+degraded part of the towns, among the scum and offscouring of all
+nations, and like locusts they leave a blight behind them
+wherever they have been.&nbsp; Others have their tents and vans,
+and there are many others who I have tents only.&nbsp; A tent as
+a rule is about 7ft. 6in. wide, 16ft. long, and 4ft. 6in. high at
+the top.&nbsp; They are covered with pieces of old cloth,
+sacking, &amp;c., to keep the rain and snow out; the opening to
+allow the Gipsies to go in and out of their tent is covered with
+a kind of coverlet.&nbsp; The fire by which they cook their meals
+is placed in a kind of tin bucket pierced with holes, and stands
+on the damp ground.&nbsp; Some of the smoke or sulphur arising
+from the sticks or coke finds its way through an opening at the
+top of the tent about 2ft. in diameter.&nbsp; The other part of
+the smoke helps to keep their faces and hands the proper Gipsy
+colour.&nbsp; Their beds consist of a layer of straw upon the
+damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the case may
+be.&nbsp; An old soapbox or tea-chest serves as a chest of
+drawers, drawing-room table, and clothes-box.&nbsp; In these
+places children are born, live, and die; men, women, grown-up
+sons and daughters, lie huddled together in such a state as would
+shock the <!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 98</span>modesty of South African savages, to
+whom we send missionaries to show them the blessings of
+Christianity.&nbsp; As in other cases where idleness and filth
+abounds, what little washing they do is generally done on the
+Saturday afternoons; but this is a business they do not indulge
+in too often.&nbsp; They are not overdone with cooking utensils,
+and the knives and forks they principally use are of the kind
+Adam used, and sensitive when applied to hot water.&nbsp; They
+take their meals and do their washing squatting upon the ground
+like tailors and Zulus.&nbsp; Lying, begging, thieving, cheating,
+and every other abominable, low, cunning craft that ignorance and
+idleness can devise, they practise.&nbsp; In some instances these
+things are carried out to such a pitch as to render them more
+like imbeciles than human beings endowed with reason.&nbsp;
+Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances used
+only as a &lsquo;blind;&rsquo; while the women and children go
+about the country begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their
+heathenish tents sufficient to keep the family.&nbsp; The poor
+women are the slaves and tools for the whole family, and can be
+seen very often with a child upon their backs, another in their
+arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.&nbsp; Upon the
+shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for
+the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens.&nbsp; Many of the women
+enjoy their short pipes quite as much as the men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Judging from the conversations I have had with the
+Gipsies in various parts of the country, not more than half
+living as men and wives are married.&nbsp; No form or ceremony
+has been gone through, not even &lsquo;jumping the
+broomstick,&rsquo; as has been reported of them; and taking the
+words of a respectable Gipsy woman, &lsquo;they go together, take
+each other&rsquo;s words, and there is an end of it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real respectable Gipsy, and
+a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy, who preaches
+occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as men and
+wives are married.&nbsp; When once a Gipsy woman has <!-- page
+99--><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>been
+ill-used, she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days
+since, &lsquo;we are either like devils or like
+lambs.&rsquo;&nbsp; In the case of some of the adult Gipsies
+living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken
+place.&nbsp; There is some good among them as with others.&nbsp;
+A Gipsy in Wiltshire has built himself a house at the cost of
+&pound;600.&nbsp; Considerable difficulty is experienced
+sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by two
+names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the
+children.&nbsp; Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers
+prohibiting the granting of licences for hawking to the youths of
+both sexes under seventeen, and the Education Acts not being
+sufficiently strong to lay hold of their dirty, idle, travelling
+tribes to educate them&mdash;except in rare cases&mdash;they are
+allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training, without
+being taught how to get an honest living.&nbsp; No ray of hope
+enters their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll
+about so long as the food comes, no matter by whom or how it
+comes so that they get it.&nbsp; In many instances they live like
+pigs, and die like dogs.&nbsp; The real old-fashioned Gipsy has
+become more lewd and demoralised&mdash;if such a thing could
+be&mdash;by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the
+scamps, vagabonds, &lsquo;rodneys,&rsquo; and gaol birds, who now
+and then take their flight from the &lsquo;stone cup&rsquo; and
+settle among them as they are camping on the ditch banks; the
+consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot of dirty
+ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children,
+have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers&mdash;by
+supplying their wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men
+helping themselves to game&mdash;to locate in the neighbourhood
+until they have received the tip from the farmer to pass on to
+his neighbours.&nbsp; Children born under such circumstances,
+unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a class of
+most dangerous characters.&nbsp; Very much, up to the present,
+the wants of the women and children have been supplied through
+gulling the large-hearted and liberal-minded they <!-- page
+100--><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+100</span>have been brought in contact with, and the result has
+been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their way into
+gaols.&nbsp; This is a redeeming feature in their character;
+probably their offences may have been winked at by the farmers
+and others who do not like the idea of having their stacks fired
+and property destroyed, and have given the Gipsies a wide
+berth.&nbsp; Gipsies, as a rule, have very large families,
+generally between eight and sixteen children are born in their
+tents.&nbsp; Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground
+they suffer much from chest and throat complaints.&nbsp; Large
+numbers of the children die young before they are
+&lsquo;broken&rsquo; in.&rsquo;&nbsp; And it is a &lsquo;breaking
+in&rsquo; in a tremendous sense, fraught with fearful
+consequences.&nbsp; With regard to their education, the following
+cases, selected from different parts of the country, may be
+fairly taken as representative of the entire Gipsy
+community.&nbsp; Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had
+nine sons and daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen
+grandchildren, and none of them can read or write; and he also
+thinks that about half the Gipsy men and women living as husbands
+and wives are unmarried.&nbsp; Mrs. Simpson, a Gipsy woman and a
+Christian, says she has six sons and daughters and sixteen
+grandchildren, and only two can read and write a little.&nbsp;
+Mrs. Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters.&nbsp; Mr.
+Eastwood, a Christian and a Gipsy, has eight brothers and
+sisters, many among them have large families, making a total of
+adults and children of about fifty of all ages, and there is
+scarcely one among them who can tell a letter or read a sentence;
+in addition to this number they have between them from 130 to 150
+first and second cousins, among whom there are not more than two
+who can read or write, and that but very little indeed, and Mr.
+Eastwood thinks this proportion will apply to other
+Gipsies.&nbsp; Mrs. Trayleer has six brothers and sisters, all
+Gipsies, and not one can read or write.&nbsp; A Gipsy woman,
+whose head-quarters are near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, has fifteen
+brothers and sisters, some <!-- page 101--><a
+name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>of whom
+have large families.&nbsp; She herself has fifteen sons and
+daughters alive, some of whom are married.&nbsp; But of the whole
+of these brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren,
+&amp;c., numbering not less than 100 of all ages, not more than
+three or four can read or write, and they who can but very
+imperfectly.&nbsp; Mrs. Matthews has a family of seven children,
+nearly all grown-up, and not one out of the whole of these can
+read or write; thus it will be seen that I shall be under the
+mark when I state that not five per cent. of the Gipsies,
+&amp;c., travelling about the country in tents and vans can
+either read or write; and I have not found one Gipsy but what
+thinks it would be a good thing if their tents and vans were
+registered, and the children compelled to go to school&mdash;in
+fact, many of them are anxious for such a thing to be brought
+about.&nbsp; In the case of the brick-yard and canal-boat
+children, they were over-worked as well as ignorant.&nbsp; In the
+case of the Gipsy children, these children and roadside arabs,
+for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are
+indulging in practices that are fast working their own
+destruction and those they are brought into contact with, and a
+great deal of this may lay at the door of flattery, twaddle,
+petting, and fear.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The plan I would adopt to remedy this sad state of
+things is to apply the principles of the Canal Boats Act of 1877
+to all movable habitations&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, I would have all
+tents, shows, caravans, auctioneers&rsquo; vans, and like places
+used as dwellings registered and numbered, and under proper
+sanitary arrangements and supervision of the sanitary inspectors
+and School Board officers in every town and village.&nbsp; With
+regard to the education of the children when once the tent or van
+is registered and numbered, the children, whether travelling as
+Gipsies, auctioneers, &amp;c., are mostly idle during the day;
+consequently, a book similar to the half-time book, in which
+their names and attendance at school could be entered, they could
+take from place to place as they travel about, and it could be
+endorsed by the schoolmaster <!-- page 102--><a
+name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>showing
+that the child was attending school.&nbsp; The education obtained
+in this way would not be of the highest order; but through the
+kindness of the schoolmaster&mdash;for which extra trouble he
+should be compensated, as he ought to be under the Canal Boats
+Act&mdash;and the vigilance of the School Board visitor, a plain,
+practical, and sound education could be imparted to, and obtained
+by, these poor little Gipsy children and roadside arabs, who, if
+we do our duty, will be qualified to fill the places of those of
+our best artisans who are leaving the country to seek their
+fortunes abroad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following is a leading article in the <i>Birmingham Daily
+Mail</i>, October 8th:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, whose
+exertions on behalf of the canal population and the children
+employed in brick-yards have been accompanied with so much
+success, is now turning his attention to the education of the
+Gipsies.&nbsp; He read a paper on this subject at the Social
+Science Congress, yesterday, suggesting that the same plan of
+registration which had proved advantageous in the case of the
+canal-boatmen and their families should be adopted for the more
+nomadic class who roam from place to place, with no settled home
+and no local habitation.&nbsp; The Gipsies are a strange race,
+with a romantic history, and their vagabond life is surrounded
+with enough of the mysterious to give them at all times a special
+and curious interest.&nbsp; In the days of our infancy we are
+frightened with tales of their child-thieving propensities, and
+even when years and reason have asserted their influence we are
+apt to regard with a survival of our childish awe the wandering
+&lsquo;diviners and wicked heathens&rsquo; who roam about the
+country, living in a mysterious aloofness from their
+fellow-men.&nbsp; Scores of theories have been propounded as to
+the origin of the Gipsy race, whence they sprang, and how they
+came to be so largely scattered over three of the four quarters
+of the globe.&nbsp; Opinion, following in the wake of the learned
+Rudiger, has finally settled down to the view that they came <!--
+page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+103</span>from India, but whether they are the Tshandalas
+referred to in the laws of Menou, or kinsmen of the Bazeegars of
+Calcutta, or are descended from the robbers of the Indus, or are
+identical with the Nuts and Djatts of Northern India, has not
+been ascertained with any degree of certainty.&nbsp; The
+Gyptologists are not yet agreed upon the ancestry of this ancient
+but obscure race, and possibly they never will be.&nbsp; We know,
+however, that the Gipsies have wandered up and down Europe since
+the eleventh century, if not from a still earlier period, and
+that they have preserved their Bohemian characteristics, their
+language&mdash;which is a sort of daughter of the old
+Sanscrit&mdash;their traditions, and the mysteries of their
+religion during a long career of restless movement and frequent
+persecution.&nbsp; And they have kept, too, their indolent, and
+not too creditable habits.&nbsp; Early in the twelfth century an
+Austrian monk described them as &lsquo;Ishmaelites and braziers,
+who go peddling through the wide world, having neither house, nor
+home, cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving
+mankind, but not openly.&rsquo;&nbsp; That description would hold
+good at the present day.&nbsp; The Gipsies are still a lazy,
+thieving set of rogues, who get their living by robbing
+hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and &lsquo;snapping up unconsidered
+trifles&rsquo; like Autolycus of old.&nbsp; Pilfering, varied
+with a rude sort of magic, and the swindling arts of divination
+and chiromancy for the special behoof of credulous servant-girls,
+are the stock-in-trade of the modern Zingaris.&nbsp; Without
+education, and without industry, they transmit their vagrant
+habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all the
+vices of a lawless and nomadic life.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is very easy to give a romantic and even a
+sentimental colouring to the wandering Romany.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;greenwood home,&rsquo; with its freedom from all the
+restraints of a conventional state of society, is not without its
+attractive side&mdash;in books and in ballads.&nbsp; Minor poets
+have told us that &lsquo;the Gipsy&rsquo;s life is a joyous
+life,&rsquo; and plays and operas have been <!-- page 104--><a
+name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>written to
+illustrate the superiority of vagabondage over
+civilisation.&nbsp; But the pretty Gitana of the stage is
+altogether a different sort of being from the brown-faced,
+elf-locked, and tawdrily dressed female who haunts back entries
+with the ostensible object of selling clothes-pegs, but with the
+real motive of picking up whatever may be lying in her way.&nbsp;
+There is but small chance of Bohemian Girls finding themselves in
+drawing-rooms nowadays.&nbsp; The last experiment of the kind was
+made by the writer of a charming book on the Gipsies, who was so
+fascinated by one of their number that he married her; but the
+wild, restless spirit was untameable, and the divorce court
+proved that the supposed precept of fidelity, which is said to
+guide the conduct of Gipsy wives, is not without its
+exceptions.&nbsp; The Gipsies have nothing in common with our
+conventional ways and habits, and whether it is possible ever to
+remove the barrier that separates them from civilisation is a
+question which only experiment can satisfactorily answer.&nbsp;
+Mr. Smith&rsquo;s scheme is not the first, by many, that has been
+made to improve the conditions of Gipsy life.&nbsp; Nearly half a
+century ago the Rev. Mr. Crabb, of Southampton, formed a society
+with the object of amalgamating the Gipsies with the general
+population, but the scheme was comparatively futile.&nbsp; Still,
+past failure is no reason why a new attempt should not be
+made.&nbsp; Mr. Smith says there cannot be less than 4,000 Gipsy
+men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy children moving
+about the country, outside the educational laws and the pale of
+civilisation, and not five per cent. of them can either read or
+write.&nbsp; Their mode of life is such as &lsquo;would shock the
+modesty of South African savages,&rsquo; for men, women, and
+grown-up sons and daughters lie huddled together, and in many
+cases they &lsquo;live like pigs and die like dogs.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+There is certainly room enough here for education, and education
+is the only thing that is likely to have any practical
+results.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is proposed that the principles of the Canal Boats
+<!-- page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+105</span>Act shall be applied to all movable habitations; that
+is, that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneers&rsquo; vans, and
+like places used as dwellings, shall be registered and numbered,
+and put under proper sanitary supervision.&nbsp; Mr. Smith points
+out that when once a tent or van had been registered and
+numbered, it could be furnished with a book similar to a
+half-time book, in which the names of the children having first
+been entered, the attendances at school could be endorsed by the
+schoolmaster&mdash;for which extra trouble he should be
+compensated&mdash;as the children travelled about from place to
+place.&nbsp; By this means something tangible would be done to
+prevent the roadside waifs from growing up in the ignorance which
+is the parent of idleness.&nbsp; Why should these ten or fifteen
+thousand little nomads be allowed to remain in the neglected
+condition which has characterised their strange race for
+centuries?&nbsp; It is time that the spell was broken.&nbsp;
+There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth perpetuating; there
+is no sentimental halo around its history which it would be cruel
+to dispel.&nbsp; In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected to
+harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more
+enlightened times to deal with them on a humaner plan.&nbsp; It
+is only by the expanding influence of education that the little
+minds of their children can gain a necessary experience of the
+utility and dignity of honest labour.&nbsp; When they have
+received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to
+emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers,
+and break away from the squalor and precarious existence which
+has held so many generations of them in thrall.&nbsp; Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s idea is worthy the attention of legislators.&nbsp;
+It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is a nobler
+thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war
+upon the unoffending barbarian abroad.&nbsp; The instincts and
+habits which have been transmitted from father to son for
+hundreds of years are not, of course, to be eradicated in a day,
+or even in a generation; but the time will, perhaps, eventually
+<!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+106</span>come when the Gipsies will cease to exist as a separate
+and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general
+population of the country.&nbsp; Whether that absorption takes
+place sooner or later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the
+young &lsquo;Arabs&rsquo; of the tents the rudiments of an
+education which will hereafter be helpful to them if they are
+desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and of
+earning an industrious livelihood.&nbsp; Their dread of fixed and
+continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy
+with the conditions of industrial life may teach them that
+civilisation has some compensations to offer for the sacrifice of
+their roaming propensities, and for taking away from them their
+&lsquo;free mountains, their plains and woods, the sun, the
+stars, and the winds&rsquo; which are the companions of their
+free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The <i>Weekly Dispatch</i>, in a leading article, October
+13th, says:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, has an
+eye for the nomads of the country.&nbsp; His name must already be
+unfavourably known throughout most of the canal barges of the
+United Kingdom.&nbsp; If he is not the Croquemitaine of every
+floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought
+to be, for it was mainly he who thrust a half-time book into the
+hands of the bargee and compelled him, by the Canal Boats Act of
+1877, to soap his infants&rsquo; faces and put primers in their
+way.&nbsp; With Smith of Coalville, therefore, it may be expected
+that each juvenile of the wharves and locks now associates his
+most unhappy moments.&nbsp; The half-time book of the act comes
+between him and the blessed state of his previous
+ignorance.&nbsp; Registered and numbered, supervised and
+inspected, he has been put on the road to know things that must
+necessarily disillusionise him of the black enchantments of life
+on the water highway.&nbsp; It is allowable to hope, however,
+that having recovered from the first discomforts of civilising
+soap and primers, he will yet live to appreciate Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s name as one associated <!-- page 107--><a
+name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>with kindly
+intent and generous aspirations in his behalf.&nbsp; A generation
+of bargemen who had a less uncompromising vocabulary of oaths,
+who could beguile some of the tedium of their voyaging with
+reading, and who in other important respects showed the
+influences of half-time, would be a smiling reward of
+philanthropy and an important addition to our civilisation.&nbsp;
+That Mr. Smith anticipates some such reward is evident from the
+eagerness with which he has been pushing the principle in another
+quarter.&nbsp; At the Social Science Congress he has just
+propounded a scheme of educational annexation for Gipsy children
+similar in every respect to that applied to the occupants of the
+canal-boats.&nbsp; That is, he would have every tent and van
+numbered and furnished with a half-time book, and he would ordain
+it as the duty of School Board visitors to see that the Gipsies
+render their children amenable to the terms of the act to the
+extent of their wandering ability, under threat of the usual
+penalties.&nbsp; The prospect which he foresees from such
+treatment is that a body of wanderers numbering not much below
+20,000 will be rescued from a position which, he says, would at
+present shock South African savages, and will thus be brought in
+to honest industry and &lsquo;qualified to fill the places of our
+best artisans, who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes
+abroad.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is impossible not to wish Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s scheme well, especially as he contends that the
+Gipsies themselves are not averse to having their children
+educated; but it is equally impossible to be sanguine as to
+results.&nbsp; The true Gipsy, who is not to be confounded with
+the desultory hawker of English origin, has many arteries of
+untameable blood within him.&nbsp; He has never as yet shown the
+slightest concern about the English phases of civilisation which
+Mr. Smith would like to press upon his notice.&nbsp; Such ideas
+as those of God, immortality, and marriage are as unknown to him
+as the commonest distinction between mine and thine.&nbsp; He is
+a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book and a
+penalty will in all probability <!-- page 108--><a
+name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>be no
+better than a standing joke to be cracked with impunity at the
+expense of the rural School Boards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p108b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Gipsies&rsquo; Winter Quarters near Latimer Road, Notting Hill"
+title=
+"Gipsies&rsquo; Winter Quarters near Latimer Road, Notting Hill"
+src="images/p108s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The <i>Sportsman</i> of October 16th, 1879, has the following
+notice:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose
+philanthropic efforts on behalf of &lsquo;our canal-boat
+population&rsquo; are well known, has lately turned his attention
+to the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the
+view to procuring at least a modicum of education for their
+children.&nbsp; He says that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant,
+few of them being able even to write their names.&nbsp; By
+certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court
+on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of the dark-faced
+wanderers already are educated a little too much.&nbsp; At all
+events, they occasionally manifest an ability to &lsquo;take a
+stave&rsquo; out of the rest of the community.&nbsp; At the court
+in question a Gipsy woman named Emma Barney was brought to task
+for &lsquo;imposing by subtle craft to extort money&rsquo; from a
+Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver.&nbsp; It seems that
+Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that Emma
+Barney&mdash;not an inappropriate name, by the way&mdash;said she
+could cure these by means of a certain herb, the name of which
+she would divulge &lsquo;for a consideration.&rsquo;&nbsp; Before
+doing so, however, she required Richard&rsquo;s coat and
+waistcoat, and some silver to &lsquo;steam in hot water,&rsquo;
+after which the name of the herb would be given&mdash;on the
+following day.&nbsp; It is needless to say that the coat,
+waistcoat, and silver did not return to the Oliver home, and that
+the pimples did not depart from the Oliver face.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;Gipsy&rsquo;s home&rsquo; for the next two months will be
+in the county gaol.&nbsp; It is a curious reflection, however,
+that such strange credulity as that displayed by the Bournemouth
+shopkeeper in this case can be found in the present year of
+grace, with its gigantic machinery for educating the
+masses.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following leading article, taken from the <i>Daily
+Telegraph</i>, under date October 17th of last year, will show
+that crime is far from abating among the classes of the Gipsy
+<!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+109</span>fraternity:&mdash;&ldquo;The melancholy truth that
+there exists a &lsquo;breed&rsquo; of criminals in all societies
+was well illustrated at Exeter this week.&nbsp; Sir John
+Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon Quarter Sessions, in charging
+the grand jury, had to tell them that the calendar was very
+heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years.&nbsp; There
+were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number
+is twenty-five, taking the last five years.&nbsp; Sir John could
+assign no particular reason for such a lamentable increase,
+though he supposed the prevailing depression of trade might have
+had something to do with it.&nbsp; But he pointed out a very
+notable fact indeed, which sprang from an examination of the gaol
+delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five prisoners
+twenty had been previously convicted.&nbsp; Such a percentage
+goes far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to
+a certain degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only
+enhances the immense importance of national education, by which
+alone society can hope to conquer the predatory tendency in
+certain baser blood, and to supply it with the means and the
+instincts of industry.&nbsp; In justice, however, to the existing
+generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such
+serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by
+released prisoners in living honestly.&nbsp; A rat will not steal
+where traps are set if it can only find food in the open, and
+some of these twice-captured vermin of our community might tell a
+piteous tale of the obstacles that lie in the way of
+honesty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The <i>Weekly Times</i>, under date October 26th, 1879, has
+the following article upon the Gipsies near London.&nbsp; The
+locality described is not one hundred miles from Mary&rsquo;s
+Place and Notting Hill Potteries.&nbsp; The writer goes on to say
+that &ldquo;There are at the present time upwards of two thousand
+people&mdash;men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy
+tribe&mdash;camped in the outlying districts of London.&nbsp;
+They are settled upon waste places of every kind.&nbsp; Bits of
+ground that will ere long be occupied by houses, waste corners
+that <!-- page 110--><a name="page110"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 110</span>seem to be of no good for anything,
+yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of
+&lsquo;common&rsquo; over which no authority claims any rights;
+or if there are rights, the authority is too obscure to interfere
+with such poor settlers as Gipsies, who will move away again
+before an authoritative opinion can be pronounced upon any
+question affecting them.&nbsp; The Gipsies, in the winter,
+certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the
+metropolis.&nbsp; They do not cause rents to rise.&nbsp; They are
+satisfied to put up their tent where a Londoner would only
+accommodate his pig or his dog, and they certainly do not affect
+the balance of labour, few of them being ever guilty of robbing a
+man of an honest day&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; Yet, with all their
+failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take
+their part in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account
+of their hard lot, and the scanty measure with which the good
+things of this life have been, and still are, meted out to
+them.&nbsp; Constrained by an irresistible force to keep ever
+moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree of
+cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit.&nbsp;
+As the approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest
+possible number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ
+the whole of his time profitably, and those who only follow an
+outdoor life for the pleasures it yields naturally gravitate
+towards the shelter of large towns in which to spend the winter
+months of every year.&nbsp; So when the cold winds begin to blow,
+and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to town, and settle
+upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused yards, and
+eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where
+their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before
+them.&nbsp; The young men get a day&rsquo;s work where they can;
+the young women hawk wool mats, laces, or other women&rsquo;s
+vanities; while the more skilful go round with rope mats, and
+every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes and
+canes.&nbsp; The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or
+tinker pots and pans; and, if a fine <!-- page 111--><a
+name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>day or a
+pleasure fair calls forth all the useful mouths and hands from
+their tents and caravans, the babies will take care of themselves
+in the straw which makes the pony&rsquo;s bed until some member
+of the camp returns home in the evening.&nbsp; So the winter
+months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to
+call, these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is
+acquainted with, go forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or
+on the commons of the country, pass their summer, earning a
+precarious subsistance&mdash;honestly if they can&mdash;content
+with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel the free
+air of heaven blowing about them night and day, while the sun
+paints their cheeks the colour of the ancient Egyptians.&nbsp;
+Our Gipsies have always been a favourite study with ethnological
+folk; poets have sung their wild, free life, and painters have
+taken them as types of the happy, if the careless; while
+philanthropists have occasionally gone amongst them, and told
+pitiful tales of their degradation, ignorance, and misery.&nbsp;
+It was not from any feeling of romance or pity that we were
+induced the other day to accept an invitation from Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, to spend a few hours amongst some of these
+people.&nbsp; Mr. George Smith&rsquo;s life has been devoted to
+the amelioration of the condition of many very poor and almost
+entirely neglected classes of the community, and it was pleasant
+to have the opportunity of going with such a simple-hearted hero
+amongst those in whom he takes a deep interest.&nbsp; Having
+devoted many years of his life to the poor brick-yard children,
+and afterwards to the children labouring in canal-boats, he has
+found one more class still left outside every Act of Parliament,
+and beyond every chance of being helped in the right way to earn
+an honest living and become industrious members of society.&nbsp;
+These are the Gipsies and their children, who have been let alone
+so severely by all so-called right-thinking men and women that
+there is great danger of their becoming a sore evil in our
+midst.&nbsp; Unable to read or write&mdash;their powers of
+thought <!-- page 112--><a name="page112"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 112</span>thereby cramped&mdash;with no one to
+look after them, separated from the people in whose midst they
+live, there can be little wonder that they should grow up with
+certain loose notions about right and wrong, and a manner of life
+the reverse of that which prevails amongst Christian people; but,
+now that Mr. George Smith has got his eyes and his heart fixed
+upon them, there will surely be something done which, in the near
+future, will redeem these people from many of the disadvantages
+under which they labour, and add to the body corporate a tribe
+possessed of many amiable characteristics.&nbsp; Mr. Smith never
+takes up more than one thing at a time, and upon the
+accomplishment of it he concentrates all his energies.&nbsp; This
+attribute is the one which has enabled him to carry to successful
+conclusions the acts for the relief of the brick-yard and the
+canal-boat children; but while he is about a work he becomes
+thoroughly possessed by his subject, and the most important event
+that may happen for the country, or for the world, loses all
+value in his eyes unless it bears directly upon the
+accomplishment of the object in hand.&nbsp; Thus it happened
+that, from the time we sallied out together in search of a Gipsy
+camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of
+nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but
+what had some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of
+life.&nbsp; The Zulus were to be pitied because theirs was a sort
+of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies&rsquo; tents were nothing more
+than kraals.&nbsp; All his stories were of what Gipsies he had
+met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in
+the train were only noticeable because they looked like some
+Gipsy man or woman whom he had met elsewhere.&nbsp; We had a
+short ride by rail, and a tramp through a densely-populated
+district, and then we came to the camping-ground we wanted.&nbsp;
+It was a spacious yard, entered through a gate, and surrounded
+with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure.&nbsp; There
+were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was
+Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants <!-- page 113--><a
+name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>were at
+home.&nbsp; Those who were absent were a few children able to go
+to Sunday-school, whither they went of their own free will and
+with the approval of their parents.&nbsp; The kraals were not all
+constructed on the same pattern&mdash;two were circular in form
+and the third was square.&nbsp; This was on the right hand at
+entering, and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a
+calf, who had many years before gone the way of all
+beef&mdash;into a butcher&rsquo;s shop.&nbsp; There were tiles on
+the low roof&mdash;in places&mdash;but plenty of openings were
+left for the rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in
+the bucket to find a way out if it chose.&nbsp; The floor was
+common earth, and very uneven in places.&nbsp; Alice, the
+mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty, with a face the
+colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of
+work.&nbsp; As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of
+the loss of her spectacles, without which she solemnly declared
+she could not read a line.&nbsp; She left the spectacles one day
+when she was going &lsquo;hopping,&rsquo; hidden under a tile
+above her head, and when she returned the case was there, but the
+spectacles were gone.&nbsp; She carried her licence to hawk in
+her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily
+beg the gift of a pair of new ones.&nbsp; Her husband, a
+white-haired old man, with a look of innocent wonder in his face,
+sat on a lump of wood, warming his hands over the fire.&nbsp; He
+said little&mdash;his wife scarcely allowing an opportunity for
+any one else to speak&mdash;but seemed to consider that he was a
+fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife.&nbsp; There was a
+handsome young woman sitting in the only chair in the place,
+daughter of the old couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed
+made of indescribable things in one portion of the cabin, where
+the tiles in the roof showed no openings to the sky.&nbsp; His
+wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a baby&mdash;their
+first-born&mdash;on the edge of the bed.&nbsp; The wood walls
+were covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd
+things, fastened in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned
+with a few pots and pans <!-- page 114--><a
+name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>used in
+cooking.&nbsp; Here, for six or seven winters, this family had
+resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most
+severe winters.&nbsp; Nor could they be made to admit that a
+cottage would be more comfortable; that hut had served them well
+enough so many years, and would be good enough as long as they
+lived.&nbsp; Besides, said Alice, the rent was a consideration,
+and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week.&nbsp; This woman was the
+mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living.&nbsp;
+Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of
+two young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed
+us as to the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind
+of remembrance to be left with them.&nbsp; But we did not accept
+their invitation to walk up, but passed down the yard, by heaps
+of manure and refuse of all kinds, by another kraal, where a
+bucket containing coal was burning, and a young man lay stretched
+on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch beside him,
+to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we heard,
+high jinks were going on with some children.&nbsp; At the sound
+of a tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl
+of nineteen, who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come
+in.&nbsp; We looked up in amazement; the girl&rsquo;s face
+appeared like an apparition&mdash;so fair, so beautiful, so like
+some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused and
+puzzled.&nbsp; In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen
+that face before in several of the choicest canvases that have
+hung in recent years upon the walls of the Academy; we had met
+with the fairest Gipsy model that ever stood before the students
+of the Academy, the favourite alike of the young artist and the
+head of his profession.&nbsp; It can only fall to the lot of a
+few to see Annie, the Gipsy model; but the curious may look upon
+her counterpart, only of heroic size, in Clytie, at the British
+Museum.&nbsp; Annie has a face of exquisite Grecian form, and a
+hand so delicate that it has been painted more than once in the
+&lsquo;portrait of a titled lady.&rsquo;&nbsp; <!-- page 115--><a
+name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>When she
+was a very little girl, she told us, hawking laces in a basket
+one day, a gentleman met her at the West-end who was a painter,
+and from that day to the present Annie has earned a
+living&mdash;and at times of great distress maintained all the
+family&mdash;by the fees she received as a model.&nbsp; Her
+mother had had nine children, of whom eight were living; and
+three of the family are constantly employed as models.&nbsp;
+Annie is one, the young fellow who was watched over by the bantam
+was another, and a boy of four was the third.&nbsp; The father is
+of pure Gipsy blood, but the mother is an Oxfordshire woman, and
+neither of them possess any striking characteristic in their
+faces; yet all their girls are singularly beautiful, and their
+sons handsome fellows.&nbsp; They have got a reputation for
+beauty now, and ladies have, but without success, tried to
+negotiate for the possession of the youngest.&nbsp; Never before
+had we seen such fair faces, such dainty limbs, such exquisite
+eyes, as were possessed by the Gipsy occupants of that
+caravan.&nbsp; Annie was as modest and gentle-voiced and mannered
+as she was beautiful; and there came a flush of trouble over her
+fair face as she told us that not being able to read or write had
+&lsquo;been against&rsquo; her all her life.&nbsp; There was more
+refinement about Annie and her mother than we had discovered
+amongst others with whom we had conversed.&nbsp; Thus, Annie,
+speaking of her grandfather, laid great emphasis on the assertion
+that he was a fine man.&nbsp; He lived to be 104, she said, and
+walked as upright as a young man to his death.&nbsp; He went
+about crying &lsquo;chairs to mend,&rsquo; in that very locality,
+up to within a short time of his death, and all the old ladies
+employed him because he was so handsome.&nbsp; She was playing
+with a baby girl as she talked with us, and the child fixed her
+black eyes upon her sister&rsquo;s face, and crooned with baby
+pleasure.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is baby&rsquo;s name,&rsquo; we
+asked?&nbsp; &lsquo;Comfort,&rsquo; replied Annie.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We were hopping one year&rsquo; said the mother,
+&lsquo;and there was a young woman in the party I took to very
+much, and her name was Comfort.&nbsp; Coming away <!-- page
+116--><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+116</span>from the hop grounds, the caravans had to cross a
+river, and while we were in the water one day the river suddenly
+rose, the caravans were upset, and eleven were drowned, Comfort
+amongst the number.&nbsp; So I christened baby after her in
+remembrance.&rsquo;&nbsp; All the family were neatly dressed, and
+once, when Annie opened the cupboard door for an instant, we
+caught sight of a dish of small currant puddings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A visit to a batch of Gipsy wigwams, Wardlow Street, Garrett
+Lane, Wandsworth, induced me to send the following letter to the
+London and country daily papers, and it appeared in the <i>Daily
+Chronicle</i> and <i>Daily News</i>, November 20th, as
+under:&mdash;&ldquo;The following touching incident may slightly
+show the thorough heartfelt desire there is&mdash;but lacking the
+power&mdash;among the Gipsies to be partakers of some of the
+sanitary and educational advantages the Gorgios or Gentiles are
+the recipients of.&nbsp; A few days since I wended my way to a
+large number of Gipsies located in tents, huts, and vans near
+Wandsworth Common, to behold the pitiable spectacle of some sixty
+half-naked, poor Gipsy children, and thirty Gipsy men and women,
+living in a state of indescribable ignorance, dirt, filth, and
+misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, making their beds upon
+peg shavings and straw, and divested of the last tinge of
+romantical nonsense, which is little better in this
+case&mdash;used as a deal of it is&mdash;than paper pasted upon
+the windows, to hide from public view the mass of human
+corruption which has been festering in our midst for centuries,
+breeding all kinds of sin and impurities, except in the eyes of
+those who see beautiful colours and delights in the aroma of
+stagnant pools and beauty in the sparkling hues of the gutter,
+and revel in adding tints and pictures to the life and death of a
+weasel, lending enchantment to the life of a vagabond, and admire
+the non-intellectual development of beings many of whom are only
+one step from that of animals, if I may judge from the amount of
+good the 20,000 Gipsies have accomplished in the <!-- page
+117--><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+117</span>world during the last three or four centuries.&nbsp;
+Connected with this encampment not more than four or five of the
+poor creatures could read a sentence or write a letter.&nbsp; In
+creeping almost upon &lsquo;all-fours,&rsquo; into one of the
+tents, I came across a real, antiquated, live, good kind of Gipsy
+woman named Britannia Lee, who boasted that she was a Lee of the
+fourth generation; and in sitting down upon a seat that brought
+my knees upon a level with my chin, I entered into conversation
+with the family about the objects of my inquiries&mdash;of which
+they said they had heard all about&mdash;viz., to get all the
+Gipsy tents, vans, and other movable habitations in the country
+registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the
+children compelled to attend school wherever they may be
+temporarily located, and to receive an education which will in
+some degree help to get these poor unfortunate people out of the
+heartrending and desponding condition into which they have been
+allowed to sink.&nbsp; Although Mrs. Lee was ill and poor, her
+face beamed with gladness to find that I was trying in my humble
+way to do the Gipsy children good; and in a kind of maternal
+feeling she said she should be pleased to show her deep interest
+in my work, and asked me if I would accept all the money she had
+in the world, viz., one penny and two farthings?&nbsp; With much
+persuasion and hesitation, and under fear of offending her, I
+accepted them, which I purpose keeping as a token of a
+woman&rsquo;s desire to do something towards improving her
+&lsquo;kith and kin.&rsquo;&nbsp; She said that Providence would
+see that she was no loser for the mite she had given to me.&nbsp;
+He once sent her, in her extremity, a shilling in the middle of a
+potato, which she found when cooking.&nbsp; With many expressions
+of &lsquo;God bless you in your work among the children!&nbsp;
+You will be rewarded some day for all your time, trouble, and
+expense,&rsquo; we parted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The London correspondent of the <i>Croydon Chronicle</i>
+writes as under, on November 22nd, touching a visit we both made
+to a number of poor Gipsy children squatting <!-- page 118--><a
+name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>about upon
+Mitcham Common.&nbsp; Among other things he says:&mdash;&ldquo;I
+have had a day in your neighbourhood with George Smith, of
+Coalville.&nbsp; He is visiting all the Gipsy grounds he can find
+and reach, for the purpose of gaining information as to the
+condition of the swarms of children who live in squalor and
+ignorance under tents.&nbsp; He is of opinion that he will be
+able to get them into schools, and do as much for them generally
+as he has done for the brick-field and canal children; and I have
+no doubt myself that he will succeed.&nbsp; Well, the other day
+he asked me to have a run round with him, and we went to Mitcham
+Common to see some of the families there.&nbsp; He told me that
+one of the Gipsy women had been confined, and that she wanted him
+to give the child a name.&nbsp; He did not know what to call it,
+so we had to put our heads together and settle the matter.&nbsp;
+After a great deal of careful deliberation he decided that when
+we reached the common the child should be called
+&lsquo;Deliverance.&rsquo;&nbsp; I have been told that this
+sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and perhaps it would have
+done as well for one as for the other.&nbsp; The tents were much
+of a character&mdash;some kind of stitched-together rags thrown
+over sticks.&nbsp; Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was
+not particularly cold, and the first tent we came to had been
+opened at the top.&nbsp; We looked over (these tents are only
+about five feet high), and beheld six children, the eldest being
+a girl of about eight or ten.&nbsp; The father was anywhere to
+suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking.&nbsp;
+These children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle
+of them, were making clothes-pegs.&nbsp; The process seemed
+simple.&nbsp; The sticks are chopped into the necessary lengths
+and put into a pan of hot water.&nbsp; This I suppose swells the
+wood and loosens the bark.&nbsp; A child on the other side takes
+out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its
+teeth.&nbsp; Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so
+the work goes on.&nbsp; When the day is done they look for the
+mother coming home from <!-- page 119--><a
+name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>hawking
+with anything she may have picked up.&nbsp; When they have
+devoured such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down
+where they have worked and as they are, and go to sleep.&nbsp; It
+is a wonderful and mysterious arrangement of Providence that they
+can sleep.&nbsp; They have only a rag between them and the
+snow.&nbsp; A good wind would blow their homes over the
+trees.&nbsp; I do not wish to make any particularly violent
+remarks, but I should like some of the comfortable clergymen of
+your neighbourhood, when they have done buying their toys and
+presents for young friends at Christmas, to walk to Mitcham
+Common and see how the children are there.&nbsp; They would then
+find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the work of
+the Master.&nbsp; One tent is very much like another.&nbsp; We
+visited about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the
+child.&nbsp; We stayed in this tent for about ten minutes.&nbsp;
+It was inhabited by two families, numbering in all about
+twenty.&nbsp; I talked a little time with the woman lying on the
+ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me.&nbsp; I do
+not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but
+&lsquo;Deliverance&rsquo; will do for either one or the
+other.&nbsp; She asked me to write the name on a piece of paper,
+and I did so.&nbsp; With a few words, as jolly as we could make
+them, we crawled out, thanks and blessings following George
+Smith, as they always do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p118b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and
+in which &ldquo;Deliverance&rdquo; was born"
+title=
+"A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and
+in which &ldquo;Deliverance&rdquo; was born"
+src="images/p118s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Leading article in the <i>Primitive Methodist</i>, November
+27th:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is
+endeavouring to do a work for the children of Gipsies similar to
+that he has done for the children employed in brick-yards and the
+children of canal-boatmen&mdash;that is, bring them under some
+sort of supervision, so that they may secure at least a small
+share in the educational advantages of the country.&nbsp;
+Recently he published an account of a visit to an encampment of
+the Gipsies near Wandsworth Common, and it is evident that these
+wanderers without any settled place of abode look on his efforts
+with some considerable approval.&nbsp; The encampment was made up
+of a number of tents, huts, and <!-- page 120--><a
+name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>vans, and
+contained some sixty half-naked poor Gipsy children and thirty
+Gipsy men and women, living in an indescribable state of
+ignorance, dirt, filth, and misery, mostly squatting upon the
+ground, or otherwise making their beds upon peg shavings and
+straw; and it turned out upon inquiry that not more than four of
+these poor creatures could read a sentence or write a
+letter.&nbsp; They are, however, not indisposed to be subject to
+regulations that will contribute to their partial education, if
+to nothing more.&nbsp; In passing from one of these miserable
+habitations to another, Mr. Smith found an old Gipsy woman proud
+of her name and descent, for she was a Lee, and a Lee of the
+fourth generation.&nbsp; To this old woman he explained his
+purpose, sitting on a low seat under the cover of the tent with
+his knees on a level with his chin.&nbsp; He wanted, he said,
+&lsquo;to get all the Gipsy tents and vans, and other movable
+habitations in the country, registered and under proper sanitary
+arrangements, and the children compelled to attend school
+wherever they may be temporarily located, and to receive an
+education which will in some degree help to get them out of the
+low, heartrending condition into which they have been allowed to
+sink.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mrs. Lee listened with pleasure to this
+narration of Mr. Smith&rsquo;s purpose, and, though in great
+poverty, desired to aid this good work.&nbsp; Her stock of cash
+amounted to three-halfpence; but this she insisted upon giving,
+so that she might contribute a little, at any rate, towards the
+improvement of her people.&nbsp; We hope Mr. Smith may succeed in
+his work, and succeed speedily, so that these Gipsy children, who
+are trained up to a vagabond life, may have a chance of learning
+something better.&nbsp; And evidently, from Mr. Smith&rsquo;s
+experience, there is no hostility to such a measure as he wishes
+to have made law among the Gipsies themselves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Owing to my letters, papers, articles and paragraphs, and
+efforts in other directions during the last several months, the
+Gipsy subject might now be fairly considered to <!-- page
+121--><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+121</span>have made good headway, consequently the proprietor of
+the <i>Illustrated London News</i>, without any difficulty, was
+induced&mdash;in fact, with pleasure&mdash;to have a series of
+sketches of Gipsy life in his journal, the first appearing
+November 29th, connected with which was the following notice, and
+in which he says:&mdash;&ldquo;Our illustrations, from a sketch
+taken by one of our artists in the neighbourhood of Latimer Road,
+Notting Hill, which is not far from Wormwood Scrubs, show the
+habits of living folk who are to be found as well in the
+outskirts of London, where there are many chances of picking up a
+stray bit of irregular gain, as in more rural parts of the
+country.&nbsp; The figure of a gentleman introduced into this
+sketch, who appears to be conversing with the Gipsies in their
+waggon encampment, is that of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville,
+Leicester, the well-known benevolent promoter of social reform
+and legislative protection for the long-neglected class of people
+employed on canal-barges, whose families, often living on board
+these vessels, are sadly in want of domestic comfort and of
+education for the children.&rdquo;&nbsp; The editor also inserted
+my Congress paper fully.&nbsp; The following week another sketch
+of Gipsy life appeared in the same journal, connected with which
+were the following remarks:&mdash;&ldquo;Another sketch of the
+wild and squalid habits of life still retained by vagrant parties
+or clans of this singular race of people, often met with in the
+neighbourhood of suburban villages and other places around
+London, will be found in our journal.&nbsp; We may again direct
+the reader&rsquo;s attention to the account of them which was
+contributed by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, to the
+late Social Science Congress at Manchester, and which was
+reprinted in our last week&rsquo;s publication.&nbsp; That
+well-known advocate of social reform and legal protection for the
+neglected vagrant classes of our population reckons the total
+number of Gipsies in this country at three or four thousand men
+and women and ten thousand children.&nbsp; He is now seeking to
+have all movable habitations&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, tents, vans,
+shows, &amp;c.&mdash;in which the <!-- page 122--><a
+name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>families
+live who are earning a living by travelling from place to place,
+registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the
+parents compelled to send their children to school at the place
+wherever they may be temporarily located, be it National,
+British, or Board school.&nbsp; The following is Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s note upon what was to be seen in the Gipsies&rsquo;
+tent on Mitcham Common:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Inside this tent&mdash;with no other
+home&mdash;there were two men, their wives, and about fourteen
+children of all ages: two or three of these were almost men and
+women.&nbsp; The wife of one of the men had been confined of a
+baby the day before I called&mdash;her bed consisting of a layer
+of straw upon the damp ground.&nbsp; Such was the wretched and
+miserable condition they were in that I could not do otherwise
+than help the poor woman, and gave her a little money.&nbsp; But,
+in her feelings of gratitude to me for this simple act of
+kindness, she said she would name the baby anything I would like
+to chose; and, knowing that Gipsies are fond of outlandish names,
+I was in a difficulty.&nbsp; After turning the thing over in my
+mind for a few hours, I could think of nothing but
+&ldquo;Deliverance.&rdquo;&nbsp; This seemed to please the poor
+woman very much; and the poor child is named Deliverance
+G---.&nbsp; Strange to say, the next older child is named
+&ldquo;Moses.&rdquo;&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On December 13th, an additional sketch, showing the inside of
+a van, was given, to which were added the following
+remarks:&mdash;&ldquo;Another sketch of the singular habits and
+rather deplorable condition of these vagrant people, who hang
+about, as the parasites of civilisation, close on the suburban
+outskirts of our wealthy metropolis, is presented by our artist,
+following those which have appeared in the last two weeks.&nbsp;
+Mr. G. Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, having taken in hand the
+question of providing due supervision and police regulation for
+the Gipsies, with compulsory education for their children, we
+readily dedicate these local illustrations to the furtherance of
+his good work.&nbsp; The ugliest place we know in the
+neighbourhood of London, the most dismal <!-- page 123--><a
+name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>and
+forlorn, is not Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old
+Ford, at the East-end; but it is the tract of land, half torn up
+for brick-field clay, half consisting of fields laid waste in
+expectation of the house-builder, which lies just outside of
+Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush and Notting Hill.&nbsp; There it is that
+the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an
+hour&rsquo;s walk of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town
+mansions of our nobility and opulent classes, to the very west of
+the fashionable West-end, beyond the gentility of Bayswater and
+Whiteley&rsquo;s avenue of universal shopping.&nbsp; It is a
+curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few
+serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and
+capital of the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the
+correction of every savage tribe in South and West Africa and
+Central Asia.&nbsp; The encampment is usually formed of two or
+three vans and a rude cabin or a tent, placed on some piece of
+waste ground, for which the Gipsy party have to pay a few
+shillings a week of rent.&nbsp; This may be situated at the back
+of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom
+or parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet
+inhabitants.&nbsp; The interior of one of the vans, furnished as
+a dwelling-room, which is shown in our artist&rsquo;s sketch,
+does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith informs us that these
+receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly
+overcrowded.&nbsp; Besides a man, his wife, and their own
+children, the little ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there
+will be several adult persons taken in as lodgers.&nbsp; The
+total number of Gipsies now estimated to be living in the
+metropolitan district is not less than 2,000.&nbsp; Among these
+are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or
+&lsquo;losels&rsquo; from the more settled classes of our
+people.&nbsp; It would seem to be the duty of somebody at the
+Home Office, for the sake of public health and good order, to
+call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to
+look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 124--><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+124</span>On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were
+given in the <i>Illustrated London News</i>.&nbsp; 1. Tent at
+Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3. Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting
+Hill; 4. A Bachelor&rsquo;s Bedroom, Mitcham Common; 5.
+Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney Wick;
+7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes.&nbsp; &ldquo;A few additional
+sketches, continuing those of this subject which have appeared in
+our journal, are engraved for the present number.&nbsp; It is
+estimated by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, who has
+recently been exploring the queer outcast world of Gipsydom in
+different parts of England, that some 2,000 people called by that
+name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu
+Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the
+neighbourhood of London.&nbsp; They are not all thieves, not even
+all beggars and impostors, and they escape the law of vagrancy by
+paying a few shillings of weekly rent for pitching their tents or
+booths, and standing their waggons or wheeled cabins, on pieces
+of waste ground.&nbsp; The western side of Notting Hill, where
+the railway passenger going to Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush or
+Hammersmith sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry
+in the gardens and courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered
+towards Wormwood Scrubs by a dismal expanse of brick-fields,
+might tempt the Gipsies so inclined to take a clean shirt or
+petticoat&mdash;certainly not for their own wearing.&nbsp; But we
+are not aware that the police inspectors and magistrates of that
+district have found such charges more numerous in their official
+record than has been experienced in other quarters of London; and
+it is possible that honest men and women, though of irregular and
+slovenly habits, may exist among this odd fragment of our motley
+population.&nbsp; It is for the sake of their children, who ought
+to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring
+classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided
+with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith
+has brought this subject under public notice.&nbsp; <!-- page
+125--><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+125</span>The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and
+stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be
+persecuted; for they are a less active nuisance than the Italian
+organ-grinders in our city streets, whose tormenting presence we
+are content to suffer, to the sore interruption both of our daily
+work and our repose.&nbsp; But it is expedient that there should
+be an Act of Parliament, if the Home Secretary has not already
+sufficient legal powers, to establish compulsory registration of
+the travelling Gipsy families, and a strict licensing system,
+with constant police supervision, for their temporary
+encampments, while their children should be looked after by the
+local School Board.&nbsp; These measures, combined with judicious
+offers of industrial help for the adults and industrial training
+for the juniors, with the special exercise of Poor-Law Guardian
+administration, and some parochial or missionary religious
+efforts, might put an end to vagabond Gipsy life in England
+before the commencement of the twentieth century, or within one
+generation.&nbsp; We hope to see the matter discussed in the
+House of Lords or the House of Commons during the ensuing
+session; for it actually concerns the moral and social welfare of
+more than thirty thousand people in our own country, which is an
+interest quite as considerable as that we have in Natal or the
+Transvaal, among Zulus and Basutos, and the rest of
+Kaffirdom.&nbsp; The sketches we now present in illustration of
+this subject are designed to show the squalid and savage aspect
+of Gipsy habitations in the suburban districts, at Hackney and
+Hackney Wick, north-east of London; where the marsh-meadows of
+the river Lea, unsuitable for building-land, seem to forbid the
+extension of town streets and blocks of brick or stuccoed
+terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and Hainault
+Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on
+summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English
+kings and queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an
+hour&rsquo;s walk, of which the fashionable West-ender knoweth
+nought.&nbsp; <!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 126</span>There lurks the free and fearless
+Gipsy scamp, if scamp he truly be, with his squaw and his
+piccaninnies, in a wigwam hastily constructed of hoops and poles
+and blankets, or perhaps, if he be the wealthy sheikh of his wild
+Bedouin tribe, in a caravan drawn from place to place by some
+lost and strayed plough-horse, the lawful owner of which is a
+farmer in Northamptonshire.&nbsp; Far be it from us to say or
+suspect that the Gipsy stole the horse; &lsquo;convey, the wise
+it call;&rsquo; and if horse or donkey, dog, or pig, or cow, if
+cock and hen, duck or turkey, be permitted to escape from field
+or farmyard, these fascinated creatures will sometimes follow the
+merry troop of &lsquo;Romany Rye&rsquo; quite of their own
+accord, such is the magic of Egyptian craft and the innate
+superiority of an Oriental race.&nbsp; These Gipsies, Zingari,
+Bohemians, whatever they be called in the kingdoms of Europe, are
+masters of a secret science of mysterious acquisition, as remote
+from proved crime of theft or fraud as from the ways of earning
+or winning by ordinary industry and trade.&nbsp; There is many a
+rich and splendid establishment at the West-end supported by a
+different application of the same mysterious craft.&nbsp;
+Solicitors and stockbrokers may have seen it in action.&nbsp; It
+is that of silently appropriating what no other person may be
+quite prepared to claim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following remarks appeared in the December number of
+<i>The Quiver</i>:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, who has earned
+a much-respected and worthy name by his interest in and
+persevering efforts for the well-being of our canal population,
+is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children and
+roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and
+rural districts of the land.&nbsp; By securing the registration
+of canal-boats as human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of
+poor little outcasts within the pale of society and the
+beneficent influence of the various educational machineries of
+the age.&nbsp; By bringing the multitudinous tents, vans, shows,
+and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar arrangements,
+<!-- page 127--><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+127</span>he hopes to put civilisation, education, and
+Christianity within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who
+are at present left to grow up in ignorance and
+degradation.&nbsp; These vagrant juveniles are growing up to
+strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal classes;
+and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the
+nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating
+law which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of
+semi-barbarity to which untoward circumstances have consigned
+them, and to place them in a position to make something better of
+the life that now is, and to secure some fitting preparation for
+the life that is to come.&nbsp; It is evidently high time that
+something should be done, otherwise we must sooner or later be
+faced with more serious difficulties than even now exist.&nbsp;
+Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist;
+and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will
+win all needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a
+life of crime and vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected
+little ones will be crowned with success.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The glories of our mortal state<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Are shadows, not substantial things;<br />
+There is no armour against fate&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Death lays its icy hands on kings:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sceptre and crown<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Must tumble down,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And in the dust be equal made<br
+/>
+With the poor crooked scythe and spade:<br />
+Only the actions of the just<br />
+Smell sweet and blossom in the
+dust.&rsquo;&mdash;<i>Shirley</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy
+children&rsquo;s homes, as it appeared in the <i>Daily News</i>,
+<i>Daily Chronicle</i>, and other London and country daily
+papers, December 2nd:&mdash;&ldquo;Amongst some of the sorrowful
+features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more
+loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision than the
+<!-- page 128--><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+128</span>wretched little rag and stick hovels, scarcely large
+enough to hold a costermonger&rsquo;s wheelbarrow, in which the
+poor Gipsy women and children are born, pig, and die&mdash;aye,
+and men too, if they can be called Gipsies, with three-fourths,
+excepting the faintest cheering tint, of the blood of English
+scamps and vagabonds in their reins, and the remainder consisting
+of the blood of the vilest rascals from India and other
+nations.&nbsp; A real Gipsy of the old type, of which there are
+but few, will tell you a lie and look straight at you with a
+chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now will tell you a lie and
+look a thousand other ways while doing so.&nbsp; In their own
+interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain facts
+of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the
+brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the
+Bible may have their influence upon the character of the little
+ones about to become in our midst the men and women of the
+future.&nbsp; Outside their hovels or sack huts, poetically
+called &lsquo;tents&rsquo; and &lsquo;encampments,&rsquo; but in
+reality schools for teaching their children how to gild
+double-dyed lies,&mdash;sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and
+filth, paint immorality with Asiatic ideas, notions, and hues,
+and put a pleasant and cheerful aspect upon taking things that do
+not belong to them, may be seen thousands of ragged, half-naked,
+dirty, ignorant and wretched Gipsy children, and the men
+loitering about mostly in idleness.&nbsp; Inside their sack
+hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of
+all ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or
+sleeping upon a bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is
+often little better than a manure-heap, in fact sometimes
+completely rotten, and as a Gipsy woman told me last week,
+&lsquo;it is not fit to be handled with the hands.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of
+eye-disease, I am told by the women that it is owing to the
+sulphur arising from the coke fire they have upon the ground in
+their midst, and which at times also causes the children to turn
+pale and sickly.&nbsp; The sulphur affects the men and <!-- page
+129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+129</span>women in various ways, sometimes causing a kind of
+stupor to come over them.&nbsp; I have noticed farther that many
+of the adults are much pitted with small-pox.&nbsp; It is a
+wonder to me that there is not more disease among them than there
+appears to be, considering that they are huddled together,
+regardless of sex or age, in the midst of a damp atmosphere
+rising out of the ground, and impregnated with the sulphur of
+their coke fires.&nbsp; Probably their flitting habits prevent
+detection.&nbsp; My plan to improve their condition is not by
+prosecuting them and breaking up their tents and vans and turning
+them into the roads pell-mell, but to bring their habitations
+under the sanitary officers and their children under the
+schoolmaster in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, and it
+has the approval of these wandering herds.&nbsp; The process will
+be slow but effective, and without much inconvenience.&nbsp;
+Unless something be done for them in the way I have indicated,
+they will drift into a state similar to Darwin&rsquo;s
+forefathers and prove to the world that civilisation and
+Christianity are a failure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following article appears in the <i>Christian World</i>,
+December 19th, by Christopher Crayon (J. Ewing Ritchie), in which
+he says:&mdash;&ldquo;The other day I was witness to a spectacle
+which made me feel a doubt as to whether I was living in the
+nineteenth century.&nbsp; I was, as it were, within the shadow of
+that mighty London where Royalty resides, where the richest
+Church in Christendom rejoices in its Abbey and Cathedral, and
+its hundreds of churches, where an enlightened and energetic
+Dissent has not only planted its temples in every district, but
+has sent forth its missionary agents into every land, where the
+fierce light of public opinion, aided by a Press which never
+slumbers, is a terror to them that do evil, and a praise to them
+that do well; a city which we love to boast heads the onward
+march of man; and yet the scene before me was as intensely that
+of savage life, as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and savage life
+destitute of all that lends it picturesque attractions, or ideal
+charms.&nbsp; I was standing in <!-- page 130--><a
+name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>the midst
+of some twenty tents and vans, inhabited by that wandering race
+of whose origin we know so little, and of whose future we know
+less.&nbsp; The snow was on the ground, there was frost in the
+very air.&nbsp; Within a few yards was a great Board school;
+close by were factories and workshops, and the other concomitants
+of organised industrial life.&nbsp; Yet in that small area the
+Gipsies held undisputed sway.&nbsp; In or about London there are,
+it is calculated, some two thousand of these dwellers in
+tents.&nbsp; In all England there are some twenty thousand of
+these sons of Ishmael, with hands against every one, or, perhaps
+to put it more truly, with every one&rsquo;s hands against
+them.&nbsp; In summer-time their lot is by no means to be envied;
+in winter their state is deplorable indeed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We entered, Mr. George Smith and I, and were received
+as friends.&nbsp; Had I gone by myself, I question whether my
+reception would have been a pleasant one.&nbsp; As Gipsies pay no
+taxes, they can keep any number of dogs, and these dogs have a
+way of sniffing and snarling, anything but agreeable to an
+unbidden guest.&nbsp; The poor people complained to me no one
+ever came to see them.&nbsp; I should be surprised if any one
+did; but Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is no common man, and
+having secured fair play for the poor children of the
+brick-fields&mdash;he himself was brought up in a
+brick-yard&mdash;and for the poor, and sadly-neglected, inmates
+of the canal-boats, he has now turned his attention to the
+Gipsies.&nbsp; His idea is&mdash;and it is a good one&mdash;that
+an Act of Parliament should be passed for their
+benefit&mdash;something similar to that he has been the means of
+carrying for the canal and brick-field children.&nbsp; In a paper
+read before the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith
+argued that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like
+places used as dwellings should be registered and numbered, and
+under proper sanitary arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and
+School Board officers, in every town and village.&nbsp; Thus in
+every district the children would have their names and <!-- page
+131--><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+131</span>attendance registered in a book, which they could take
+with them from place to place, and when endorsed by the
+schoolmaster, it would show that the children were attending
+school.&nbsp; In carrying out this idea, it is a pity that Mr.
+Smith should have to bear all the burden.&nbsp; As it is, he has
+suffered greatly in his pocket by his philanthropic effort. . .
+.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is no joke going into a Gipsy yard, and it is still
+less so when you go down on your hands and knees, and crawl into
+the Gipsy&rsquo;s wigwam; but the worst of it is, when you have
+done so, there is little to see after all.&nbsp; In the middle,
+on a few bricks, is a stove or fireplace of some kind.&nbsp; On
+the ground is a floor of wood-chips, or straw, or shavings, and
+on this squat some two or three big, burly men, who make
+linen-pegs and skewers, and mend chairs and various articles, the
+tribe, as they wander along, seek to sell.&nbsp; The women are
+away, for it is they who bring the grist to the mill, as they
+tell fortunes, or sell their wares, or follow their doubtful
+trade; but the place swarms with children; and it was wonderful
+to see with what avidity they stretched out the dirtiest little
+hand imaginable as Mr. Smith prepared to distribute some sweets
+he had brought with him for that purpose.&nbsp; As we entered,
+all the vans were shut up, and the tents only were occupied, the
+vans being apparently deserted but presently a door was opened
+half-way, and out popped a little Gipsy head, with sparkling eyes
+and curly hair; and then another door opened, and a similar
+spectacle was to be seen.&nbsp; Let us look into the van, about
+the size of a tiny cabin, and chock full, in the first place,
+with a cooking-stove; and then with shelves, with curtains and
+some kind of bedding, apparently not very clean, on which the
+family repose.&nbsp; It is a piteous life, even at the best, in
+that van; even when the cooking pot is filled with something more
+savoury than cabbages or potatoes; the usual fare; but the
+children seem happy, nevertheless, in their dirty rags, and with
+their luxurious heads of curly hair.&nbsp; All of them are as
+ignorant as Hottentots, and lead a life horrible to think
+of.&nbsp; <!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 132</span>I only saw one woman in the camp,
+and I only saw her by uncovering the top and looking into the
+tent in which she resides.&nbsp; She is terribly poor, she says,
+and pleads earnestly for a few coppers; and I can well believe
+she wants them, for in this England of ours, and especially in
+the outskirts of London, the Gipsy is not a little out of
+place.&nbsp; Around us are some strapping girls, one with a
+wonderfully sweet smile on her face, who, if they could be
+trained to domestic service, would have a far happier life than
+they can ever hope to lead.&nbsp; The cold and wet seem to affect
+them not, nor the poor diet, nor the smoke and bad air of their
+cabins, in which they crowd, while the men lazily work, and the
+mothers are far away.&nbsp; The leading lady in this camp is
+absent on business; but she is a firm adherent of Mr. George
+Smith, and wishes to see the children educated; and as she is a
+Lee, and as a Lee in Gipsy annals take the same rank as a Norfolk
+Howard in aristocratic circles, that says a good deal; but, then,
+if you educate a Gipsy girl, she will want to have her hands and
+face, at any rate, clean; and a Gipsy boy, when he learns to
+read, will feel that he is born for a nobler end than to dwell in
+a stinking wigwam, to lead a lawless life, to herd with
+questionable characters, and to pick up a precarious existence at
+fairs and races; and our poets and novelists and artists will not
+like that.&nbsp; However, just now, by means of letters in the
+newspapers, and engravings in the illustrated journals, a good
+deal of attention is paid to the Gipsies, and if they can be
+reclaimed and turned into decent men and women a good many
+farmers&rsquo; wives will sleep comfortably at night, especially
+when geese and turkeys are being fattened for Christmas fare; and
+a desirable impulse will be given to the trade in
+soap.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p132b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Gipsy girl washing clothes"
+title=
+"A Gipsy girl washing clothes"
+src="images/p132s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>In the <i>Sunday School Chronicle</i>, December 19th, the
+kind-hearted editor makes the following
+allusions:&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. George Smith stirs every feeling of
+pity and compassion in our hearts by his descriptions of the
+Gipsy Children&rsquo;s Homes.&nbsp; It is one of the curious
+things of English life that the <!-- page 133--><a
+name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>distinct
+Gipsy race should dwell among us, and, neither socially nor
+politically, nor religiously, do we take any notice of
+them.&nbsp; No portion of our population may so earnestly plead,
+&lsquo;No man careth for our souls.&rsquo;&nbsp; The chief
+interest of them, to many of us, is that they are used to give
+point, and plot, to novels.&nbsp; But can nothing be done for the
+Gipsy <i>children</i>?&nbsp; Christian enterprise is seldom found
+wanting when a sphere is suggested for it; and those who live in
+the neighbourhood of Gipsy haunts should be especially concerned
+for their well-being.&nbsp; What must the children be, morally
+and religiously, who <i>bide</i>, we cannot say <i>dwell</i>, in
+such homes as Mr. George Smith describes?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In their own interest, and without mincing
+matters, it is time the plain facts of their dark lives were
+brought to daylight, so that the brightening and elevating
+effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible may have their
+influence upon the character of the little ones about to become
+in our midst the men and women of the future.&nbsp; Outside their
+hovels or sack huts, poetically called &ldquo;tents&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;encampments,&rdquo; but in reality schools for teaching
+their children how to gild double-dyed lies, sugar-coat
+deception, gloss idleness and filth, and put a pleasant and
+cheerful aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them,
+may be seen thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant, and
+wretched Gipsy children, and the men loitering about mostly in
+idleness.&nbsp; Inside their sack hovels are to be found man,
+wife, and six or seven children of all ages, not one of them able
+to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a bed of straw,
+which through the wet and damp is often little better than a
+manure-heap, in fact sometimes it is completely rotten, and as a
+Gipsy woman told me last week, &ldquo;it is not fit to be handled
+with the hands.&rdquo;&nbsp; In noticing that many of the Gipsy
+children have a kind of eye disease, I am told by the women that
+it is owing to the sulphur arising from the coke fire they have
+upon the ground in their midst, and which at times also causes
+the children to turn pale and sickly.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+134</span>The following brief account of the Hungarian Gipsies of
+the present day, as seen by a writer under the initials &ldquo;A.
+C.,&rdquo; who visited the Unitarian Synod in Hungary last
+summer, is taken from the <i>Unitarian Herald</i>, bearing date
+January 9th, 1880, and in which the author says:&mdash;&ldquo;Not
+far from Rugonfalva we came on a colony of exceedingly squalid
+Gipsies, living in huts which a respectable Zulu would utterly
+despise.&nbsp; Their appearance reminded me of Cowper&rsquo;s
+graphic sketch, which I am tempted to quote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I see a column of slow-rising
+smoke<br />
+O&rsquo;ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.<br />
+A vagabond and useless tribe there eat<br />
+Their miserable meal.&nbsp; A kettle, flung<br />
+Between two poles upon a stick transverse,<br />
+Receives the morsel&mdash;flesh obscene of dog,<br />
+Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined<br />
+From his accustomed perch.&nbsp; Hard-faring race,<br />
+They pick their fuel out of every hedge,<br />
+Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched<br />
+The spark of life.&nbsp; The sportive wind blows wide<br />
+Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,<br />
+The vellum of the livery they claim.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Transylvania is one great museum of human as well as
+natural products, and this singular race forms an interesting
+element of its motley population.&nbsp; It is supposed that the
+tribe found its way to Hungary in the beginning of the fifteenth
+century, having fled from Central Asia or India during the Mongol
+reign of terror.&nbsp; About the close of last century Pastor
+Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting
+England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him
+very well.&nbsp; There are now about eighty thousand of them in
+Transylvania, but three-fourths of this number have settled
+homes, and caste distinctions are so strong that the higher
+grades would not drink from a cup used by one of their
+half-savage brethren.&nbsp; On reaching the mansion of Mr.
+Jakabh&aacute;zi, at Sim&eacute;nfalva, who employs about one
+hundred and forty civilised Gipsies <!-- page 135--><a
+name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>on his
+estate, we had an opportunity after dinner of seeing them return
+in a long procession from the fields.&nbsp; Some of the women
+carried small brown babies, that appeared able to find footing
+anywhere on their mothers&rsquo; shoulders, backs, or
+breasts.&nbsp; These labourers are almost entirely paid in food
+and other necessaries, and if kindly treated are very honourable
+towards their master, and generally adopt his religion.&nbsp;
+When smarting under any grievance, they, on the contrary,
+sometimes change their faith <i>en masse</i>, and when
+conciliated undergo as speedy a re-conversion.&nbsp; The women
+are, as a rule, very fond of ornaments, and the men are, above
+all things, proud of a horse or a pair of scarlet breeches.&nbsp;
+Of late years they have in a few districts began to intermarry
+with the Wallachs, and the sharp distinction between them and the
+other races in Hungary will, no doubt, gradually
+disappear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The <i>Weekly Times</i> again takes up the subject, and the
+following appears on January 9th, 1880:&mdash;&ldquo;We made a
+second expedition, with Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, on
+Sunday, in search of a Gipsy encampment; and though the way was
+long and tedious, and we were both lamed with walking before we
+returned at night, yet we had not gone one step out of our
+way.&nbsp; There is no encampment of these ancient and
+interesting people in the neighbourhood of the hundred odd square
+miles which composes the site of the metropolis, with which Mr.
+Smith is not acquainted, and to which we verily believe he could
+lead a friend if he was blindfolded.&nbsp; The way we went must
+remain somewhat of a secret, because the Gipsies do not care to
+see many visitors on the only day of the week which is one of
+absolute rest to them.&nbsp; All that we shall disclose about the
+way is, that we skirted Mount Nod, and for a short distance
+looked upon the face of an ancient river, then up-hill we
+clambered for many longish miles, until we turned out of a
+certain lane into the encampment.&nbsp; There was a rude
+picturesqueness in the gaping of the vans and tents.&nbsp; In
+<!-- page 136--><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+136</span>the foreground were the vans, to the rear the cloth
+kraals, with their smoky coverings stretched over poles; from a
+hole in the centre the smoke ascended, furnishing evidence that
+the open brazier was burning within.&nbsp; The vans protected the
+approach to the camp, just in the same way that artillery are
+planted to keep the road to a military encampment.&nbsp; Mr.
+Smith&rsquo;s face seemed to be well known to these strange
+people, and we no sooner appeared in sight than the swinging door
+of every van was edged with faces, and forth from the strange
+kraals there crept child and woman, youth and dog, to say a
+kindly word, or bark a welcome to the visitors.&nbsp; But for the
+Gipsies&rsquo; welcome we might have had an unpleasant reception
+from the dogs.&nbsp; They were evidently dubious as to our
+character, their training inclining them to bite, if they get a
+chance, any leg wearing black cloth, but to give the
+ragged-trousered visitors a fawning welcome; so they sniffed
+again and again, and growled, until driven away by the voices of
+their owners.&nbsp; Perchance, during the remainder of the day,
+they were revolving in their intelligent minds how it had come to
+pass that the black cloth legs were received with evident marks
+of favour.&nbsp; Nor were they able to settle the point easily,
+for whenever we happened to look round the encampment during the
+afternoon, from the raised door-way of a kraal where we happened
+to be couched, we noticed the eyes of one or other of the
+four-footed guardians fixed intently on us.&nbsp; There were
+about twenty vans and tents in all; and each paid one shilling a
+week to the ground landlord.&nbsp; That money, with whatever else
+was required for food, was obtained by hawking at this season of
+the year, and trade was very bad.&nbsp; Winter must be a fearful
+experience for these children of the air, and the field, the
+summer sun, the wild flowers, and the fruits of harvest.&nbsp;
+Such rains as have descended, such snows as have been falling,
+such cold winds as have been blowing, must discount fearfully the
+joys of the three happier seasons of the year.</p>
+<p><!-- page 137--><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+137</span>&ldquo;Invitations to stoop and enter any
+&lsquo;tent&rsquo; were freely tendered, and &lsquo;peeps&rsquo;
+were indulged in with regard to a few.&nbsp; In one, a closed
+cauldron covered the brazier fire, and two men and a dog watched
+with unceasing vigilance.&nbsp; We tried to make friends here,
+but failed.&nbsp; There was a steamy exudation from the cauldron
+which filled the air with fragrance, and our curiosity overcame
+our prudence, but with no satisfactory result.&nbsp; &lsquo;A
+stew,&rsquo; we suggested.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes! it was summut
+stewing.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Couldn&rsquo;t we guess what it
+was?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Not soon,&rsquo; was the reply; &lsquo;a
+few bones and a potato or two; perhaps a bit of something
+green.&nbsp; At such hard times they were mostly glad to get
+anything.&rsquo;&nbsp; But nothing more could be gleaned, and the
+two men and the dog never lost sight of the cauldron while the
+visitors remained.&nbsp; In a few cases the tents were pegged
+down all round, and across the top, upon a stout line, there hung
+a few articles fresh from the wash.&nbsp; The pegged cloth
+indicated that the female occupants were within, but &lsquo;not
+at home,&rsquo; nor would they be visible until the wind had
+dried the garments that fluttered overhead.&nbsp; We tarried, and
+were made quite at home in another kraal, where we gleaned many
+interesting particulars of Gipsy life; and here we held a sort of
+smoking <i>lev&eacute;e</i>, and were honoured by the company of
+many distinguished residents in camp.&nbsp; We lay upon a bed of
+straw, which covered the whole of the interior, save a little
+space filled with the brazier, in which a fire of coke was
+burning; above was a hole, out of which the smoke passed.&nbsp;
+The straw had been stamped into consistency by the feet of the
+family; there was no odour from it, and in that particular was an
+improvement on the rush and straw floors in the English houses of
+which Erasmus made such great complaint.&nbsp; There was no
+chair, stool, or box on which to sit, and all of us reclined
+Eastern fashion in the posture that was most convenient.&nbsp;
+The owner of the kraal and his wife were very interesting people:
+the mother&rsquo;s hair descended by little steps from the crown
+of her head, until it stuck out <!-- page 138--><a
+name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>like a
+bush, in a line with the nape of her neck, a dense dead-black
+mass of hair.&nbsp; She had been a model for painters many a
+time, she said, before small-pox marked her; and, since, the back
+of her head had often been drawn to fit somebody else&rsquo;s
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;When I come again what shall I bring you?&rsquo;
+said Mr. Smith, in most reckless fashion, to the Egyptian
+Queen.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said she, without a
+moment&rsquo;s hesitation, &lsquo;if there is one thing more than
+another that I do want, it&rsquo;s a silk handkercher for my
+head&mdash;a real Bandana.&rsquo;&nbsp; The request was
+characteristic.&nbsp; Of the tales we heard one or two were
+curious, one positively laughable, and one related to a deed of
+blood.&nbsp; Mr. Smith, going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy
+woman, to whom he told the object of his visiting the Gipsies,
+and what he hoped to accomplish for the children, and she forwith
+handed him a money gift.&nbsp; On more than one occasion a
+well-polished silver coin of small value, a penny, or a farthing
+has been quietly put into Mr. Smith&rsquo;s hands, in furtherance
+of his work, by some poor Gipsy woman.&nbsp; The story which made
+us laugh was of a Gipsy marriage.&nbsp; It is one of the
+unwritten laws of Gipsy life that the wife works while the
+husband idles about the tent.&nbsp; The wife hawks with the
+basket or the cart and sells, while the husband loiters about the
+encampment or cooks the evening meal.&nbsp; But one young Gipsy
+fell in love with an Irish girl named Kathleen, and from the day
+of their marriage Tom never had an idle moment.&nbsp; In vain did
+he plead the usages of Gipsy married life.&nbsp; Kathleen was
+deaf to all such modes of argument, and drove her husband forth
+from tent and encampment, by voice or by stake, until she
+completely cured him of his idleness, and she remained mistress
+of the field.&nbsp; Whenever a young Gipsy is supposed to be
+courting a stranger, the fate of Tom at the hands of Kathleen is
+told him as a warning.&nbsp; During the afternoon we were
+continually exhorted to see &lsquo;Granny&rsquo; before we
+left.&nbsp; Every one spoke of her with respect, and when we were
+<!-- page 139--><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+139</span>about to leave, Patience offered to show us
+&lsquo;Granny&rsquo;s tent.&rsquo;&nbsp; Repentance joined her
+sister, and before we were up and out of the tent opening, we saw
+Patience at a tent not far off; she dived head and shoulders
+through an opening she made, and then appeared to be pulling
+vigorously.&nbsp; Her activity was soon explained.&nbsp; We
+thrust our heads through the opening, and were face to face with
+a shrivelled-faced old woman, whose cheeks were like discoloured
+parchment, and whose hands and arms appeared to be mere
+bones.&nbsp; But her eye was bright, and her tongue proved her to
+be in possession of most of her faculties.&nbsp; She could not
+stand or walk, nor could she sit up for many minutes at a time,
+and the action of Patience was caused by her hastily seizing the
+old woman by her arms as she lay on her straw floor, and dragging
+her into a sitting position.&nbsp; If the old dame had been
+asleep, Patience had thoroughly aroused her.&nbsp; She greeted us
+with Gipsy courtesy, and told us she was &lsquo;fourscore and six
+years of age.&rsquo;&nbsp; Her name, in answer to our query, she
+said was &lsquo;Sinfire Smith.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Why,
+that&rsquo;s the same as mine,&rsquo; said Mr. Smith.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;O, likely,&rsquo; said Sinfire, &lsquo;the Smiths is a
+long family.&rsquo;&nbsp; For four score and six years poor
+Sinfire has led a Gipsy life, and though her house now is only a
+tent, and her bed and bedding straw, she made no moan, and there
+was nothing she wished to have.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Farewell, farewell! so rest there,
+blade!<br />
+Entomb me where our chiefs are laid;<br />
+But, hark, methinks I hear the drum,<br />
+I would that holy man were come.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Harris</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What sound is that as of one knocking gently?<br />
+Yet who would enter here at hour so late?<br />
+Arise! draw back the bolt&mdash;unclose the portal.<br />
+What figure standeth there before the gate?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He bears to thee sweet messages from Heaven,<br />
+Whispers of love from dear ones folded there,<br />
+And tells thee that a place for thee is waiting,<br />
+That thou shalt join them in their home so fair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. F. B.&mdash;&ldquo;Sunday at
+Home.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><!-- page 140--><a name="page140"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 140</span>Part III.<br />
+The Treatment the Gipsies have received in this Country.</h2>
+<p>The social history and improvements of our own country seem to
+have gone by irregular leaps and bounds.&nbsp; The Parliament,
+like the <i>Times</i>, follows upon the heels of public opinion
+in all measures concerning the welfare of the nation; and it is
+well it should be so.&nbsp; An Englishman will be led by a child;
+but it requires a strong hand and a sharp whip to drive
+him.&nbsp; One hundred and forty years ago the Wesleys and
+Whitfield caused a commotion in the religious world.&nbsp;
+Upwards of a century ago the first canal in this country was
+opened for the conveyance of goods upon our silent highways, and
+trade began in earnest to show signs of life and activity.&nbsp;
+A century ago Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, opened his first
+Sunday-school&mdash;the beginning of a system ever widening and
+expanding, carrying with it blessings incomprehensible to finite
+minds, and only to be revealed in another world.&nbsp; Nearly a
+century ago Raper&rsquo;s translation of Grellmann&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Dissertation on the Gipsies&rdquo; was published, and
+which caused no little stir at the time, being the first work of
+any kind worth notice that had appeared.&nbsp; Seventy years ago
+an interesting correspondence took place in the <i>Christian
+Observer</i> upon the condition of the Gipsies, and various lines
+of missionary action were suggested; but no plan was adopted, and
+all words blown to the wind.&nbsp; Then, as now, people would
+look at the Gipsies <!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 141</span>in their pitiable condition, and
+with a shrug of the shoulders would say, &ldquo;Poor
+things,&rdquo; and away they would go to their mansions, doff
+their warm winter clothing, put on their needleworked slippers,
+stretch their legs before a blazing fire in the drawing-room, and
+call &ldquo;John&rdquo; to bring a box of the best cigars, the
+champagne, dry sherry, and crusted port, and then noddle off to
+sleep.&nbsp; Sixty-four years ago Hoyland&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Historical Survey of the Gipsies&rdquo; made its
+appearance, a work that caught the fire and spirit of
+Grellmann&rsquo;s, the object of both being to stir up the
+missionary zeal of this country in the cause of the
+Gipsies.&nbsp; Fifty years ago James Crabb began his missionary
+work among the Gipsies at Southampton, and for a while did well;
+but in course of time, owing to the Gipsies moving about, as in
+the case of &ldquo;Our Canal Population,&rdquo; the work dwindled
+down and down, till there is not a vestige of this good
+man&rsquo;s efforts to be seen.&nbsp; About the same time that
+Crabb was at work among the Gipsies missionary efforts were put
+in motion to improve the canal-boatmen, and mission stations were
+established at Newark, Stoke-on-Trent, Aylesbury, Oxford,
+Birmingham, and other places, but fared the same fate as the
+missionary effort of Crabb and others among the Gipsies.&nbsp;
+Fifty years ago railways were opened, which gave an impetus to
+trade never experienced before.&nbsp; Fifty years ago the
+preaching of Bourne and Clowes was causing considerable
+excitement in the country.&nbsp; Nearly fifty years ago witnessed
+the passing of the Reform Bill, and the Factory Act received the
+Royal signature.&nbsp; Forty years have passed away since George
+Borrow&rsquo;s missionary efforts among the Gipsies were
+prominently before the public, which, sad to say, shared the fate
+of Crabb&rsquo;s, Hoyland&rsquo;s, Roberts&rsquo;, and
+Raper&rsquo;s.&nbsp; From that day till now, except the spasmodic
+efforts of a clergyman here and there, or some other kind-hearted
+friend, these 20,000 poor slighted outcasts have been left to
+themselves to sink or swim as they thought well.&nbsp; The only
+man, except the dramatist and novelist, who has seemed <!-- page
+142--><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>to
+notice them has been the policeman, and his vigilant eye and
+staff have been used to drive them from their camping-ground from
+time to time, and thus&mdash;if possible&mdash;made their lives
+more miserable, and created within them deeper-seated revenge,
+owing to the way in which they are carrying out the Enclosures
+Act.&nbsp; All missionary efforts put forth to improve the
+condition of the factory operative and canal-boatmen, previous to
+the passing of the Factory Act, nearly fifty years since, and the
+Canal Boats Act of 1877, were fruitless and unprofitable.&nbsp;
+The passing of the Factory Act has done more for the children in
+one year than all the missionaries in the kingdom could have done
+in their lifetime.&nbsp; Similar results are the outcome of the
+Brickyard Act of 1871, as touching the welfare of the
+children.&nbsp; And so in like manner it will be with the Canal
+Boats Act when properly carried out, the canal-boat children of
+to-day, in fifty years hence, will be equal to other working
+classes.&nbsp; From the days of Hoyland, and Borrow, and Crabb,
+down to the present time, but little seems to have been done for
+the Gipsies.&nbsp; With Crabb died all real interest in the
+welfare of these poor unfortunate people.&nbsp; The difficulties
+he had encountered seemed to have had a deterrent effect upon
+others.&nbsp; Missionary zeal, without moral force of law and the
+schoolmaster, will accomplish but little for the Gipsies at our
+doors; and it may be said with special emphasis as regards the
+improvement of the Gipsy children.&nbsp; From the days of the
+relentless, cruel, and merciless persecution the Gipsies received
+under the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, down to the
+present time, nothing has been done by law to reclaim these
+Indian outcasts and Asiatic emigrants.&nbsp; The case of the
+Gipsies shows us plainly that hunting the women and children with
+bloodhounds, and dragging the Gipsy leaders to the gallows, will
+neither stamp them out nor improve their character and habits;
+and, on the other hand, it appears that the love-like gentleness,
+child-like simplicity, and religious fervour of the circumscribed
+influence <!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 143</span>of Crabb and others, about this
+time, did but little for these poor, little, dark-eyed, wandering
+brethren of ours from afar.&nbsp; The next agents that appeared
+upon the scene to try to elevate the Gipsies into something like
+a respectable position in society were the dramatists and
+novelists.&nbsp; These flickering lights of the night have met
+with no better success, in fact, their efforts, in the way they
+have been put forth, have, as a rule, exhibited Gipsy life in a
+variety of false colours and shades, which exhibition has turned
+out to be a failure in accomplishing the object the authors had
+in view, other than to fill their coffers and mislead the public
+as to the real character of a Gipsy vagabond&rsquo;s life; and
+thus it will be seen, I think, that the Gipsies and their
+children of to-day present to us the miserable failure, of bitter
+persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
+efforts of Christianity alone at the beginning of the nineteenth
+century, and more recently the novelist and dramatist as a means
+in themselves, separately, to effect a reformation in the habits
+and character of the Gipsy children and their parents.</p>
+<p>If the Gipsy and other tramping, travelling &ldquo;rob
+rats&rdquo; of to-day are to become honest, industrious, and
+useful citizens of the future, it must be by the influence of the
+schoolmaster and the sanitary officer, coming to a great extent
+as they do between the fitful and uncertain efforts of the
+missionary, the relentless hands of persecution, the policeman,
+and the stage.</p>
+<p>From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down
+to the time when Raper&rsquo;s translation of Grellmann&rsquo;s
+work appeared in 1787, a period of 272 years, nothing seems to
+have been done to improve the Gipsies, except to pass laws for
+their extermination.&nbsp; The earliest notice of the Gipsies in
+our own country was published in a quarto volume in the year
+1612, the object of which was to expose the system of
+fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which
+reference is made to the <!-- page 144--><a
+name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>Gipsies as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;This kind of people about a hundred years
+ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the
+southerne parts.&nbsp; And this, as I am imformed and can gather,
+was their beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country
+(belike not for their good conditions) arrived heere in England,
+who for quaint tricks and devices, not known heere at that time
+among us, were esteemed and had in great admiration; insomuch
+that many of our English loyterers joined with them, and in time
+learned their crafty cosening.&nbsp; The speech which they used
+was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen
+conversing at least learned their language.&nbsp; These people
+continuing about the country and practising their cosening art,
+purchased themselves great credit among the country people, and
+got much by palmistry and telling of fortunes; insomuch they
+pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of money, silver
+spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they could
+make.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he goes on to say, &ldquo;But what numbers
+were executed on these statutes you would wonder; yet,
+notwithstanding, all would not prevaile, but they wandered as
+before uppe and downe and meeting once a year at a place
+appointed; sometimes at the Peake&rsquo;s Hole in Derbyshire, and
+other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath.&rdquo;&nbsp; The annual
+gathering of the Gipsies and others of the same class, who make
+Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and
+neighbouring counties, their head-quarters, takes place at the
+well-known Bolton Fair, held about Whitsuntide, on the borders of
+Leicestershire, a village situated in a kind of triangle, between
+Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.&nbsp; Spellman
+speaks of the Gipsies about this time as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;The worst kind of wanderers and impostors
+springing up on the Continent, but yet rapidly spreading
+themselves through Britain and other parts of Europe, disfigured
+by their swarthiness, sun-burnt, filthy in their clothing and
+indecent in all their customs.&rdquo;&nbsp; Under these
+circumstances it is not to be wondered at, in these dark ages,
+<!-- page 145--><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+145</span>that some steps should be taken to stop these lawless
+desperadoes and vagabonds from contaminating our English
+labourers&rsquo; and servant girls with their loose ideas of
+labour, cleanliness, honesty, morality, truthfulness, and
+religion.&nbsp; It was soon manifest what kind of strange people
+had begun to flock to our shores to make their domiciles among
+us, as will be seen in a description given of them in an Act of
+Parliament passed in the twenty-second year of the reign of Henry
+VIII., being only about seven years after their landing in
+Scotland, and to which I have referred before.&nbsp; In the tenth
+chapter of the said act they are described as&mdash;&ldquo;An
+outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no crafte
+nor feat of merchandise; who have come into this realm and gone
+from shire to shire and place to place in great company, and used
+great subtle and crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them
+in hand that by palmistry they could tell the men&rsquo;s and
+women&rsquo;s fortunes, and so many times by crafte and subtlety
+have deceived the people of their money, and also have committed
+many heinous felonies and robberies.&nbsp; Wherefore all are
+directed to avoid the realm and not to return under pain of
+imprisonment and forfeitures of their goods and chattels; and on
+their trials for any felonies which they may have committed they
+shall not be entitled to a jury.&rdquo;&nbsp; As if this was not
+sufficient or as if it had not the desired effect the authors
+anticipated viz., in preventing other Gipsies flocking to our
+shores or driving those away from us who were already in our
+midst another act was passed in the twenty-seventh year of the
+same reign, more severe than the previous act, and part of it
+runs as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;Whereas certain outlandish people,
+who do not profess any crafte or trade, whereby to maintain
+themselves, but go about in great numbers from place to pace
+using insidious underhand means to impose on His Majesty&rsquo;s
+subjects, making them believe that they understand the art of
+foretelling to men and women their good and evil fortunes by
+looking in their hands, whereby they <!-- page 146--><a
+name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>frequently
+defraud people of their money; likewise are guilty of thefts and
+highway robberies; it is hereby ordered that the said vagrants,
+commonly called Egyptians, in case they remain one month in the
+kingdom, shall be proceeded against as thieves and rascals, and
+at the importation of such Egyptians (the importer) shall forfeit
+&pound;40 for every trespass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fine of &pound;40 being inflicted at that time, which
+means a large sum at the present day, carries something more with
+it than the thefts committed by the Gipsies.&nbsp; It is evident
+that the Gipsies had wheedled themselves into the graces and
+favours of some portion of the aristocracy by their crafts and
+deception.&nbsp; If the Gipsy offences had been committed against
+the labouring population it would have been the height of
+absurdity for Parliament to have inflicted a fine of some
+hundreds of pounds upon the working man of the poorer
+classes.&nbsp; It has occurred to me that the question of Popery
+may have been one of the causes of their persecution; and it is
+not unlikely that wealthy Roman Catholics may have had something
+to do with their importation into this country.&nbsp; The fact
+is, before the Gipsies left the Continent for England they were
+Roman Catholic pilgrims, and going about the country doing the
+work of the Pope to some extent, and this may have been one of
+the objects of those who were opposed to the Protestant
+tendencies of Henry VIII. in causing them to come over to
+England.&nbsp; At this time our own country was in a very
+disturbed state, religiously, and no people were so suitable to
+work in the dark and carry messages from place to place as the
+Gipsies, especially if by so doing they could make plenty of
+plunder out of it; and this idea I have hinted at before as one
+of their leading characteristics.&nbsp; It should not be
+overlooked that telegraphs, railways, stagecoaches, and canals
+had not been established at this time, consequently for the
+Gipsies to be moving about the country from village to village
+under a cloak, as they appeared to the <!-- page 147--><a
+name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>higher
+powers, was sufficient to make them the subjects of bitter
+persecution.&nbsp; For the Gipsies to have openly avowed that
+they were Roman Catholics before landing upon our shores, would
+in all probability have defeated the object of those who
+induced&mdash;if induced&mdash;them to come over to
+Britain.&nbsp; At any rate, we may, I think, fairly assume that
+this feature of their character, an addition to their
+fortune-telling proclivities, may have been one of the causes of
+their persecution, and in this view I am to some extent supported
+by circumstances.</p>
+<p>During the reign of Henry VIII. a number of Gipsies were sent
+back to France, and in the book of receipts and payments of the
+thirty-fifth of the same reign the following entries are
+made:&mdash;&ldquo;Nett payments, 1st Sept., 36 of Henry
+VIII.&nbsp; Item, to Tho. Warner, Sergeant of the Admyraltie,
+10th Sept., for victuals prepared for a shippe appointed to
+convey certaine Egupeians, 58s.&nbsp; Item, to the same Tho.
+Warner, to the use of John Bowles for freight of said shippe,
+&pound;6 5s.&nbsp; 0d.&nbsp; Item, to Robt. ap Rice, Esq., Shriff
+of Huntingdon, for the charge of the Egupeians at a special gailo
+delivery, and the bringing of them to be carreied over the sees;
+over and besides the sum of &pound;4 5s. 0d. groming of seventeen
+horses sold at five shillings the peice as apperythe by a
+particular book, &pound;17 17s. 7d.&nbsp; Item, to Will. Wever,
+appointed to have the charge of the conduct of the said Egupeians
+to Callis, &pound;5.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1426 a first-rate horse was worth about &pound;1 6s. 8d.,
+and a colt 4s. 6d.&nbsp; Twenty-two years later the hay of an
+acre of land was worth about &pound;5.</p>
+<p>There were several acts passed relating to the Gipsies during
+the reign of Philip and Mary, and fifth of Elizabeth, by which it
+states&mdash;&ldquo;If any person, being fourteen years old,
+whether natural born subject or stranger, who had been seen in
+the fellowship of such persons, or had disguised himself like
+them, or should remain with them one month at once or several
+times, it should be felony without the benefit of the
+clergy.&rdquo;&nbsp; Wraxall, in his &ldquo;History of
+France,&rdquo; vol. ii., <!-- page 148--><a
+name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>page 32, in
+referring to the act of Elizabeth, in 1653, states that in her
+reign the Gipsies throughout England were supposed to exceed
+10,000.&nbsp; About the year 1586 complaints were again made of
+the increase of vagabonds and loitering persons.</p>
+<p>The following order is copied from the Harleian MSS. in the
+British Museum:&mdash;&ldquo;Orders, rules, and directions,
+concluded, appointed, and agreed upon by us the Justices of Peace
+within the county of Suffolk, assembled at our general session of
+peace, holden at Bury, the 22nd daie of Aprill, in the 31st yeare
+of the raigne of our Souraigne Lady the Queen&rsquo;s Majestie,
+for the punishing and suppressinge of roags, vacabonds, idle
+loyterings, and lewde persons, which doe or shall hereafter
+wander and goe aboute within the hundreths of Thingo cum Bury,
+Blackborne, Thedwardstree, Cosford, Babings, Risbridge, Lackford,
+and the hundreth of Exninge, in the said county of Suffolk,
+contrary to the law in that case made and provided.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whereas at the Parliament beganne and holden at
+Westminster, the 8th daie of Maye, in the 14th yeare of the
+raigne of the Queen&rsquo;s Majesty that nowe is, one Acte was
+made intytuled, &lsquo;An Acte for the punishment of Vacabonds
+and for releife of the Pooere and Impotent&rsquo;; and whereas at
+a Session of the Parliament, holden by prorogacon at Westminster,
+the eight daie of February, in the 28th yeare of Her Majesties
+raigne, an other Acte was made and intytuled, &lsquo;An Act for
+settinge of the Poore to work and for the avoydinge of
+idleness&rsquo;; by virtue of which severall Acts certeyne
+provisions and remedies have been ordeyned and established, as
+well for the suppressinge and punishinge of all roags, vacabonds,
+sturdy roags, idle and loyteringe persons; as also for the
+reliefe and setting on worke of the aged and impotente persons
+within this realm, and authoritie gyven to justices of peace, in
+their several charges and commissions, to see that the said Acts
+and Statuts be putte in due execution, to the glorie of
+Allmightie God and the benefite of the Common Welth.</p>
+<p><!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+149</span>&ldquo;And whereas also yt appeareth by dayly
+experience that the numbr of idle, vaggraunte, loyteringe sturdy
+roags, masterless men, lewde and yll disposed persons are
+exceedingly encreased and multiplied, committinge many grevious
+and outerageous disorders and offences, tendinge to the great . .
+. of Allmightie God, the contempt of Her Majesties laws, and to
+the great charge, trouble, and disquiet of the Common Welth:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We, the Justices of Peace above speciefied, assembled
+and mett together at our general sessions above-named for remedie
+of theis and such lyke enormitities which hereafter shall happen
+to arrise or growe within the hundreths and lymits aforesaid, doe
+by theis presents order, decree, and ordeyne That there shall be
+builded or provided a convenient house, which shall be called the
+House of Correction, and that the same be establishd within the
+towne of Bury, within the hundreth of Thingoe aforesaid: And that
+all persons offendinge or lyvinge contrary to the tenor of the
+said twoe Acts, within the hundreths and lymitts aforesaid, shall
+be, by the warrante of any Justice of Peace dwellinge in the same
+hundreths or lymitts, committed thether, and there be received,
+punished, sett to worke, and orderd in such sorte and accordinge
+to the directions, provisions, and limitations hereafter in theis
+presents declard and specified.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fyrst&mdash;That yt maie appeare what persons arre
+apprehended, committed, and brought to the House of Correction,
+it is ordered and appointed, that all and every person and
+persons which shall be found and taken within the hundreths and
+lymitts aforesaid above the age of 14 yeares, and shall take upon
+them to be procters or procuraters goinge aboute without
+sufficiente lycense from the Queen&rsquo;s Majestie; all idle
+persons goinge aboute usinge subtiltie and unlawfull games or
+plaie; all such as faynt themselves to have knowledge in
+physiognomeye, palmestrie, or other absurd sciences; all tellers
+of destinies, deaths, or fortunes, and such lyke fantasticall
+imaginations.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+150</span>In Scotland, the Gipsies, and other vagrants of the
+same class, were dealt with equally as severely under Mary Queen
+of Scots as they were under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth in
+England.&nbsp; In an act passed in 1579 I find the following
+relating to Gipsies and vagabonds:&mdash;&ldquo;That sik as make
+themselves fules and ar bairdes, or uther sik like runners about,
+being apprehended, sall be put into the Kinge&rsquo;s Waird, or
+irones, sa lang as they have ony gudes of their owin to live on,
+and fra they have not quhair upon to live of thir owin that their
+eares be nayled to the trone or to an uther tree, and thir eares
+cutted off and banished the countrie; and gif thereafter they be
+found againe, that they be hanged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And that it may be knowen quwhat maner of persones ar
+meaned to be idle and strong begares, and vagabounds, and worthy
+of the punischment before specified, it is declared: That all
+idle persones ganging about in any countrie of this realm, using
+subtil craftie and unlawful playes, as juglarie, fast-and-lous,
+and sik uthers; the idle people calling themselves
+<i>Egyptians</i>, or any uther, that feinzies themselves to have
+a knowledge or charming prophecie, or other abused sciences,
+quairby they perswade peopil that they can tell thir weirds,
+deaths, and fortunes, and sik uther phantastical
+imaginations,&rdquo; &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+<p>Another law was passed in Scotland in 1609, not less severe
+than the one passed in 1579, called Scottish Acts, and in which I
+find the following:&mdash;&ldquo;Sorcerers, common thieves,
+commonly called Egyptians, were directed to pass forth of the
+kingdom, under pain of death as common, notorious, and condemned
+thieves.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was persecution with vengeance, and no
+mistake; and it was under this kind of treatment, severe as it
+was, the Gipsies continued to grow and prosper in carrying out
+their nefarious practices.&nbsp; The case of these poor miserable
+wretches, midnight prowlers, with eyes and hearts and bending
+steps determined upon mischief and evil-doing, presents to us the
+spectacle of justice untempered with mercy.&nbsp; The phial
+filled with <!-- page 151--><a name="page151"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 151</span>revenge, malice, spite, hatred,
+extermination and blood&mdash;without the milk of human kindness,
+the honey of love, water from the crystal fountain, and the
+tincture of Gethsemane&rsquo;s garden being added to take away
+the nauseousness of it&mdash;being handed these poor deluding
+witches and wretches to drink to the last dregs, failed to get
+rid of social and national grievances.&nbsp; The hanging of
+thirteen Gipsies at one of the Suffolk Assizes a few years before
+the Restoration carried with it none of the seeds of a
+reformation in their character and habits, nor did it lessen the
+number of these wandering prowlers, for we find that from the
+landing of a few hundred of Gipsies from France in 1514, down to
+the commencement of the eighteenth century, the number had
+increased to something like 15,000.&nbsp; The number who had been
+hung, died in prison, suffered starvation, and the fewness of
+those who were Christians, and gone to heaven, during the period
+of over 250 years, and prior to the noble efforts of Raper, Sir
+Joseph Banks, Hoyland, Crabb, Borrow, and others, is fearful to
+contemplate.&nbsp; Hoyland tells us that in his day, &ldquo;not
+one Gipsy in a thousand could read or write.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Efforts put forth to exterminate these Asiatic heathens,
+babble-mongers, and bush-ranging thieves, were not confined to
+England alone.&nbsp; King Ferdinand of Spain was the first to set
+the persecuting machine at work to grind them to powder, and
+passed an edict in the year 1492 for their extermination, which
+only drove them into hiding-places, to come out, with their
+mouths watering, in greater numbers, for fresh acts of violence
+and plunder.&nbsp; At the King&rsquo;s death, the Emperor Charles
+V. persecuted them afresh, but with no success, and the
+consequence was they were left alone in Spain to pursue their
+course of robbery and crime for more than 200 years.&nbsp; In
+France an edict was passed by Francis I.&nbsp; At a Council of
+the State of Orleans an order was sent to all Governors to drive
+the Gipsies out of the country with fire and the sword.&nbsp;
+Under this edict <!-- page 152--><a name="page152"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 152</span>they still increased, and a new
+order was issued in 1612 for their extermination.&nbsp; In 1572
+they were driven from the territories of Milan and Parma, and
+earlier than this date they were driven beyond the Venetian
+jurisdiction.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It is the sound of fetters&mdash;sound of
+work<br />
+Is not so dismal.&nbsp; Hark! they pass along.<br />
+I know it is those Gipsy prisoners;<br />
+I saw them, heard their chains.&nbsp; O! terrible<br />
+To be in chains.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In Denmark they were not allowed to pass about the country
+unmolested, and every magistrate was ordered to take them into
+custody.&nbsp; A very sharp and severe order came out for their
+expulsion from Sweden in the year 1662.&nbsp; Sixty-one years
+later a second order was published by the Diet; and in 1727
+additional stringent measures were added to the foregoing
+edicts.&nbsp; Under pain of death they were excluded from the
+Netherlands by Charles V., and in 1582 by the United
+Provinces.&nbsp; Germany seems to have led the van in passing
+laws for their extermination.&nbsp; At the Augsburg Diet in 1500,
+Maximillian I. had the following edict drawn
+up:&mdash;&ldquo;Respecting those people who call themselves
+Gipsies roving up and down the country.&nbsp; By public edict to
+all ranks of the empire, according to the obligations under which
+they are bound to us and the Holy Empire, it is strictly ordered
+that in future they do not permit the said Gipsies (since there
+is authentic evidence of their being spies, scouts, and conveyers
+of intelligence, betraying the Christians to the Turks) to pass
+or remain within their territories, nor to trade or traffic,
+neither to grant them protection nor convoy, and that the said
+Gipsies do withdraw themselves before Easter next ensuing from
+the German Dominions, entirely quit them, nor suffer themselves
+to be found therein.&nbsp; As in case they should transgress
+after this time, and receive injury from any person, they shall
+have no redress, nor shall such persons be thought to have
+committed <!-- page 153--><a name="page153"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 153</span>any crime.&rdquo;&nbsp; Grellmann
+says the same affair occupied the Diet in 1530, 1544, 1548, and
+1551, and was also enforced in the stringent police regulations
+of Frankfort in 1577, and he goes on to say that with the
+exception of Hungary and Transylvania, they were similarly
+proscribed in every civilised state.&nbsp; I think it will be
+seen by the foregoing German edict that there is some foundation
+for the supposition I have brought forward earlier, viz., that
+the persecution of the Gipsies in this country was not so much on
+account of their thieving deeds, plunder, and other abominations,
+as their connection with the emissaries of the Pope of Rome, and
+in the secrecy of their movements in going from village to
+village, undermining the foundation of the State, law, and order,
+civil and religious liberty.&nbsp; The only bright spot and
+cheerful tint upon this sorrowful picture of persecution which
+took place in our own country during these dark ages was the
+appearance of the Star of Elstow, John Bunyan, the Bedfordshire
+tinker, whose life and death forcibly illustrates the last words
+of Jesus upon the Cross, &ldquo;Father, forgive them, they know
+not what they do.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Twere ill to banish hope and let the
+mind<br />
+Drift like a feather.&nbsp; I have had my share<br />
+Of what the world calls trial.&nbsp; Once a fire<br />
+Came in the darkness, when the city lay<br />
+In a still sea of slumber, stretching out<br />
+Great lurid arms which stained the firmament;<br />
+And when I woke the room was full of sparks,<br />
+And red tongues smote the lattice.&nbsp; Then a hand<br />
+Came through the sulphur, taking hold of mine,<br />
+And the next moment there were shouts of joy.<br />
+Ah! I was but a child and my first care<br />
+Was for my mother.&rdquo;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Harris</span>
+(the Cornish poet).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Towards the end of the eighteenth century it became evident
+that edicts and persecutions were not going to stamp out the
+Gipsies in this country, for instead of them decreasing in
+numbers they kept increasing; at this time there <!-- page
+154--><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+154</span>were supposed to be about 18,000 in the country.&nbsp;
+The following sad case, showing the malicious spirits of the
+Gipsies, and the relentless hand of the hangman, seemed to have
+had the effect of bringing the authorities to bay.&nbsp; They had
+begun to put their &ldquo;considering caps&rdquo; on, and were in
+a fix as to the next move, and it was time they had.&nbsp; They
+had never thought of tempering justice with mercy.&nbsp; A
+century ago, 1780, a number of young Gipsies were arrested at
+Northampton, upon what charge it does not appear.&nbsp; It should
+be noted that Northamptonshire at this time was a favourite round
+for the Gipsy fraternity as well as the adjoining counties.&nbsp;
+This, it seems, excited the feelings of the Gipsies in the
+county, and they sought to obtain the release of the young
+Gipsies who were in custody, but were not successful in their
+application to the magistrate; the consequence was&mdash;true to
+their instincts&mdash;the spirit of revenge manifested itself to
+such a degree that the Gipsies threatened to set fire to the
+town, and would, in all probability have carried it out had not a
+number of them been brought to the gallows for these
+threats.&nbsp; With this case the hands of persecution began to
+hang down, for it was evident that persecution <i>alone</i> would
+neither improve these Gipsies nor yet drive them out of the
+country.&nbsp; The tide of events now changed.&nbsp; Law, rigid,
+stern justice alone could do no good with them, and consequently
+handed them over to the minister of love and mercy.&nbsp; This
+step was a bound to the opposite extreme, and as we go along we
+shall see that the efforts put forth in this direction alone met
+with but little more success than under the former
+treatment.&nbsp; Seven years after the foregoing executions
+Grellmann&rsquo;s work upon the Gipsies appeared, which caused a
+considerable commotion among the religious communities,
+following, as it did, the universal feeling aroused in the
+welfare of the children of this country by the establishment of
+Sunday-schools throughout the length and breadth of the land to
+teach the children of the working-classes reading and writing and
+<!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+155</span>the fundamental principles of Christianity.&nbsp; After
+repeated efforts put forth by a number of Christian gentlemen,
+and the interest caused by the publication of Grellmann&rsquo;s
+book, the work of reforming the Gipsies by purely religious and
+philanthropic action began to lag behind; the result was, as in
+the case of persecution, no good was observable, and the Gipsies
+were allowed to go again on their way to destruction.&nbsp; The
+next step was one in the right direction, viz., that of trying to
+improve the Gipsies by the means of the schoolmaster; although
+humble and feeble in its plan of operation, yet if we look to the
+agency put forth and its results, the Sunday-school teacher must
+have felt encouraged in his work as he plodded on Sunday after
+Sunday.</p>
+<p>It may be said of Thomas Howard as it was said of the poor
+widow of old, he &ldquo;hath done more than them
+all.&rdquo;&nbsp; The following account of this cheerful,
+encouraging, and interesting gathering is taken from Hoyland, in
+which he says:&mdash;&ldquo;The first account he received of any
+of them was from Thomas Howard, proprietor of a glass and china
+shop, No. 50, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street.&nbsp; This person, who
+preached among the Calvinists, said that in the winter of 1811 he
+had assisted in the establishment of a Sunday-school in Windwill
+Street, Acre Lane, near Clapham.&nbsp; It was under the patronage
+of a single gentlewoman, of the name of Wilkinson, and
+principally intended for the neglected and forlorn children of
+brick-makers and the most abject poor.&rdquo;&nbsp; At the
+present day Gipsies generally locate in the neighbourhood of
+brick-yards and low, swampy marshes, or by the side of rivers or
+canals.&nbsp; It was begun on a small scale, but increased till
+the number of scholars amounted to forty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;During the winter a family of Gipsies, of the name of
+Cooper, obtained lodgings at a house opposite the school.&nbsp;
+Trinity Cooper, a daughter of the Gipsy family, who was about
+thirteen years of age, applied to be instructed at the school;
+but in consequence of the obloquy affixed to that description of
+persons she was repeatedly refused.&nbsp; She <!-- page 156--><a
+name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+156</span>nevertheless persevered in her importunity, till she
+obtained admission for herself and two of her brothers.&nbsp;
+Thomas Howard says, surrounded as he was by ragged children,
+without shoes and stockings, the first lesson he taught them was
+silence and submission.&nbsp; They acquired habits of
+subordination and became tractable and docile; and of all his
+scholars there were not any more attentive and affectionate than
+these; and when the Gipsies broke up in the spring, to make their
+usual excursions, the children expressed much regret at leaving
+school.&nbsp; This account was confirmed by Thomas Jackson, of
+Brixton Row, minister of Stockwell Chapel, who said:&mdash;Since
+the above experiment, several Gipsies had been admitted to a
+Sabbath-school under the direction of his congregation.&nbsp; At
+their introduction, he compared them to birds when first put into
+the cage, which flew against the sides of it, having no idea of
+restraint; but by a steady, even care over them, and the
+influence of the example of other children, they soon become
+settled and fell into their ranks.&rdquo;&nbsp; The next step
+taken to let daylight upon the Gipsy and his dark doings in the
+dark ages was by means of letters to the Press, and what
+surprises me is that this step, the most important of all, was
+not taken before.</p>
+<p>In a letter addressed to the <i>Christian Observer</i>, vol.
+vii., p. 91, in the year about 1809, &ldquo;Nil&rdquo;
+writes:&mdash;&ldquo;As the divine spirit of Christianity deems
+no object, however uncouth or insignificant, beneath her notice,
+I venture to apply to you on behalf of a race, the outcasts of
+society, of whose pitiable condition, among the many forms of
+human misery which have engaged your efforts, I do not recollect
+to have seen any notice in the pages of your excellent
+miscellany.&nbsp; I allude to the deplorable state of the
+Gipsies, on whose behalf I beg leave to solicit your good offices
+with the public.&nbsp; Lying at our very doors, they seem to have
+a peculiar claim on our compassion.&nbsp; In the midst of a
+highly refined state of society, they are but little removed from
+savage life.&nbsp; In this happy country, where the light of
+Christianity shines <!-- page 157--><a name="page157"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 157</span>with its purest lustre, they are
+still strangers to its cheering influence.&nbsp; I have not heard
+even of any efforts which have been made either by individuals or
+societies for their improvement.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Fraternicus,&rdquo; writing to the same Journal, vol.
+vii., and in the same year, says:&mdash;&ldquo;It is painful to
+reflect how many thousands of these unhappy creatures have, since
+the light of Christianity has shone on this island, gone into
+eternity ignorant of the ways of salvation;&rdquo; and goes on to
+say that, &ldquo;there is an awful responsibility attached to
+this neglect,&rdquo; and recommends the appointment of
+missionaries to the work; and finishes his appeal as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;Christians of various denominations,
+perhaps may, through the divine providence, be the means of
+exciting effectual attention to the spiritual wants of this
+deplorable set of beings; and the same benevolence which induced
+you to exert your talents and influence on behalf of the
+oppressed negroes may again be successfully employed in
+ameliorating the condition of a numerous class of our
+fellow-creatures.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;H.&rdquo; wrote to the
+<i>Christian Observer</i>, and said he hoped &ldquo;to see the
+day when the nation, which has at length done justice to the poor
+negroes, will be equally zealous to do their duty in this
+instance,&rdquo; and he offered to subscribe &ldquo;twenty pounds
+per annum towards so good an object.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Minimus,&rdquo; another writer to the same paper, with
+reference to missionary enterprise, says:&mdash;&ldquo;The soil
+which it is proposed to cultivate is remarkably barren and
+unpropitious; of course, a plentiful harvest must not be soon
+expected;&rdquo; and finishes his letter by saying, &ldquo;Let us
+arise and build; let us begin; there is no fear of progress and
+help.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;H.,&rdquo; a clergyman, writes again
+and says:&mdash;&ldquo;Surely, when our charity is flowing in so
+wide a channel, conveying the blessings of the Gospel to the most
+distant quarters of the globe, we shall not hesitate to water
+this one barren and neglected field in our own land.&nbsp; My
+attention was drawn to the state of this miserable class of human
+beings by the letter of &lsquo;Fraternicus,&rsquo; and looking
+upon it as a reproach to our country;&rdquo; and ends his letter
+<!-- page 158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+158</span>with a short prayer, as follows: &ldquo;It is my
+earnest prayer to God that this may not be one of these projects
+which are only talked of and never begun; but that it may tend to
+the glory of His name and to the bringing back of these poor lost
+sheep to the fold of their Redeemer.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;J.
+P.&rdquo; writes to the same Journal, April 28, 1810, in which he
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;Circumstances lead to think that were
+encouragement given to them the Gipsies would be inclined to live
+in towns and villages like other people; and would in another
+generation become civilised, and with the pains which are now
+taken to educate the poor, and to diffuse the Scriptures and the
+knowledge of Christ, would become a part of the regular
+fold.&nbsp; It would require much patient continuance in well
+doing in those who attempted it, and they must be prepared,
+perhaps, to meet with some untowardness and much
+disappointment.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Fraternicus&rdquo; sums up
+the correspondence by suggesting a plan of taking the school to
+the Gipsies instead of taking the Gipsies to the
+schools:&mdash;&ldquo;If the compulsory education of the Gipsies
+had taken place a century ago, and their tents brought under some
+sort of sanitary inspection, what a change by this time would
+have taken place in their habits,&rdquo; &amp;c.; and he further
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;By degrees they might be brought to attend
+divine worship; and if in the parish of a pious clergyman he
+would probably embrace the opportunity of teaching them.&nbsp;
+Much might be done by a pious schoolmaster and schoolmistress, by
+whom the girls might be taught different kinds of work, knitting,
+sewing, &amp;c.&nbsp; Should these suggestions be deemed worthy
+of your insertion, they might, perhaps, awaken the attention of
+some benevolent persons, whose superior talents and experience in
+the ways of beneficence would enable them to perfect and carry
+into execution a plan for the effectual benefit of these unhappy
+portioners of our kind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Junius,&rdquo; in the <i>Northampton Mercury</i>, under
+date June 27th, 1814, writes:&mdash;&ldquo;When we consider the
+immense sums raised for every probable means of doing good which
+have <!-- page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 159</span>hitherto been made public, we cannot
+doubt if a proper method should be proposed for the relief and
+ameliorating the state of these people it would meet with
+deserved encouragement.&nbsp; Suppose that legislature should
+think this not unworthy its notice, and as a part of the great
+family they ought not to be overlooked.&rdquo;&nbsp; Another
+correspondent to the same Journal, &ldquo;A Friend of
+Religion,&rdquo; writes under date July 21st, 1815, urging the
+necessity of some means being adopted for their improvement, and
+remarks as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;Thousands of our
+fellow-creatures would be raised from depravity and wretchedness
+to a state of comfort; the private property of individuals be
+much more secure, and the public materially benefited.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Instead of putting into practice measures for their
+improvement, and the State taking hold of them by the hand as
+children belonging to us, and with us, and for whom our first
+care ought to have been, we have said in anger&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&lsquo;Heathen
+dog!<br />
+Begone, begone! you shall have nothing here.&rsquo;<br />
+The Indian turned; then facing Collingrew,<br />
+In accents low and musical, he said:<br />
+&lsquo;But I am very hungry; it is long<br />
+Since I have eaten.&nbsp; Only give me a crust,<br />
+A bone, to cheer me on my weary way.&rsquo;<br />
+Then answered he, with fury and a frown:<br />
+&lsquo;Go!&nbsp; Get you gone! you red-skinned heathen hound!<br
+/>
+I&rsquo;ve nothing for you.&nbsp; Get you gone, I
+say!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Harris</span>,
+&ldquo;Wayside Pictures.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>During the summer of 1814, Mr. John Hoyland, of Sheffield, set
+to work in earnest to try to improve the condition of the
+Gipsies, and for that purpose he visited, in conjuction with Mr.
+Allen, solicitor at Higham Ferners, many parts of
+Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties; and he also sent out
+a circular to most of the sheriffs in England with a number of
+questions upon it relating to their numbers, condition, &amp;c.,
+and the following are a few of the answers sent in
+reply:&mdash;1. All Gipsies suppose the <!-- page 160--><a
+name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>first of
+them came from Egypt.&nbsp; 2. They cannot form any idea of the
+number in England.&nbsp; 5. The more common names are Smith,
+Cooper, Draper, Taylor, Boswell, Lee, Lovell, Leversedge, Allen,
+Mansfield, Glover, Williams, Carew, Martin, Stanley, Buckley,
+Plunkett, and Corrie.&nbsp; 6 and 7. The gangs in different towns
+have not any connection or organisation.&nbsp; 8. In the county
+of Herts it is computed there may be sixty families, having many
+children.&nbsp; Whether they are quite so numerous in
+Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire the answers
+are not sufficiently definite to determine.&nbsp; In
+Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and
+Dorsetshire, greater numbers are calculated upon.&nbsp; 9. More
+than half their numbers follow no business; others are dealers in
+horses and asses, &amp;c., &amp;c.&nbsp; 10. Children are brought
+up in the habits of their parents, particular to music and
+dancing, and are of dissolute conduct.&nbsp; 11. The women mostly
+carry baskets with trinkets and small wares, and tell
+fortunes.&nbsp; 13. In most counties there are particular
+situations to which they are partial.&nbsp; 15, 16, and 17. Do
+not know of any person that can write the language, or of any
+written specimen of it.&nbsp; 19. Those who profess any religion
+represent it to be that of the country in which they reside; but
+their description of it seldom goes beyond repeating the
+Lord&rsquo;s Prayer, and only a few of them are capable of
+that.&nbsp; 20. They marry, for the most part, by pledging to
+each other, without any ceremony.&nbsp; 21. They do not teach
+their children religion.&nbsp; 22 and 23. Not <i>one in a
+thousand can read</i>.&nbsp; Most of these answers were confirmed
+by Riley Smith, who, during many years, was accounted the chief
+of the Gipsies in Northamptonshire.&nbsp; Mr. John Forster and
+Mr. William Carrington, respectable merchants of Biggleswade, and
+who knew Riley Smith well, corroborated his statements.&nbsp;
+After Hoyland had published his book no one stepped into the
+breach, with flag in hand, to take up the cry; and for several
+years&mdash;except the efforts of a clergyman here and
+there&mdash;the interest in the cause of the <!-- page 161--><a
+name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>Gipsies
+dwindled down, and became gradually and miserably less, and the
+consequence was the Gipsies have not improved an iota during the
+three centuries they have been in our midst.&nbsp; As they were,
+so they are, and likely to remain unless brought under State
+control.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;On
+the winds<br />
+A voice came murmuring, &lsquo;We must work and wait&rsquo;;<br
+/>
+And every echo in the far-off fen<br />
+Took up the utterance: &lsquo;We must work and wait.&rsquo;<br />
+Her spirit felt it, &lsquo;We must work and
+wait.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Harris</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>No one heeded the warning.&nbsp; No one listened to the cries
+of the poor Gipsy children as they glided into eternity.&nbsp; No
+one put out their hands to save them as they kept disappearing
+from the gaze of the bystanders, among whom were artificial
+Christians, statesmen, and philanthropists.&nbsp; All was as
+still as death, and the poor black wretches passed away.</p>
+<p>Whether His Majesty George III. had ever read
+Grellmann&rsquo;s or Hoyland&rsquo;s works on Gipsies has not
+been shown.&nbsp; The following interesting account will show
+that royal personages are not deaf to the cries of suffering
+humanity, be it in a Gipsy&rsquo;s wigwam, a cottage, or
+palace.&nbsp; It is taken from a missionary magazine for June,
+1823, and in all probability the circumstance took place not many
+years prior to this date, and is as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;A king
+of England of happy memory, who loved his people and his God
+better than kings in general are wont to do, occasionally took
+the exercise of hunting.&nbsp; Being out one day for this
+purpose, the chase lay through the shrubs of the forest.&nbsp;
+The stag had been hard run; and, to escape the dogs, had crossed
+the river in a deep part.&nbsp; As the dogs could not be brought
+to follow, it became necessary, in order to come up with it, to
+make a circuitous route along the banks of the river, through
+some thick and troublesome underwood.&nbsp; The roughness of <!--
+page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+162</span>the ground, the long grass and frequent thickets, gave
+opportunity for the sportsmen to separate from each other, each
+one endeavouring to make the best and speediest route he
+could.&nbsp; Before they had reached the end of the forest the
+king&rsquo;s horse manifested signs of fatigue and uneasiness, so
+much so that his Majesty resolved upon yielding the pleasures of
+the chase to those of compassion for his horse.&nbsp; With this
+view he turned down the first avenue in the forest and determined
+on riding gently to the oaks, there to wait for some of his
+attendants.&nbsp; His Majesty had only proceeded a few yards
+when, instead of the cry of the hounds, he fancied he heard the
+cry of human distress.&nbsp; As he rode forward he heard it more
+distinctly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, my mother! my mother!&nbsp; God pity
+and bless my poor mother!&rsquo;&nbsp; The curiosity and kindness
+of the king led him instantly to the spot.&nbsp; It was a little
+green plot on one side of the forest, where was spread on the
+grass, under a branching oak, a little pallet, half covered with
+a kind of tent, and a basket or two, with some packs, lay on the
+ground at a few paces distant from the tent.&nbsp; Near to the
+root of the tree he observed a little swarthy girl, about eight
+years of age, on her knees, praying, while her little black eyes
+ran down with tears.&nbsp; Distress of any kind was always
+relieved by his Majesty, for he had a heart which melted at
+&lsquo;human woe&rsquo;; nor was it unaffected on this
+occasion.&nbsp; And now he inquired, &lsquo;What, my child, is
+the cause of your weeping?&nbsp; For what do you
+pray?&rsquo;&nbsp; The little creature at first started, then
+rose from her knees, and pointing to the tent, said, &lsquo;Oh,
+sir! my dying mother!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;What?&rsquo; said his
+Majesty, dismounting, and fastening his horse up to the branches
+of the oak, &lsquo;what, my child? tell me all about
+it.&rsquo;&nbsp; The little creature now led the king to the
+tent; there lay, partly covered, a middle-aged female Gipsy in
+the last stages of a decline, and in the last moments of
+life.&nbsp; She turned her dying eyes expressively to the royal
+visitor, then looked up to heaven; but not a word did she utter;
+the organs of <!-- page 163--><a name="page163"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 163</span>speech had ceased their office!
+<i>the silver cord was loosed</i>, <i>and the wheel broken at the
+cistern</i>.&nbsp; The little girl then wept aloud, and, stooping
+down, wiped the dying sweat from her mother&rsquo;s face.&nbsp;
+The king, much affected, asked the child her name, and of her
+family; and how long her mother had been ill.&nbsp; Just at that
+moment another Gipsy girl, much older, came, out of breath, to
+the spot.&nbsp; She had been at the town of W---, and had brought
+some medicine for her dying mother.&nbsp; Observing a stranger,
+she modestly curtsied, and, hastening to her mother, knelt down
+by her side, kissed her pallid lips, and burst into tears.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What, my dear child,&rsquo; said his Majesty, &lsquo;can
+be done for you?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, sir!&rsquo; she replied,
+&lsquo;my dying mother wanted a religious person to teach her and
+to pray with her before she died.&nbsp; I ran all the way before
+it was light this morning to W---, and asked for a minister,
+<i>but no one could I get to come with me to pray with my dear
+mother</i>!&rsquo;&nbsp; The dying woman seemed sensible of what
+her daughter was saying, and her countenance was much
+agitated.&nbsp; The air was again rent with the cries of the
+distressed daughters.&nbsp; The king, full of kindness, instantly
+endeavoured to comfort them.&nbsp; He said, &lsquo;I am a
+minister, and God has sent me to instruct and comfort your
+mother.&rsquo;&nbsp; He then sat down on a pack by the side of
+the pallet, and, taking the hand of the dying Gipsy, discoursed
+on the demerit of sin and the nature of redemption.&nbsp; He then
+pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour.&nbsp; While
+the king was doing this the poor creature seemed to gather
+consolation and hope; her eyes sparkled with brightness, and her
+countenance became animated.&nbsp; She looked up; she smiled; but
+it was the last smile; it was the glimmering of expiring
+nature.&nbsp; As the expression of peace, however, remained
+strong in her countenance, it was not till some little time had
+elapsed that they perceived the struggling spirit had left
+mortality.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was at this moment that some of his Majesty&rsquo;s
+attendants, who had missed him at the chase, and who had <!--
+page 164--><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+164</span>been riding through the forest in search of him, rode
+up, and found the king comforting the afflicted Gipsies.&nbsp; It
+was an affecting sight, and worthy of everlasting record in the
+annals of kings.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;His Majesty now rose up, put some gold into the hands
+of the afflicted girls, promised them his protection, and bade
+them look to heaven.&nbsp; He then wiped the tears from his eyes
+and mounted his horse.&nbsp; His attendants, greatly affected,
+stood in silent admiration.&nbsp; Lord L--- was now going to
+speak, when his Majesty, turning to the Gipsies, and pointing to
+the breathless corpse, and to the weeping girls, said, with
+strong emotion, &lsquo;Who, my lord, who, thinkest thou, was
+neighbour unto these?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Hark!&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you hear the
+rumbling of its wheels?<br />
+Nearer it comes and nearer!&nbsp; Oh, what light!<br />
+The tent is full; &rsquo;tis glory everywhere!<br />
+Dear Jesus, I am coming!&nbsp; Then she fell&mdash;<br />
+As falls a meteor when the skies are clear.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>After this solemn but interesting event nothing further seems
+to have been done by either Christian or philanthropist towards
+wiping out this national disgrace, and the Gipsies were left to
+follow the bent of their evil propensities for several years,
+till Mr. Crabb&rsquo;s reading of Hoyland and witnessing the
+sentence of death passed upon a Gipsy at Winchester, in 1827, for
+horse-stealing.</p>
+<p>Mr. Crabb happened to enter just as the judge was passing
+sentence of death on two unhappy men.&nbsp; To one he held out
+the hope of mercy; but to the other, a poor Gipsy, who was
+convicted of horse-stealing, he said, no hope could be
+given.&nbsp; The young man, for he was but a youth, immediately
+fell on his knees, and with uplifted hands and eyes, apparently
+unconscious of any persons being present but the judge and
+himself, addressed him as follows: &ldquo;Oh, my Lord, save my
+life!&rdquo;&nbsp; The judge replied, &ldquo;No; you can have no
+mercy in this world: I and my brother judges <!-- page 165--><a
+name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>have come
+to the determination to execute horse-stealers, especially
+Gipsies, because of the increase of the crime.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+suppliant, still on his knees, entreated&mdash;&ldquo;Do, my Lord
+Judge, save my life! do, for God&rsquo;s sake, for my
+wife&rsquo;s sake, for my baby&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the judge, &ldquo;I cannot; you should
+have thought of your wife and children before.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+then ordered him to be taken away, and the poor fellow was rudely
+dragged from his earthly judge.&nbsp; It is hoped, as a penitent
+sinner, he obtained the more needful mercy of God, through the
+abounding grace of Christ.&nbsp; After this scene Mr. Crabb could
+not remain in court.&nbsp; As he returned he found the mournful
+intelligence had been communicated to some Gipsies who had been
+waiting without, anxious to learn the fate of their
+companion.&nbsp; They seemed distracted.</p>
+<p>On the outside of the court, seated on the ground, appeared an
+old woman and a very young one, and with them two children, the
+eldest three years and the other an infant but fourteen days
+old.&nbsp; The former sat by its mother&rsquo;s side, alike
+unconscious of her bitter agonies and of her father&rsquo;s
+despair.&nbsp; The old woman held the infant tenderly in her
+arms, and endeavoured to comfort its weeping mother, soon to be a
+widow under circumstances the most melancholy.&nbsp; &ldquo;My
+dear, don&rsquo;t cry,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;remember you have
+this dear little baby.&rdquo;&nbsp; Impelled by the sympathies of
+pity and a sense of duty, Mr. Crabb spoke to them on the evil of
+sin, and expressed his hope that the melancholy event would prove
+a warning to them, and to all their people.&nbsp; The poor man
+was executed about a fortnight after his condemnation.</p>
+<p>Mr. Crabb being full of fire and zeal, set to work in right
+good earnest, and succeeded in forming a committee at Southampton
+to bring about a reformation among the Gipsies.&nbsp; He also
+enlisted the sympathy of other earnest Christians in the work,
+and for a time, while the sun shone, received encouraging signs
+of success, in fact, according to his little work published in
+1831, his labours were attended with blessed results among the
+adult portion of the Gipsies.&nbsp; <!-- page 166--><a
+name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>Owing to
+the wandering habits of the Gipsies, discouragements, and his own
+death, the work, so far as any organisation was concerned, came
+to an end.&nbsp; No Elisha came forward to catch his mantle, the
+consequence was the Gipsies were left again to work out their own
+destruction according to their own inclinations and tastes, as
+they deemed best, plainly showing that voluntary efforts are very
+little better than a shadow, vanishing smoke, and spent steam, to
+illuminate, elevate, warm, cheer, and encourage the wandering,
+dark-eyed vagabonds roving about in our midst into paths of
+usefulness, honesty, and sobriety.</p>
+<p>Thus far in this part I have feebly endeavoured to show that
+rigid, stern, inflexible law and justice on the one hand, and
+meek, quiet, mild, human love and mercy on the other hand, have
+separately failed in the object the promoters had in view.&nbsp;
+Justice tried to exterminate the Gipsy; mercy tried to win them
+over.&nbsp; Of the two processes I would much prefer that of
+mercy.&nbsp; It is more pleasant to human nature to be under its
+influence, and more in the character of an Englishman to deal out
+mercy.&nbsp; The next efforts put forth to reform these renegades
+was by means of fiction, romance, and poetry.&nbsp; Some writers,
+in their praiseworthy endeavours to make up a medicine to improve
+the condition of the Gipsies, have neutralised its effects by
+adding too much honey and spice to it.&nbsp; Others, who have
+mistaken the emaciated condition of the Gipsy, have been dosing
+him with cordials entirely, to such a degree, that
+he&mdash;Romany <i>chal</i>&mdash;imagines he is right in
+everything he says and does, and he ought to have perfect liberty
+to go anywhere or do anything.&nbsp; Some have attempted to paint
+him white, and in doing so have worked up the blackness from
+underneath, and presented to us a character which excites a
+feeling in our notions&mdash;a kind of go-between, akin to
+sympathy and disgust.&nbsp; Not a few have thrown round the Gipsy
+an enchanting, bewitching halo, which an inspection has proved
+nothing less than a delusion and a snare.&nbsp; Others have tried
+to improve this <!-- page 167--><a name="page167"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 167</span>field of thistles and sour docks by
+throwing a handful of daisy seeds among them.&nbsp; It requires
+something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and
+bring him to land.&nbsp; Scents and perfumes in a death-bed
+chamber only last for a short time.&nbsp; A bottle of rose-water
+thrown into a room where decomposition is at work upon a body
+will not restore life.&nbsp; Scattering flowers upon a cesspool
+of iniquity will not purify it.&nbsp; A fictitious rope composed
+of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy
+children.&nbsp; To put artificially-coloured feathers upon the
+head of a Gipsy child dressed in rags and shreds, with his body
+literally teeming with vermin and filth, will not make him
+presentable at court or a fit subject for a drawing-room.&nbsp;
+To dress the Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy with the
+violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the
+repulsive aspect of his features.&nbsp; The first storm of
+persecution brings him out again in his true colour.&nbsp; The
+forked light of imagination thrown across the heavens on a dark
+night is not the best to reveal the character of a Gipsy and set
+him upon the highways for usefulness and heaven.&nbsp; The
+dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various
+characters in his endeavour to improve his condition.&nbsp; After
+the fine colours have been doffed, music finished, applause
+ceased, curtain dropped, and scene ended, he has been a black,
+swarthy, idle, thieving, lying, blackguard of a Gipsy
+still.&nbsp; Applause, fine colours, and dazzling lights have not
+altered his nature.&nbsp; Bad he is, and bad he will remain,
+unless we follow out the advice of the good old book,
+&ldquo;Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is
+old he will not depart from it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Would to God the voice of the little Gipsy girl would begin to
+ring in our ears, when she spoke with finger pointed and tears in
+her eyes:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There is a cabin half-way down the
+cliff,<br />
+You see it from this arch-stone; there we live,<br />
+<!-- page 168--><a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+168</span>And there you&rsquo;ll find my mother.&nbsp; Poverty<br
+/>
+Weeps on the woven rushes, and long grass<br />
+Rent from the hollows is our only bed.<br />
+I have no father here; he ran away;<br />
+Perhaps he&rsquo;s dead, perhaps he&rsquo;s living yet,<br />
+And may come back again and kiss his child;<br />
+For every day, and morn, and even star,<br />
+I pray for him with face upturned to heaven,<br />
+&lsquo;O blessed Saviour, send my father home!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The word &ldquo;Gipsy&rdquo; seems to have a magic thread
+running through it, beginning at the tip end of &ldquo;G&rdquo;
+and ending with the tail end of &ldquo;y.&rdquo;&nbsp; Geese have
+tried to gobble it, ducks swallow it, hens scratched after it,
+peacocks pecked it, dandy cocks crowed over it, foxes have hid
+it, dogs have fought for it, cats have sworn and spit over it,
+pigs have tried to gulp it as the daintiest morsel, parrots have
+chatted about it, hawks, eagles, jackdaws, magpies, ravens, and
+crows have tried to carry it away as a precious jewel, and in the
+end all have put it down as a thing they could neither carry nor
+swallow; and after all, when it has been stripped of its dowdy
+colours, what has it been?&nbsp; Only a &ldquo;scamp,&rdquo; in
+many cases, reared and fostered among thieves, pickpockets, and
+blackguards, in our back slums and sink gutters.&nbsp; Strip the
+20,000 men, women, and children of the word &ldquo;Gipsy,&rdquo;
+moving about our country under the artificial and unreal
+association connected with Gipsy life, so-called, of the
+&ldquo;red cloaks,&rdquo; &ldquo;silver buttons,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;pretty little feet,&rdquo; &ldquo;small hands,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;bewitching eyes,&rdquo; &ldquo;long black hair,&rdquo; in
+nine cases out of ten in name only, and you, at a glance, see the
+class of people you have been neglecting, consequently sending to
+ruin and misery through fear on the one hand and lavishing smiles
+on the other.</p>
+<p>In all ages there have been people silly enough to be led away
+by sights, sounds, colours, and unrealities, to follow a course
+of life for which they are not suited, either by education,
+position, or tastes.&nbsp; No one acts the part of a butterfly
+among school-boys better than the black-eyed Gipsy girl has <!--
+page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+169</span>done among &ldquo;fast-goers,&rdquo; swells, and
+fops.&nbsp; In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she has trotted
+them out to perfection and then left them in the lurch, and
+those, when they have come to their senses, and had their eyes
+opened to the stern facts of a Gipsy&rsquo;s life, have said to
+themselves, &ldquo;What fools we have been, to be sure,&rdquo;
+and they would have given any amount to have undone the
+past.&nbsp; The praise, flattery, and looks bestowed upon the
+&ldquo;bewitching deceivers,&rdquo; when they have been labouring
+under the sense of infatuation and fascination instead of reason,
+has made them in the presence of friends hang down their heads
+like a willow, and to escape, if possible, the company of their
+&ldquo;old chums&rdquo; by all sorts of man&oelig;uvres.&nbsp;
+Hubert Petalengro&mdash;a gentleman, and a rich member of a long
+family&mdash;conceived the idea, after falling madly in love with
+a dark-eyed beauty, so-called, of turning Gipsy and tasting for
+himself&mdash;not in fiction and romance&mdash;the charms of tent
+life, as he thought, in reality passing through the
+&ldquo;first,&rdquo; &ldquo;second,&rdquo; and &ldquo;third
+degrees.&rdquo;&nbsp; At first, it was ideal and fascinating
+enough in all conscience; it was a pity Brother Petalengro did
+not have a foretaste of it by spending a month in a Gipsy&rsquo;s
+tent in the depth of winter, with no balance at his
+banker&rsquo;s, and compelled to wear Gipsy clothing, and make
+pegs and skewers for his Sunday broth; gather sticks for the
+fire, and sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and
+peeping through the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his
+back, surrounded by Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes,
+cursing each other under the maddening influence of brandy and
+disappointment.&nbsp; To make himself and his damsel comfortable
+on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold, flask with brandy,
+buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of foxes&rsquo;
+heads&mdash;and I suppose tails too&mdash;waterproof covering for
+the tent, and waterproof sheets and a number of blankets to lay
+on the damp grass to prevent their tender bodies being overtaken
+with rheumatics, and he also lays in a stock of potted meats and
+other dainties; makes <!-- page 170--><a name="page170"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 170</span>all &ldquo;square&rdquo; with
+Esmeralda and her two brothers and the donkeys; takes first and
+second-class tickets for the whole of them to Hull&mdash;the
+Balaams excepted (it is not on record that they spoke to him on
+his journey); provides Esmeralda with dresses and
+petticoats&mdash;not too long to hide her pretty ankles, red
+stockings, and her lovely little foot&mdash;gold and diamond
+rings, violin, tambourine, the guitar, Wellington boots, and
+starts upon his trip to Norway in the midst of summer
+beauty.&nbsp; Many times he must have said to himself, &ldquo;Oh!
+how delightful.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;As we journeyed onward, how
+fragrant the wild flowers&mdash;those wild flowers can never be
+forgotten.&nbsp; Gipsies like flowers, it is part of their
+nature.&nbsp; Esmeralda would pluck them, and forming a charming
+bouquet, interspersed with beautiful wild roses, her first
+thoughts are to pin them in the button-hole of the Romany Rye
+(Gipsy gentleman).&nbsp; As we journeyed quietly through the
+forest, how delightful its scenes.&nbsp; Free from all care, we
+enjoy the anticipation of a long and pleasant ramble in
+Norway&rsquo;s happy land.&nbsp; We felt contented with all
+things, and thankful that we should be so permitted to roam with
+our tents and wild children of nature in keeping the solitudes we
+sought.&nbsp; The rain had soon ceased, tinkle, tinkle went the
+hawk-bells on the collar of our Bura Rawnee as she led the way
+along the romantic Norwegian road.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p170b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Respectable Gipsy and his Family &ldquo;on the Road&rdquo;"
+title=
+"A Respectable Gipsy and his Family &ldquo;on the Road&rdquo;"
+src="images/p170s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Give the snakes and toads a
+twist,<br />
+And banish them for ever,&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>sang Zachariah, ever and anon giving similar wild
+snatches.&nbsp; Then Esmeralda would rocker about being the wife
+of the Romany Rye (Gipsy gentleman) and as she proudly paced
+along in her heavy boots, she pictured in imagery the pleasant
+life she should lead as her Romany Rye&rsquo;s joovel, monshi, or
+somi.&nbsp; She was full of fun, yet there was nothing in her
+fanciful delineations which could offend us.&nbsp; They were but
+the foam of a crested wave, soon dissipated in the air.&nbsp;
+They were the evanescent creations of a lively, open-hearted
+girl&mdash;<!-- page 171--><a name="page171"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 171</span>wild notes trilled by the bird of
+the forest.&nbsp; We came again into the open valley.&nbsp; Down
+a meadow gushed a small streamlet which splashed from a wooden
+spout on to the roadside.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The spot where we
+pitched our tents was near a sort of small natural terrace, at
+the summit of a steep slope above the road, backed by a mossy
+bank, shaded by brushwood and skirting the dense foliage of the
+dark forest of pine and fir, above our camp.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We gave two of the peasants some brandy and
+tobacco.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Then all our visitors left, except
+four interesting young peasant girls, who still
+lingered.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;They had all pleasant
+voices.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;We listened to them with much
+pleasure; there was so much sweetness and feeling in their
+melody.&nbsp; Zachariah made up for his brother&rsquo;s
+timidity.&nbsp; Full of fun, what dreadful faces the young Gipsy
+would pull, they were absolutely frightful; then he would twist
+and turn his body into all sorts of serpentine contortions.&nbsp;
+If spoken to he would suddenly, with a hop, skip, and a jump
+alight in his tent as if he had tumbled from the sky, and,
+sitting bolt upright, make a hideous face till his mouth nearly
+stretched from ear to ear, while his dark eyes sparkled with wild
+excitement, he would sing&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Dawdy!&nbsp; Dawdy! dit a kei<br />
+Rockerony, fake your bosh!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;At one time a woman brought an exceedingly fat child
+for us to look at, and she wanted Esmeralda to suckle it, which
+was, of course, hastily declined.&nbsp; We began to ask ourselves
+if this was forest seclusion.&nbsp; Still our visitors were kind,
+good-humoured people, and some drank our brandy, and some smoked
+our English tobacco.&nbsp; After our tea, at five o&rsquo;clock,
+we had a pleasant stroll.&nbsp; Once more we were with
+Nature.&nbsp; There we lingered till the scenes round us, in
+their vivid beauty, seemed graven deep in our thought.&nbsp; How
+graphic are the lines of Moore:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The turf shall be my fragrant
+shrine,<br />
+My temple, Lord, that arch of Thine,<br />
+My censor&rsquo;s breath the mountain airs,<br />
+And silent thoughts my only prayers.</p>
+<p><!-- page 172--><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+172</span>&ldquo;&lsquo;My choir shall be the moonlight waves,<br
+/>
+When murm&rsquo;ring homeward to their caves,<br />
+Or when the stillness of the sea<br />
+Even more of music breathes of Thee!&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>How appropriate were the words of the great poet to our
+feelings.&nbsp; We went and sat down.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;As we
+were seated by our camp fire, a tall, old man, looking round our
+tents, came and stood contemplating us at our tea.&nbsp; He
+looked as if he thought we were enjoying a life of
+happiness.&nbsp; Nor was he wrong.&nbsp; He viewed us with a
+pleased and kindly expression, as he seemed half lost in
+contemplation.&nbsp; We sent for the flask of brandy.&nbsp;
+Returning to our tents we put on our Napoleon boots and made some
+additions to our toilette.&rdquo;&nbsp; Of course, kind Mr.
+Petalengro would assist lovely Esmeralda with hers.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Whilst we were engaged some women came to our tents.&nbsp;
+The curiosity of the sex was exemplified, for they were dying to
+look behind the tent partition which screened us from
+observation.&nbsp; We did not know what they expected to see;
+one, bolder than the rest, could not resist the desire to look
+behind the scenes, and hastily drew back and dropped the curtain,
+when we said rather sharply, &lsquo;Nei! nei!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Esmeralda shortly afterwards appeared in her blue dress and
+silver buttons.&nbsp; Then we all seated ourselves on a mossy
+bank, on the side of the terrace, with a charming view across the
+valley of the Logan.&nbsp; At eight o&rsquo;clock the music
+commenced.&nbsp; The sun shone beautifully, and the mosquitoes
+and midges bit right and left with hungry determination.&nbsp; We
+sat in a line on the soft mossy turf of the grassy slope,
+sheltered by foliage.&nbsp; Esmeralda and Noah with their
+tambourines, myself with the castanets, and Zachariah with his
+violin.&nbsp; Some peasant women and girls came up after we had
+played a short time.&nbsp; It was a curious scene.&nbsp; Our
+tents were pleasantly situated on an open patch of green sward,
+surrounded by border thickets, near the sunny bank and the small
+flat terrace.&nbsp; The rising hills and rugged ravines on the
+other side of the valley all gave a singular and <!-- page
+173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+173</span>romantic beauty to the lovely view.&nbsp; Although our
+Gipsies played with much spirit until nine o&rsquo;clock, none of
+the peasants would dance.&nbsp; At nine o&rsquo;clock our music
+ceased, and we all retired to our tents with the intention of
+going to bed.&nbsp; When we were going into our tents, a peasant
+and several others with him, who had just arrived, asked us to
+play again.&nbsp; At length, observing several peasant girls were
+much disappointed, we decided to play once more.&nbsp; It was
+past nine o&rsquo;clock when we again took up our position on the
+mossy bank; so we danced, and the peasant girls, until nearly ten
+o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; Once we nearly whirled ourself and Esmeralda
+over the slope into the road below.&nbsp; Esmeralda&rsquo;s dark
+eyes flashed fire and sparkled with merriment and
+witchery.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The bacon and fish at dinner were excellent; we hardly
+knew which was best.&nbsp; A peasant boy brought us a bundle of
+sticks for our fire.&nbsp; The sun became exceedingly hot.&nbsp;
+Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade near our
+tents.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Noah stood in the shade blacking his
+boots, and observed to Esmeralda, &lsquo;I shall not help my wife
+as Mr. Petalengro does you.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said
+Esmeralda, &lsquo;what is a wife for?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;For!&rsquo; retorted Noah, sharply, giving his boot an
+extra brush, &lsquo;why, to wait upon her husband.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said Esmeralda, &lsquo;is a husband
+for?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;What&rsquo;s a husband for!&rsquo;
+exclaimed Noah, with a look of profound pity for his
+sister&rsquo;s ignorance, &lsquo;why, to eat and drink, and look
+on.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Petalengro goes on to say: &ldquo;It
+would seem to us that the more rude energy a man has in his
+composition the more a woman will be made to take her position as
+helpmate.&nbsp; It is always a mark of great civilisation and the
+effeminacy of a people when women obtain the undue mastery of
+men.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he farther goes on to say: &ldquo;We were
+just having a romp with Esmeralda and her two brothers as we were
+packing up our things, and a merry laugh, when some men appeared
+at the fence near our camping-ground.&nbsp; We little
+think,&rdquo; says Mr. Petalengro, &ldquo;how much we can do in
+this world to lighten a lonely wayfarer&rsquo;s heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p174b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Bachelor Gipsy&rsquo;s Bedroom"
+title=
+"A Bachelor Gipsy&rsquo;s Bedroom"
+src="images/p174s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><!-- page 174--><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+174</span>Esmeralda and Mr. Petalengro tell each other their
+fortunes.&nbsp; &ldquo;Esmeralda and myself were sitting in our
+tents.&nbsp; Then the thought occurred to her that we should tell
+her fortune.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your fortune must be a good one,&rsquo;
+said we, laughing; &lsquo;let me see your hand and your lines of
+life.&rsquo;&nbsp; We shall never forget Esmeralda.&nbsp; She
+looked so earnestly as we regarded attentively the line of her
+open hand.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Mr. Petalengro does not say that tears
+were to be seen trickling down those lovely cheeks of Esmeralda
+while this fortune-telling, nonsensical farce was being played
+out.)&nbsp; &ldquo;Then we took her step by step through some
+scenes of her supposed future.&nbsp; We did not tell all.&nbsp;
+The rest was reserved for another day.&nbsp; There was a serious
+look on her countenance as we ended; but, reader, such secrets
+should not be revealed.&nbsp; Esmeralda commenced to tell our
+fortunes.&nbsp; We were interested to know what she would
+say.&nbsp; We cast ourselves on the waves of fate.&nbsp; The
+Gipsy raised her dark eyes from our hand as she looked earnestly
+in the face.&nbsp; You are a young gentleman of good
+connections.&nbsp; Many lands you have seen.&nbsp; But, young
+man, something tells me you are of a wavering
+disposition.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; And then charming Esmeralda
+would strike up &ldquo;The Little Gipsy&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My father&rsquo;s the King of the Gipsies,
+that&rsquo;s true,<br />
+My mother she learned me some camping to do;<br />
+With a packel on my back, and they all wish me well,<br />
+I started up to London some fortunes for to tell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As I was a walking up fair London streets,<br />
+Two handsome young squires I chanced for to meet,<br />
+They viewed my brown cheeks, and they liked them so well,<br />
+They said &lsquo;My little Gipsy girl, can you my fortune
+tell?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh yes! kind Sir, give me hold of your hand,<br
+/>
+For you have got honours, both riches and land;<br />
+Of all the pretty maidens you must lay aside,<br />
+For it is the little Gipsy girl that is to be your
+bride.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 175--><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+175</span>&ldquo;He led me o&rsquo;er the Mils, through valleys
+deep I&rsquo;m sure,<br />
+Where I&rsquo;d servants for to wait on me, and open me the
+door;<br />
+A rich bed of down to lay my head upon&mdash;<br />
+In less than nine months after I could his fortune tell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once I was a Gipsy girl, but now a squire&rsquo;s
+bride,<br />
+I&rsquo;ve servants for to wait on me, and in my carriage
+ride.<br />
+The bells shall ring so merrily, sweet music they shall play,<br
+/>
+And will crown the glad tidings of that lucky, lucky
+day.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The drawback to this evening&rsquo;s whirligig farce was that
+the mosquitoes determined to come in for a share.&nbsp; These
+little, nipping, biting creatures preferred settling upon young
+blood, full of life and activity, existing under artificial
+circumstances, to the carcase of a dead horse lying in the
+knacker&rsquo;s yard.&nbsp; To prevent these little stingers
+drawing the sap of life from the sweet bodies of these pretty,
+innocent, lovable creatures, the Gipsies acted a very cruel part
+in dressing their faces over with a brown liquid, called the
+&ldquo;tincture of cedar.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is not stated whether
+the &ldquo;tincture of cedar &ldquo;was made in Shropshire or
+Lebanon, nor whether it was extracted from roses, or a decoction
+of thistles.&nbsp; Alas, alas! how fickle human life is!&nbsp;
+How often we say and do things in jest and fun which turn out to
+be stern realities in another form.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As we looked upon the church and parsonage, surrounded
+as they were by the modern park, with the broad silver lake near,
+the rising mountains on all sides, and the clear blue sky above,
+our senses seemed entranced with the passing beauty of the
+scene.&nbsp; It was one of those glimpses of perfect nature which
+casts the anchor deep in memory, and leaves a lasting impression
+of bygone days.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then Esmeralda danced as she
+sang the words of her song; the words not in English are her own,
+for I cannot find them even in the slang Romany, and what she
+meant by her bosh is only known to herself.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll set me down on yonder hill;<br />
+And there I&rsquo;ll cry my fill,<br />
+And every tear shall turn a mill.<br />
+Shula gang shaugh gig a magala<br />
+To my Uskadina slawn slawn.</p>
+<p><!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+176</span>&ldquo;Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll buy me a petticoat and dye it red,<br />
+And round this world I&rsquo;ll beg my bread;<br />
+The lad I love is far away.<br />
+Shula gang shaugh gig a magala<br />
+To my Uskadina slawn slawn.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shul shul gang along with me,<br />
+Gang along me, I&rsquo;ll gang along with you,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll buy you a petticoat and dye it in the blue,<br />
+Sweet William shall kiss you in the rue.<br />
+Shula gang shaugh gig a magala<br />
+To my Uskadina slawn slawn.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;We were supremely happy,&rdquo; says Mr. Petalengro,
+&ldquo;in our wandering existence.&nbsp; We contrasted in our
+semi-consciousness of mind our absence from a thousand anxious
+cares which crowd upon the social position of those who take part
+in an overwrought state of extreme civilisation.&nbsp; How long
+we should have continued our half-dormant reflections which might
+have added a few more notes upon the philosophy of life, we knew
+not, but we were roused by the rumble of a stolk-jaerre along the
+road.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the dance no music can be better than that of a
+Gipsy band; there is life and animation in it which carries you
+away.&nbsp; If you have danced to it yourself, especially in a
+<i>czardas,</i> <a name="citation176"></a><a href="#footnote176"
+class="citation">[176]</a> then to hear the stirring tones
+without involuntarily springing up is, I assert, an absolute
+impossibility.&rdquo;&nbsp; Poor, deluded mortals, I am afraid
+they will find&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Nothing but leaves!<br />
+Sad memory weaves<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; No veil to hide the past;<br />
+And as we trace our weary way,<br />
+Counting each lost and misspent day,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sadly we find at last,<br />
+Nothing but leaves!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+177</span>The converse of all this artificial and misleading
+Gipsy life is to be seen in hard fate and fact at our own
+doors&mdash;&ldquo;Look on this picture and then on
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There is a land, a sunny land,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose skies are ever bright;<br />
+Where evening shadows never fall:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Saviour is its light.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a land that is fairer than day,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And by faith we can see it afar;<br />
+For the Father waits over the way<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To prepare us a dwelling-place there<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+In the sweet by-and-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>George Borrow, during his labours among the Gipsies of Spain
+forty years ago, did not find much occasion for rollicking fun,
+merriment, and boisterous laughter; his path was not one of
+roses, over mossy banks, among the honeysuckles and daisies, by
+the side of running rivulets warbling over the smooth pebbles;
+sitting among the primroses, listening to the enchanting voices
+of the thousand forest and valley songsters; gazing at the
+various and beautiful kinds of foliage on the hill-sides as the
+thrilling strains of music pealed forth from the sweet voice of
+Esmeralda and her tambourine.&nbsp; No, no, no!&nbsp; George
+Borrow had to face the hard lot of all those who start on the
+path of usefulness, honour, and heaven.&nbsp; Hard fare,
+disappointment, opposition, few friends, life in danger, his path
+was rough and covered with stones; his flowers were thistles, his
+songs attended with tears, and sorrow filled his heart.&nbsp; But
+note his object, and mark his end.&nbsp; In speaking of some of
+the difficulties in his travels, he says:&mdash;&ldquo;My time
+lay heavily on my hands, my only source of amusement consisting
+in the conversation of the woman telling of the wonderful tales
+of the land of the Moors&mdash;prison escapes, thievish feats,
+and one or two poisoning adventures in which she had been
+engaged.&nbsp; There was something very wild in her
+gestures.&nbsp; She goggled frightfully with her
+eyes.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then <!-- page 178--><a
+name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>speaking of
+the old Gipsy woman whom he went to see:&mdash;&ldquo;Here,
+thrusting her hand into her pocket, she discharged a handful of
+some kind of dust or snuff into the fellow&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; He
+stamped and roared, but was for some time held fast by the two
+Gipsy men; he extricated himself, however, and attempted to
+unsheath a knife which he wore in his girdle; but the two young
+Gipsies flung themselves upon him like furies.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow says, after travelling a long distance by night, and
+setting out again the next morning to travel thirteen
+leagues:&mdash;&ldquo;Throughout the day a drizzling rain was
+falling, which turned the dust of the roads into mud and
+mire.&nbsp; Towards evening we reached a moor&mdash;a wild place
+enough, strewn with enormous stones and rocks.&nbsp; The wind had
+ceased, but a strong wind rose and howled at our backs.&nbsp; The
+sun went down, and dark night presently came over us.&nbsp; We
+proceeded for nearly three hours, until we heard the barking of
+dogs, and perceived a light or two in the distance.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;That is Trujillo,&rsquo; said Antonio, who had not spoken
+for a long time.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am glad of it,&rsquo; I replied;
+&lsquo;I am so thoroughly tired, I shall sleep soundly in
+Trujillo.&rsquo;&nbsp; That is as it may be.&nbsp; We soon
+entered the town, which appeared dark and gloomy enough.&nbsp; I
+followed close behind the Gipsy, who led the way, I knew not
+whither, through dismal streets and dark places where cats were
+squalling.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here is the house,&rsquo; said he at
+last, dismounting before a low, mean hut.&nbsp; He knocked, but
+no answer.&nbsp; He knocked again, but no answer.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;There can be no difficulty,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;with
+respect to what we have to do.&nbsp; If your friends are gone
+out, it is easy enough to go to a posada.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+know not what you say,&rsquo; replied the Gipsy.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+dare not go to the mesuna, nor enter any house in Trujillo save
+this, and this is shut.&nbsp; Well, there is no remedy; we must
+move on; and, between ourselves, the sooner we leave the place
+the better.&nbsp; My own brother was garroted at
+Trujillo.&rsquo;&nbsp; He lighted a cigar by means of a steel and
+yesca, sprung on his <!-- page 179--><a name="page179"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 179</span>mule, and proceeded through streets
+and lanes equally dismal as those through which we had already
+travelled.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Borrow goes on to say:&mdash;&ldquo;I
+confess I did not much like this decision of the Gipsy; I felt
+very slight inclination to leave the town behind, and to venture
+into unknown places in the dark of the night, amidst rain and
+mist&mdash;for the wind had now dropped, and the rain again began
+to fall briskly.&nbsp; I was, moreover, much fatigued, and wished
+for nothing better than to deposit myself in some comfortable
+manger, where I might sink to sleep lulled by the pleasant sound
+of horses and mules despatching their provender.&nbsp; I had,
+however, put myself under the direction of the Gipsy, and I was
+too old a traveller to quarrel with my guide under present
+circumstances.&nbsp; I therefore followed close to his crupper,
+our only light being the glow emitted from the Gipsy&rsquo;s
+cigar.&nbsp; At last he flung it from his mouth into a puddle,
+and we were then in darkness.&nbsp; We proceeded in this manner
+for a long time.&nbsp; The Gipsy was silent.&nbsp; I myself was
+equally so.&nbsp; The rain descended more and more.&nbsp; I
+sometimes thought I heard doleful noises, something like the
+hooting of owls.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a strange night to be
+wandering abroad in,&rsquo; I at length said to Antonio, the
+Gipsy.&nbsp; (The Gipsy word for Antonio is
+&lsquo;Devil.&rsquo;)&nbsp; &lsquo;It is, brother,&rsquo; said
+the Gipsy; &lsquo;but I would sooner be abroad in such a night,
+and in such places, than in the estaripel of Trujillo.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We wandered at least a league further, and now appeared
+to be near a wood, for I could occasionally distinguish the
+trunks of immense trees.&nbsp; Suddenly Antonio stopped his
+mule.&nbsp; &lsquo;Look, brother,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;to the
+left, and tell me if you do not see a light; your eyes are
+sharper than mine.&rsquo;&nbsp; I did as he commanded me.&nbsp;
+At first I could see nothing, but, moving a little further on, I
+plainly saw a large light at some distance, seemingly amongst the
+trees.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yonder cannot be a lamp or candle,&rsquo;
+said I; &lsquo;it is more like the blaze of a fire.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Very likely,&rsquo; said Antonio.&nbsp; &lsquo;There are
+no queres (<i>houses</i>) in this place; it is doubtless a fire
+made by <!-- page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 180</span>durotunes (<i>shepherds</i>); let us
+go and join them, for, as you say, it is doleful work wandering
+about at night amidst rain and mire.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We dismounted and entered what I now saw was a forest,
+leading the animals cautiously amongst the trees and
+brushwood.&nbsp; In about five minutes we reached a small open
+space, at the farther side of which, at the foot of a large
+cork-tree, a fire was burning, and by it stood or sat two or
+three figures.&nbsp; They had heard our approach, and one of them
+now exclaimed, &lsquo;Quien Vive?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I know that
+voice,&rsquo; said Antonio, and, leaving the horse with me,
+rapidly advanced towards the fire.&nbsp; Presently I heard an
+&lsquo;Ola!&rsquo; and a laugh, and soon the voice of Antonio
+summoned me to advance.&nbsp; On reaching the fire, I found two
+dark lads, and a still darker woman of about forty, the latter
+seated on what appeared to be horse or mule furniture.&nbsp; I
+likewise saw a horse and two donkeys tethered to the neighbouring
+trees.&nbsp; It was, in fact, a Gipsy bivouac . . . &lsquo;Come
+forward, brother, and show yourself,&rsquo; said Antonio to me;
+&lsquo;you are amongst friends; these are of the Errate, the very
+people whom I expected to find at Trujillo, and in whose house we
+should have slept.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;could have
+induced them to leave their house in Trujillo and come into this
+dark forest, in the midst of wind and rain, to pass the
+night?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;They come on business of Egypt, brother,
+doubtless,&rsquo; replied Antonio, &lsquo;and that business is
+none of ours.&nbsp; Calla boca!&nbsp; It is lucky we have found
+them here, else we should have had no supper, and our horses no
+corn.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;My ro is prisoner at the village yonder,&rsquo;
+said the woman, pointing with her hand in a particular direction;
+&lsquo;he is prisoner yonder for choring a mailla (<i>stealing a
+donkey</i>); we are come to see what we can do in his behalf; and
+where can we lodge better than in this forest, where there is
+nothing to pay?&nbsp; It is not the first time, I trow, that
+Calor&eacute; have slept at the root of a tree.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+181</span>&ldquo;One of the striplings now gave us barley for our
+animals in a large bag, into which we successively introduced
+their heads, allowing the famished creatures to regale themselves
+till we conceived that they had satisfied their hunger.&nbsp;
+There was a puchero simmering at the fire, half-fall of bacon,
+garbanzos, and other provisions; this was emptied into a large
+wooden platter, and out of this Antonio and myself supped; the
+other Gipsies refused to join us, giving us to understand that
+they had eaten before our arrival; they all, however, did justice
+to the leathern bottle of Antonio, which, before his departure
+from Merida, he had the precaution to fill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was by this time completely overcome with fatigue and
+sleep.&nbsp; Antonio flung me an immense horse-cloth, of which he
+bore more than one beneath the huge cushion on which he
+rode.&nbsp; In this I wrapped myself, and placing my head upon a
+bundle, and my feet as near as possible to the fire, I lay
+down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>How delightful and soul-inspiring it would have been to the
+weary pilgrim, jaded in the cause of the poor Gipsies, if
+Antonio&rsquo;s heart had been full of religious zeal and
+fervour, and Hubert Petalengro and Esmeralda, their souls filled
+to overflowing with the love of God, had been by the side of the
+camp-fire, and the trio had struck up with their sweet voices, as
+the good man was drawing his weary legs and cold feet together
+before the embers of the dying Gipsy fire&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Guide me, O thou great
+Jehovah,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Pilgrim through this barren
+land;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I am weak, but Thou art mighty,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hold me with Thy powerful hand.<br
+/>
+Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Open now the crystal fountain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whence the healing waters flow;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Let the fiery, cloudy pillars,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lead me all my journey through.<br
+/>
+Strong Deliverer, be Thou still my strength and
+shield.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 182--><a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+182</span>&ldquo;Antonio and the other Gipsies remained seated by
+the fire conversing.&nbsp; I listened for a moment to what they
+said, but I did not perfectly understand it, and what I did
+understand by no means interested me.&nbsp; The rain still
+drizzled, but I heeded it not, and was soon asleep.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The sun was just appearing as I awoke.&nbsp; I made
+several efforts before I could rise from the ground; my limbs
+were quite stiff, and my hair was covered with rime, for the rain
+had ceased, and a rather severe frost set in.&nbsp; I looked
+around me, but could see neither Antonio nor the Gipsies; the
+animals of the latter had likewise disappeared, so had the horse
+which I had hitherto rode; the mule, however, of Antonio still
+remained fastened to the tree.&nbsp; The latter circumstance
+quieted some apprehensions which were beginning to arise in my
+mind.&nbsp; &lsquo;They are gone on some business of
+Egypt,&rsquo; I said to myself, &lsquo;and will return
+anon.&rsquo;&nbsp; I gathered together the embers of the fire,
+and heaping upon them sticks and branches, soon succeeded in
+calling forth a blaze, beside which I again placed the puchero,
+with what remained of the provision of last night.&nbsp; I waited
+for a considerable time in expectation of the return of my
+companions, but as they did not appear, I sat down and
+breakfasted.&nbsp; Before I had well finished I heard the noise
+of a horse approaching rapidly, and presently Antonio made his
+appearance amongst the trees, with some agitation in his
+countenance.&nbsp; He sprang from the horse, and instantly
+proceeded to untie the mule.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mount, brother,
+mount!&rsquo; said he, pointing to the horse; &lsquo;I went with
+the Callee and her chab&eacute;s to the village where the ro is
+in trouble; the chino-baro, however, seized them at once with
+their cattle, and would have laid hands also on me; but I set
+spurs to the grasti, gave him the bridle, and was soon far
+away.&nbsp; Mount, brother, mount, or we shall have the whole
+rustic <i>canaille</i> upon us in a twinkling&mdash;it is such a
+bad place.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I almost imagine Borrow would have said, under the <!-- page
+183--><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+183</span>circumstances, as he was putting his foot into the
+stirrup to mount his horse to fly for his life into the wild
+regions of an unknown country:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Jesus, lover of my soul,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Let me to Thy bosom fly;<br />
+While the nearer waters roll,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While the tempest still is high.<br />
+Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till the storm of life is past,<br />
+Safe into the haven guide,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh, receive my soul at last.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Other refuge have I none,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hangs my helpless soul on Thee,<br />
+Leave, O leave me not alone,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Still support and comfort me.<br />
+All my trust on Thee is stayed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All my help from Thee I bring,<br />
+Cover my defenceless head,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With the shadow of Thy wing.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Sir Walter Scott, in &ldquo;Guy Mannering,&rdquo; speaking of
+the dark deeds of the Gipsies, says:&mdash;&ldquo;The idea of
+being dragged out of his miserable concealment by wretches whose
+trade was that of midnight murder, without weapons or the
+slightest means of defence, except entreaties which would be only
+their sport, and cries for help which could never reach other ear
+than their own&mdash;his safety intrusted to the precarious
+compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose
+trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against
+every human feeling&mdash;the bitterness of his emotions almost
+choked him.&nbsp; He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark
+countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features,
+something that promised those feelings of compassion which
+females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether
+smother.&nbsp; There was no such touch of humanity about this
+woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Never fear,&rsquo; said the old Gipsy man,
+&lsquo;Meg&rsquo;s true-bred; she&rsquo;s the last in the gang
+that will start; but she has some <!-- page 184--><a
+name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>queer ways,
+and often cuts queer words.&rsquo;&nbsp; With more of this
+gibberish, they continued the conversation, rendering it thus,
+even to each other, a dark, obscure dialect, eked out by
+significant nods and signs, but never expressing distinctly or in
+plain language the subject on which it turned.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>G. P. Whyte-Melville speaks of the Russian Gipsies in the
+language of fiction in his &ldquo;Interpreter&rdquo; as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;The morning sun smiles upon a motley troop
+journeying towards the Danube.&nbsp; Two or three lithe, supple
+urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and
+bright black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the
+advanced guard.&nbsp; Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the
+whole property of the tribe.&nbsp; The main body consists of
+sinewy, active-looking men, and strikingly handsome girls, all
+walking with the free, graceful air and elastic gait peculiar to
+those whose lives are passed entirely in active exercise, under
+no roof but that of heaven.&nbsp; Dark-browed women in the very
+meridian of beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race
+of swarthy progeny, all alike distinguished for the sparkling
+eyes and raven hair, which, with a cunning nothing can overreach,
+and a nature nothing can tame, seem to be the peculiar
+inheritance of the Gipsy.&nbsp; Their costume is striking, not to
+say grotesque.&nbsp; Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind
+their brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form a
+very picturesque and not unbecoming head-gear; whilst in a few
+instances coins even of gold are strung amongst the jetty locks
+of the Zingyni beauties.&nbsp; The men are not so particular in
+their attire.&nbsp; One sinewy fellow wears only a goatskin shirt
+and a string of beads round his neck, but the generality are clad
+in the coarse cloth of the country, much tattered, and bearing
+evident symptoms of weather and wear.&nbsp; The little
+mischievous urchins who are clinging round their mothers&rsquo;
+necks, or dragging back from their mothers&rsquo; hands, and
+holding on to their mothers&rsquo; skirts, are almost
+naked.&nbsp; Small heads and hands and feet, all the marks of
+what we are <!-- page 185--><a name="page185"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 185</span>accustomed to term high birth, are
+hereditary among the Gipsies; and we doubt if the Queen of the
+South herself was a more queenly-looking personage than the dame
+now marching in the midst of the throng, and conversing earnestly
+with her companion, a resolute-looking man scarce entering upon
+the prime of life, with a Gipsy complexion, but a bearing in
+which it is not difficult to recognise the soldier.&nbsp; He is
+talking to his protectress&mdash;for such she is&mdash;with a
+military frankness and vivacity, which even to that royal
+personage, accustomed though she be to exact all the respect due
+to her rank, appear by no means displeasing.&nbsp; The lady is
+verging on the autumn of her charms (their summer must have been
+scorching indeed!), and though a masculine beauty, is a beauty
+nevertheless.&nbsp; Black-browed is she, and deep-coloured, with
+eyes of fire, and locks of jet, even now untinged with
+grey.&nbsp; Straight and regular are her features, and the wide
+mouth, with its strong, even dazzling teeth, betokens an energy
+and force of will which would do credit to the other sex.&nbsp;
+She has the face of a woman that would dare much, labour much,
+everything but <i>love</i> much.&nbsp; She ought to be a queen,
+and she <i>is</i> one, none the less despotic for ruling over a
+tribe of Gipsies instead of a civilised community . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Every Gipsy can tell fortunes; mine has been
+told many a time, but it never came true.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was studying the lines on his palm with earnest
+attention.&nbsp; She raised her dark eyes angrily to his
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Blind! blind!&rsquo; she answered, in a low,
+eager tone.&nbsp; &lsquo;The best of you cannot see a yard upon
+your way.&nbsp; Look at that white road, winding and winding many
+a mile before us upon the plain.&nbsp; Because it is flat and
+soft and smooth as far as we can see, will there be no hills on
+our journey, no rocks to cut our feet, no thorns to tear our
+limbs?&nbsp; Can you see the Danube rolling on far, far before
+us?&nbsp; Can you see the river you will have to cross some day,
+or can you tell me where it leads?&nbsp; I have the map of our
+journey here in my brain; I have the map of your career here on
+your <!-- page 186--><a name="page186"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 186</span>hand.&nbsp; Once more I say, when
+the chiefs are in council, and the hosts are melting like snow
+before the sun, and the earth quakes, and the heavens are filled
+with thunder, and the shower that falls scorches and crushes and
+blasts&mdash;remember me!&nbsp; I follow the line of wealth: Man
+of gold! spoil on; here a horse, there a diamond; hundreds to
+uphold the right, thousands to spare the wrong; both hands full,
+and broad lands near a city of palaces, and a king&rsquo;s
+favour, and a nation of slaves beneath thy foot.&nbsp; I follow
+the line of pleasure: costly amber; rich embroidery; dark eyes
+melting for the Croat; glances unveiled for the shaven head, many
+and loving and beautiful; a garland of roses, all for
+one&mdash;rose by rose plucked and withered and thrown away; one
+tender bud remaining; cherish it till it blows, and wear it till
+it dies.&nbsp; I follow the line of blood:&mdash;it leads towards
+the rising sun&mdash;charging squadrons with lances in rest, and
+a wild shout in a strange tongue; and the dead wrapped in grey,
+with charm and amulet that were powerless to save; and hosts of
+many nations gathered by the sea&mdash;pestilence, famine,
+despair, and victory.&nbsp; Rising on the whirlwind, chief among
+chiefs, the honoured of leaders, the counsellor of
+princes&mdash;remember me!&nbsp; But ha! the line is
+crossed.&nbsp; Beware! trust not the sons of the adopted land;
+when the lily is on thy breast, beware of the dusky shadow on the
+wall! beware, and remember me!&rsquo; . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I proffered my hand readily to the Gipsy, and crossed
+it with one of the two pieces of silver which constituted the
+whole of my worldly wealth.&nbsp; The Gipsy laughed, and began to
+prophesy in German.&nbsp; There are some events a child never
+forgets; and I remember every word she said as well as if it had
+been spoken yesterday.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Over the sea, and again over the sea; thou shalt
+know grief and hardship and losses, and the dove shall be driven
+from its nest.&nbsp; And the dove&rsquo;s heart shall become like
+the eagle&rsquo;s, that flies alone, and fleshes her beak in the
+slain.&nbsp; Beat on, though the poor wings be bruised by the
+tempest, <!-- page 187--><a name="page187"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 187</span>and the breast be sore, and the
+heart sink; beat on against the wind, and seek no shelter till
+thou find thy resting-place at last.&nbsp; The time will
+come&mdash;only beat on.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The woman laughed as she spoke; but there was a kindly
+tone in her voice and a pitying look in her bright eyes that went
+straight to my heart.&nbsp; Many a time since, in life, when the
+storm has indeed been boisterous and the wings so weary, have I
+thought of those words of encouragement, &lsquo;The time will
+come&mdash;beat on.&rsquo; . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Thou shalt be a &ldquo;De Rohan,&rdquo; my
+darling, and I can promise thee no brighter lot&mdash;broad
+acres, and blessings from the poor, and horses, and wealth, and
+honours.&nbsp; And the sword shall spare thee, and the battle
+turn aside to let thee pass.&nbsp; And thou shalt wed a fair
+bride with dark eyes and a queenly brow; but beware of St.
+Hubert&rsquo;s Day.&nbsp; Birth and burial, birth and
+burial&mdash;beware of St. Hubert&rsquo;s Day.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Disraeli, speaking of the Gipsies in his
+&ldquo;Venetia,&rdquo; says:&mdash;&ldquo;As Cadurcis approached
+he observed some low tents, and in a few minutes he was in the
+centre of an encampment of Gipsies.&nbsp; He was for a moment
+somewhat dismayed, for he had been brought up with the usual
+terror of these wild people; nevertheless he was not unequal to
+the occasion.&nbsp; He was surrounded in an instant, but only
+with women and children, for Gipsy men never immediately
+appear.&nbsp; They smiled with their bright eyes, and the flashes
+of the watch-fire threw a lurid glare over their dark and
+flashing countenances; they held out their practised hands; they
+uttered unintelligible, but not unfriendly sounds.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Matilda Betham Edwards, in her remarks upon Gipsies,
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;Your pulses are quickened to Gipsy pitch, you
+are ready to make love or war, to heal and slay, to wander to the
+world&rsquo;s end, to be outlawed and hunted down, to dare and do
+anything for the sake of the sweet, untramelled life of the tent,
+the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the
+joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery
+love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 188--><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+188</span>I come now to notice what a few of the poets have said
+about these ignorant, nomadic tribes, who have been skulking and
+flitting about in our midst, since the days of Borrow, Roberts,
+Hoyland, and Crabb&mdash;a period of over forty years.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;He grows, like the young oak, healthy and
+broad,<br />
+With no home but the forest, no bed but the sward;<br />
+Half-naked he wades in the limpid stream,<br />
+Or dances about in the scorching beam.<br />
+The dazzling glare of the banquet sheen<br />
+Hath never fallen on him I ween,<br />
+But fragments are spread, and the wood pine piled,<br />
+And sweet is the meal of the Gipsy child.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Eliza Cook</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Gipsy eye, bright as the star<br />
+That sends its light from heaven afar,<br />
+Wild with the strains of thy guitar,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This heart with rapture fill.<br />
+Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,<br />
+Come, touch me with the light guitar.<br />
+Thy brow unworked by lines of care,<br />
+Decked with locks of raven hair,<br />
+Seems ever beautiful and fair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; At moonlight&rsquo;s stilly hour.<br />
+What bliss! beside the leafy maze,<br />
+Illumined by the moon&rsquo;s pale rays,<br />
+On thy sweet face to sit and gaze,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou wild, uncultured flower.<br />
+Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,<br />
+Come, touch me with the light guitar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hubert
+Smith</span>: &ldquo;Tent Life in Norway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From every place condemned to roam,<br />
+In every place we seek a home;<br />
+These branches form our summer roof,<br />
+By thick grown leaves made weather-proof;<br />
+In shelt&rsquo;ring nooks and hollow ways,<br />
+We cheerily pass our winter days.<br />
+Come circle round the Gipsy&rsquo;s fire,<br />
+Come circle round the Gipsy&rsquo;s fire,<br />
+Our songs, our stories never tire,<br />
+Our songs, our stories never tire.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Reeve</span>.</p>
+<p><!-- page 189--><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+189</span>&ldquo;Where is the little Gipsy&rsquo;s home?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Under the spreading greenwood tree,<br />
+Wherever she may roam,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wherever that tree may be.<br />
+Roaming the world o&rsquo;er,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Crossing the deep blue sea,<br />
+She finds on every shore,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A home among the free,<br />
+A home among the free,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ah, voil&agrave; la Gitana, voil&agrave; la
+Gitana.&rdquo;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Halliday</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He checked his steed, and sighed to mark<br />
+Her coral lips, her eyes so dark,<br />
+And stately bearing&mdash;as she had been<br />
+Bred up in courts, and born a queen.<br />
+Again he came, and again he came,<br />
+Each day with a warmer, a wilder flame,<br />
+And still again&mdash;till sleep by night<br />
+For Judith&rsquo;s sake fled his pillow quite.&rdquo;&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Delta</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A race that lives on prey, as foxes do,<br />
+With stealthy, petty rapine; so despised,<br />
+It is not persecuted, only spurned,<br />
+Crushed under foot, warred on by chance like rats,<br />
+Or swarming flies, or reptiles of the sea,<br />
+Dragged in the net unsought and flung far off,<br />
+To perish as they may.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Eliot</span>: &ldquo;The Spanish Gipsies,&rdquo; 1865.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Help me wonder, here&rsquo;s a booke,<br />
+Where I would for ever looke.<br />
+Never did a Gipsy trace<br />
+Smoother lines in hands or face;<br />
+Venus here doth Saturne move<br />
+That you should be the Queene of Love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ben
+Jonson</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fond dreamer, pause! why floats the silvery breath<br
+/>
+Of thin, light smoke from yonder bank of heath?<br />
+What forms are those beneath the shaggy trees,<br />
+In tattered tent, scarce sheltered from the breeze;<br />
+<!-- page 190--><a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+190</span>The hoary father and the ancient dame,<br />
+The squalid children, cowering o&rsquo;er the flame?<br />
+Those were not born by English hearths to dwell,<br />
+Or heed the carols of the village bell;<br />
+Those swarthy lineaments, that wild attire,<br />
+Those stranger tones, bespeak an eastern sire;<br />
+Bid us in home&rsquo;s most favoured precincts trace<br />
+The houseless children of a homeless race;<br />
+And as in warning vision seem to show<br />
+That man&rsquo;s best joys are drowned by shades of woe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pilgrims of Earth, who hath not owned the spell<br />
+That ever seems around your tents to dwell;<br />
+Solemn and thrilling as the nameless dread<br />
+That guards the chambers of the silent dead!<br />
+The sportive child, if near your camp he stray,<br />
+Stands tranced with fear, and heeds no more his play;<br />
+To gain your magic aid, the love-sick swain,<br />
+With hasty footsteps threads the dusky lane;<br />
+The passing traveller lingers, half in sport,<br />
+And half in awe beside your savage court,<br />
+While the weird hags explore his palm to spell<br />
+What varied fates these mystic lines foretell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The murmuring streams your minstrel songs supply,<br />
+The moss your couch, the oak your canopy;<br />
+The sun awakes you as with trumpet-call,<br />
+Lightly ye spring from slumber&rsquo;s gentle thrall;<br />
+Eve draws her curtain o&rsquo;er the burning west,<br />
+Like forest birds ye sink at once to rest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Free as the winds that through the forest rush,<br />
+Wild as the flowers that by the wayside blush,<br />
+Children of nature wandering to and fro,<br />
+Man knows not whence ye came, nor where ye go;<br />
+Like foreign weeds cast upon Western strands,<br />
+Which stormy waves have borne from unknown lands;<br />
+Like the murmuring shells to fancy&rsquo;s ears that tell<br />
+The mystic secrets of their ocean cell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Drear was the scene&mdash;a dark and troublous
+time&mdash;<br />
+The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime;<br />
+Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill<br />
+Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will.<br />
+<!-- page 191--><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+191</span>Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows,<br />
+And black night flickers with the driving snows,<br />
+A stranger people, &rsquo;mid that murky gloom,<br />
+Knocked at the gates of awe-struck Christendom!<br />
+No clang of arms, no din of battle roared<br />
+Round the still march of that mysterious horde;<br />
+Weary and sad arrayed in pilgrim&rsquo;s guise,<br />
+They stood and prayed, nor raised their suppliant eyes.<br />
+At once to Europe&rsquo;s hundred shores they came,<br />
+In voice, in feature, and in garb the same.<br />
+Mother and babe and youth, and hoary age,<br />
+The haughty chieftain and the wizard sage;<br />
+At once in every land went up the cry,<br />
+&lsquo;Oh! fear us not&mdash;receive us or we
+die!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Dean
+Stanley&rsquo;s Prize Poem</span>, 1837: &ldquo;The
+Gipsies.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><!-- page 192--><a name="page192"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 192</span>Part IV.<br />
+Gipsy Life in a Variety of Aspects.</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p192b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Gipsy&rsquo;s van near Notting Hill, Latimer Road"
+title=
+"A Gipsy&rsquo;s van near Notting Hill, Latimer Road"
+src="images/p192s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>In Part III. I have endeavoured, as well as I have been able,
+to show some of the agencies that have been set in motion during
+the last three centuries for and against the Gipsies, with a view
+to their extermination, by the hang-man, to their being reclaimed
+by the religious zeal and fervour of the minister, and to their
+improvement by the artificial means of poetry, fiction, and
+romance.&nbsp; First, the persecution dealt out to the Gipsies in
+this, as well as other countries, during a period of several
+centuries, although to a large extent brought upon themselves by
+their horrible system of lying and deception, neither
+exterminated them nor improved their habits; but, on the
+contrary, they increased and spread like mushrooms; the oftener
+they were trampled upon the more they seemed to thrive; the more
+they were hated, hunted, and driven into hiding-places the
+oftener these sly, fortune-telling, lying foxes would be seen
+sneaking across our path, ready to grab our chickens and young
+turkeys as opportunities presented themselves.&nbsp; Second, that
+when stern justice said &ldquo;it is enough,&rdquo; persecution
+hanging down its hands and revenge drooping her head, a few
+noble-hearted men, filled with missionary zeal, took up the cause
+of the Gipsies for a period of nearly forty years in various
+forms and ways at the end of the last and the commencement of the
+present century.&nbsp; Except in a few isolated cases, they also
+failed in producing any noticeable <!-- page 193--><a
+name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>change in
+either the moral, social, or religious condition of the Gipsies,
+and with the death of Hoyland, Borrow, Crabb, Roberts, and
+others, died the last flicker of a flickering light that was to
+lead these poor, deluded, benighted heathen wanderers upon a road
+to usefulness, honesty, uprightness, and industry.&nbsp; Third,
+that on the decline of religious zeal, fervour, and philanthropy
+on behalf of the Gipsies more than forty years ago the spasmodic
+efforts of poets, novelists, and dramatists, in a variety of
+forms of fiction and romance, came to the front, to lead them to
+the goal through a lot of questionable by-lanes, queer places,
+and artificial lights, the result being that these melodramatic
+personages have left the Gipsies in a more pitiable condition
+than they were before they took up their cause, although they, in
+doing so, put &ldquo;two faces under one hat,&rdquo; blessing and
+cursing, smiling and frowning, all in one breath, praising their
+faults and sins, and damning their <i>few</i> virtues.&nbsp; In
+fact, to such a degree have fiction writers painted the black
+side of a Gipsy&rsquo;s life, habits, and character in glowing
+colours that, to take another 20,000 men, women, and children out
+of our back slums and sink-gutters and write the word
+&ldquo;Gipsy&rdquo; upon their back, instead of
+&ldquo;scamp,&rdquo; and send them through the country with a few
+donkeys, some long sticks, old blankets and rags, dark eyes,
+dirty faces, filthy bodies, short petticoats, and old scarlet
+hoods and cloaks, you would in fifty years make this country not
+worth living in.&nbsp; It is my decided conviction that unless we
+are careful, and take the &ldquo;bull by the horns,&rdquo; and
+compel them to educate their children, and to put their
+habitations, tents, and vans under better sanitary arrangements,
+we shall be fostering seeds in these dregs of society that will
+one day put a stop to the work of civilisation, and bring to an
+end the advance in arts, science, laws, and commerce that have
+been making such rapid strides in this country of late years.</p>
+<p>It is more pleasant to human nature to sit upon a stile on a
+midsummer eve, down a country lane, in the twilight, as the <!--
+page 194--><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+194</span>shades of evening are gathering around you, the stars
+twinkling over head, the little silver stream rippling over the
+pebbles at your feet in sounds like the distant warbling of the
+lark, and the sweet notes of the nightingale ringing in your
+ears, than to visit the abodes of misery, filth, and squalor
+among the Gipsies in their wigwams.&nbsp; It is more agreeable to
+the soft parts of our hearts and our finer feelings to listen to
+the melody and harmony of lively, lovely damsels as they send
+forth their enchanting strains than to hear the cries of the poor
+little, dirty Gipsy children sending forth their piteous moans
+for bread.&nbsp; It is more delightful to the poetic and
+sentimental parts of our nature to guide over the stepping-stones
+a number of bright, sharp, clean, lively, interesting, little
+dears, with their &ldquo;hoops,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;shuttle-cocks,&rdquo; and &ldquo;battle-doors,&rdquo; than
+to be seated among a lot of little ragged, half-starved Gipsy
+children, who have never known what soap, water, and comb
+are.&nbsp; It is more in harmony with our sensibilities to sit
+and listen to the drollery, wit, sarcasm, and fun of <i>Punch</i>
+than to the horrible tales of blood, revenge, immorality, and
+murder that some of the adult Gipsies delight in setting
+forth.&nbsp; It is more in accordance with our feelings to sit
+and admire the innocent, angelic being, the perfection of the
+good and beautiful, than to sit by the hardened, wicked, ugly,
+old Gipsy woman who has spent a lifetime in sin and debauchery,
+cursing the God who made her as she expires.&nbsp; Nevertheless,
+these things have to be done if we are to have the angelic beings
+from the other world ministering to our wants, and wafting us
+home as we leave our tenement of clay behind to receive the
+&ldquo;Well done.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I will now, as we pass along, endeavour to show what the
+actual condition of the Gipsies has been in the past, and what it
+is at the present time, which, in some cases, has been touched
+upon previously, with reference to the moral, social, and
+religious traits in their character that go to the making up of a
+<span class="smcap">man</span>&mdash;the noblest work of
+God.&nbsp; The peculiar fascinating charms about them, conjured
+up by <!-- page 195--><a name="page195"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 195</span>ethnologists and philologists, I
+will leave for those learned gentlemen to deal with as they may
+think well.&nbsp; I will, however, say that, as regards their
+so-called language, it is neither more nor less than gibberish,
+not &ldquo;full of sound and fury signifying nothing,&rdquo; but
+full of &ldquo;sound and fury&rdquo; signifying something.&nbsp;
+They never converse with it openly among themselves for a good
+purpose, as the Frenchmen, Germans, Turks, Spaniards, or other
+foreigners do.&nbsp; Some of the old Gipsies have a thousand or
+more leading words made up from various sources, English, French,
+German, Spanish, Indian, &amp;c., which they teach their
+children, and use in the presence of strangers with a certain
+amount of pride, and, at the same time, to throw dust into their
+eyes while the Gipsies are talking among themselves.&nbsp; They
+will in the same breath bless you in English and curse you in
+Romany; this I experienced myself lately while sitting in a tent
+among a dozen uninteresting-looking Gipsies, while they one and
+all were thanking me for taking steps to get the children
+educated.&nbsp; There was one among them who with a smile upon
+his face, was cursing me in Romany from his heart.&nbsp; Many
+writers differ in the spelling and pronunciation of Gipsy words,
+and what strikes me as remarkable is, the Gipsies themselves are
+equally confused upon these points.&nbsp; No doubt the confusion
+in the minds of writers arises principally from the fact that
+they have had their information from ignorant, lying, deceiving
+Gipsies.&nbsp; Almost all Gipsies have an inveterate hatred and
+jealousy towards each other, especially if one sets himself up as
+knowing more than John Jones in the next yard.&nbsp; One Gipsy
+would say paanengro-g&uacute;jo means sailor, or water gentile,
+another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile;
+another would say poovengri-g&uacute;jo meant a sailor; another
+would say it means an Irishman.&nbsp; They glory in
+contradictions and mystification.&nbsp; I was at an encampment a
+few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and forty
+children there were <!-- page 196--><a name="page196"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 196</span>not three that could talk Romany,
+and there was not one who could spell a single word of it.&nbsp;
+Their language, like themselves, was Indian enough, no doubt,
+when they started on their pilgrimage many centuries ago; but, as
+a consequence of their mixing with the scum of other nations in
+their journey westward, the charm in their language and
+themselves has pretty nearly by this time vanished.&nbsp; If I
+were to attempt to write a book about their language it would not
+do the Gipsies one iota of good.&nbsp; &ldquo;God bless
+you&rdquo; are words the Gipsies very often use when showing
+their kindness for favours received, and, as a kind of test, I
+have tried to find out lately if there were any Gipsies round
+London who could tell me what these words were in Romany, and I
+have only found one who could perform the task.&nbsp; They all
+shake their heads and say, &ldquo;Ours is not a language, only
+slang, which we use when required.&rdquo;&nbsp; Taking their
+slang generally, according to Grellmann, Hoyland, Borrow, Smart,
+and Crofton, there is certainly nothing very elevating about
+it.&nbsp; Worldliness, sensuality, and devilism are things helped
+forward by their gibberish.&nbsp; Words dealing with honesty,
+uprightness, fidelity, industry, religion, cleanliness, and love
+are very sparse.</p>
+<p>William Stanley, a converted Gipsy, said, some years since,
+that &ldquo;God bless you&rdquo; was in Romany, Artmee
+Devillesty; Smart and Crofton say it is, Do&ograve;vel,
+p&agrave;rav, p&agrave;rik toot, to&ograve;ti.&nbsp; In another
+place they say it is Doovel jal toos&agrave;.&nbsp; Mrs. Simpson
+says it is, Mi-Doovel-kom-tooti.&nbsp; Mrs. Smith says it is
+Mi-Doovel Andy-Paratuta.</p>
+<p>The following are the whole of the slang words Smart and
+Crofton have under the letters indicated, and which words are
+taken principally from Grellmann, Hoyland, Borrow, and Dr.
+Paspati:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>I.</h3>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>I,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Man, m&egrave;, m&agrave;ndi, m&agrave;nghi.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ill,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>N&agrave;sfelo, n&agrave;ffelo doosh.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><!-- page 197--><a name="page197"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 197</span>Illness,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>N&agrave;ffelop&eacute;n.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ill-tempered,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>K&ograve;rni.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Imitation,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Foshono.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Immediately,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ken&agrave;w sig.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>In,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Adr&egrave;, dre, ando, inna.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Indebted,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Pazerous.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Inflame,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Katcher.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Injure,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dooka.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Inn,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>K&iacute;tchema.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Innkeeper,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kitchem&egrave;ngro.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Intestine,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>V&eacute;nderi.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Into,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>And&egrave;, adr&egrave;, dr&egrave;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ireland,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hindo-tem, Hinditemeskro-tem.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Irishman,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hindi-temengro, poovengri gaujo.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Irish Gipsy,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Efage.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Iron,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>S&aacute;ster, sa&agrave;sta, sa&aacute;shta.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Iron,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>S&aacute;stera.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Is,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>See.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>It,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Les.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Itch,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Honj.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>J.</h3>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Jail,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>St&egrave;ripen.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Jews,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Mid&ugrave;velesto-ma&ugrave;rom&egrave;ngri.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Jockey,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>K&egrave;sterm&egrave;ngro.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Judgment,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Bitchama.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Jump,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hokter hok &ograve;xta.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Jumper,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hoxterer.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Just now,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kenaw sig.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Justice of the peace,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chivlo-gaujo, chuvno-ga&ugrave;jo, p&ograve;kenyus,
+po&ograve;kinyus.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>K.</h3>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Keep,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Righer, riker.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kettle,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kek&agrave;vvi, kavvi.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Key,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kl&egrave;rin klisin.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kick,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Del, d&eacute;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><!-- page 198--><a name="page198"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 198</span>Kill,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Maur.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kin,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Sim&egrave;nsa.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kind,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Komelo komomuso.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>King,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kr&agrave;lis.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kingdom,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kralisom tem.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kiss,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chooma.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Knee,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chong, choong.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Knife,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Choori chivom&egrave;ngro chinom&egrave;ngro.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Knock,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Koor, d&egrave;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Know,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Jin.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Knowing,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Yoki, jinomengro, jinomeskro.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h3>Q.</h3>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quarrel,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ch&iacute;ngar.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quarrel,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chingariben, g&ograve;dli.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quart,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tro&ograve;shni.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Queen,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kralisi krailisi.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quick,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Sig.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quick, Be,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Sigo toot, r&egrave;ssi toot kair &agrave;bba.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Quietly,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Shook&agrave;r.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>The following dozen words will show, in some degree, the
+fearful amount of ignorance there is amongst them, even when
+using the language of their mother country, for England is the
+mother country of the present race of Gipsies.&nbsp;
+For&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Expensive,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Expencival.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Decide,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Cide.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Advice,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Device.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Dictionary,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dixen.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Equally,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ealfully.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Instructed,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Indistructed.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gentleman,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gemmen.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Daunted,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dauntment.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Spitefulness,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Spiteliness.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Habeas Corpus,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hawcus paccus.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Increase,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Increach.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Submit,</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Commist.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><!-- page 199--><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+199</span>I cannot find joy, delight, eternity, innocent, ever,
+everlasting, endless, hereafter, and similar words, and, on
+inquiry, I find that many of the Gipsies do not believe in an
+eternity, future punishment, or rewards; this belief, no doubt,
+has its effects upon their morals in this life.</p>
+<p>The opinion respecting the Gipsy language at the commencement
+of the present century was, that it was composed only of cant
+terms, or of what has been called the slang of beggars; much of
+this probably was promoted and strengthened by the dictionary
+contained in a pamphlet, entitled, &ldquo;The Life and Adventures
+of Bamfylde Moore Carew.&rdquo;&nbsp; It consists for the most
+part of English words trumped up apparently not so much for the
+purpose of concealment as a burlesque.&nbsp; Even if used by this
+people at all, the introduction of this cant and slang as the
+genuine language of the community of Gipsies is a gross
+imposition on the public.</p>
+<p>Rees, in his Encyclop&aelig;dia, 1819, describes the Gipsies
+as &ldquo;impostors and jugglers forming a kind of commonwealth
+among themselves, who disguise themselves in uncouth habits,
+smearing their faces and bodies, and framing to themselves a
+canting language, wander up and down, and under pretence of
+telling fortunes, curing diseases, &amp;c., abuse the common
+people, trick them of their money, and steal all that they come
+at.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Borrow, speaking of the Hungarian Gipsies in his
+&ldquo;Zyncali,&rdquo; page 7, says:&mdash;&ldquo;Hungary, though
+a country not a tenth part so extensive as the huge colossus of
+the Russian empire, whose Czar reigns over a hundred lands,
+contains perhaps as many Gipsies, it not being uncommon to find
+whole villages inhabited by this race.&nbsp; They likewise abound
+in the suburbs of the towns.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its
+pristine barbarity.&nbsp; In no country does the hard hand of
+oppression bear so heavy upon the lower classes&mdash;not even in
+Russia.&nbsp; The peasants of Russia are serfs, it is true, but
+their condition <!-- page 200--><a name="page200"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 200</span>is enviable compared with that of
+the same class in the other country; they have certain rights and
+privileges, and are, upon the whole, happy and contented, at
+least, there, whilst the Hungarians are ground to powder.&nbsp;
+Two classes are free in Hungary to do almost what they
+please&mdash;the nobility and the Gipsies (the former are above
+the law, the latter below it).&nbsp; A toll is wrung from the
+hands of the hard working labourers, that most meritorious class,
+in passing over a bridge, for example, at Perth, which is not
+demanded from a well-dressed person, nor from Zingany, who have
+frequently no dress at all, and whose <i>insouciance</i> stands
+in striking contrast with the trembling submission of the
+peasants.&nbsp; The Gipsy, wherever you find him, is an
+incomprehensible being, but nowhere more than in Hungary, where
+in the midst of slavery he is free, though apparently one step
+lower than the lowest slave.&nbsp; The habits of the Hungarian
+Gipsies are abominable; their hovels appear sinks of the vilest
+poverty and filth; their dress is at best rags; their food
+frequently of the vilest carrion, and occasionally, if report be
+true, still worse: thus they live in filth, in rags, in
+nakedness.&nbsp; The women are fortune-tellers.&nbsp; Of course
+both sexes are thieves of the first water.&nbsp; They roam where
+they list.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;Chronicle of Bologna,&rdquo; printed about the year
+1422, says:&mdash;&ldquo;And of those who went to have their
+fortunes told few there were who had not their purses stolen, or
+some portion of their garments cut away.&nbsp; Their women also
+traversed the city six or eight together, entering the houses of
+the citizens, and diverting them with idle talk while one of the
+party secured whatever she could lay her hands upon.&nbsp; In the
+shops they pretended to buy, but in fact stole.&nbsp; They were
+amongst the cleverest thieves that the world contained.&nbsp; Be
+it noted that they were the most hideous crew ever seen in these
+parts.&nbsp; They were lean and black, and ate like pigs.&nbsp;
+The women wore mantles flung upon one shoulder, with only a vest
+underneath.&rdquo;&nbsp; Forli, who wrote about them about the
+<!-- page 201--><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+201</span>same time as the &ldquo;Chronicle of Bologna,&rdquo;
+does not seem to have liked them, and says they were not
+&ldquo;even civilised, and resembling rather savage and untamed
+beasts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A writer describes a visit to a Gipsy&rsquo;s tent as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;We were in a wigwam which afforded us but
+miserable shelter from the inclemency of the season.&nbsp; The
+storm raged without; the tempest roared in the open country; the
+wind blew with violence, and whistled through the fissures of the
+cabin; the rain fell in torrents, and prevented us from
+continuing our route.&nbsp; Our host was an Indian with sparkling
+and intelligent eyes, clad with a certain elegance, and wrapped
+majestically in a large fur cloak.&nbsp; Seated close to the
+fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior of the
+wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible
+desire to imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his
+impressions.&nbsp; So taking hold of a drum which hung near his
+bed, he beat a slight rolling, resembling the distant sounds of
+an approaching storm, then raising his voice to a shrill treble,
+which he knew how to soften when he pleased, he imitated the
+whistling of the air, the creaking of the branches dashing
+against one another, and the particular noise produced by dead
+leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground.&nbsp; By
+degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder,
+the chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian
+shrieked, howled, and roared in the most frightful manner; he
+struggled and struck his instrument with extraordinary rapidity;
+it was a real tempest, to which nothing was wanting, not even the
+distant howling of the dogs, nor the bellowing of the affrighted
+buffaloes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Leland, speaking of the Russian Gipsies near Moscow, says
+that after meeting them in public, and penetrating to their
+homes, they were altogether original, deeply interesting, and
+able to read and write, and have a wonderful capacity for music,
+and goes on to say that he speedily found the Russian Gipsies
+were as unaffected and childlike as they <!-- page 202--><a
+name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>were gentle
+in manner, and that compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy,
+begging, and always suspecting Gipsy roughs, as a delicate
+greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bulldog trained by
+a fly tramp.&nbsp; Leland, in his article, speaking of one of the
+Russian Gipsy maidens, says:&mdash;&ldquo;Miss Sarsha, who had a
+slight cast in one of her wild black eyes, which added something
+to the Gipsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who wore in a
+ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right
+eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady,
+and with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say
+it.&nbsp; What with her eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her
+tongue, she constituted altogether a fine specimen of
+irrepressible fireworks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Leland, referring to the musical abilities of the Russian
+Gipsies, in his article in &ldquo;Macmillan&rsquo;s
+Magazine,&rdquo; November, 1879, says:&mdash;&ldquo;These
+artists, with wonderful tact and untaught skill have succeeded in
+all their songs in combining the mysterious and maddening chorus
+of the true wild eastern music with that of regular and simple
+melody intelligible to every western ear.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+listened,&rdquo; says Leland, &ldquo;to the strangest, wildest,
+and sweetest singing I ever had heard&mdash;the singing of
+Lurleis, of syrens, of witches.&nbsp; First, one damsel, with an
+exquisitely clear, firm voice began to sing a verse of a love
+ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus stole in, softly
+and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a few
+seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling
+lake, seemed changed to a midnight tempest roaring over a stormy
+sea, in which the basso of the black captain pealed like thunder,
+and as it died away a second girl took up the melody, very
+sweetly, but with a little more excitement&mdash;it was like a
+gleam of moonlight on the still agitated waters&mdash;a strange
+contralto witch gleam, and then again the chorus and the storm,
+and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger&mdash;the
+movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild,
+<!-- page 203--><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+203</span>and mad&mdash;a locomotive quick step and then a sudden
+silence&mdash;sunlight&mdash;the storm had blown away;&rdquo; and
+adds, &ldquo;I could only think of those strange fits of
+excitement which thrill the Red Indian, and make him burst into
+song.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After the first Gipsy lyric then came another to which
+the captain especially directed my attention as being what Sam.
+Petalengro calls &lsquo;The girl in the red
+chemise&rsquo;&mdash;as well as I can recall his words.&nbsp; A
+very sweet song, with a simple but spirited chorus, and as the
+sympathetic electricity of excitement seized the performers we
+were all in a minute going down the rapids in a spring
+freshet.&nbsp; &lsquo;Sing, sir, sing!&rsquo; cried my handsome
+neighbour, with her black Gipsy eyes sparkling fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Some excuse ought to be made for Leland getting into this wild
+state of excitement, for he had on his right and on his left,
+before and behind him, dark-eyed Gipsy beauties&mdash;as some
+would call them&mdash;among whom was one, the belle of the party,
+dressed in black silk attire, wafting in his face the enchanting
+fan of fascination till he was completely mesmerised.&nbsp; How
+different this hour&rsquo;s excitement to the twenty-three
+hours&rsquo; reality!</p>
+<p>The following is the full history of a remarkable case which
+has recently occurred in Russia, taken from the London daily
+papers last November, and it shows the way in which Gipsy witches
+and fortune-tellers are held and horribly treated in that
+country.&nbsp; It is quite evident that Gipsies and witches are
+not esteemed by the Russians like angels:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Agrafena Ignatjewa was as a child simple and
+amiable, neither sharper nor more stupid than all the other girls
+of her native village, Wratschewo, in the Government of
+Novgorod.&nbsp; But the people of the place having, from her
+early youth, made up their minds that she had the &ldquo;evil
+eye,&rdquo; nothing could eradicate that impression.</p>
+<p>Being branded with this reputation, it naturally followed <!--
+page 204--><a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+204</span>that powers of divination and enchantment were
+attributed to her, including the ability to afflict both men and
+animals with various plagues and sicknesses.</p>
+<p>In spite, however, of the supernatural skill with which she
+was credited, she met with no suitor save a poor soldier.&nbsp;
+She accepted him gladly, and going with him, shortly after her
+marriage, to St. Petersburg, Wratschewo lost sight of her for
+some twelve years.&nbsp; She was, however, by no means forgotten
+there, for when, after the death of her husband, she again betook
+herself to the home of her childhood, she found that her old
+reputation still clung to her.&nbsp; The news of her return
+spread like wild-fire, and general disaster was anticipated from
+her injurious spells.&nbsp; This, however, was, from fear, talked
+of only behind her back, and dread of her at length reached such
+a pitch that the villagers and their wives sent her presents and
+assisted her in every way, hoping thereby to get into her good
+graces, and so escape being practised upon by her infernal
+arts.&nbsp; As she was now fifty years of age, somewhat weakly,
+and therefore unable to earn a living, these attentions were by
+no means unwelcome, and she therefore did nothing to disabuse her
+neighbours&rsquo; minds.&nbsp; Their superstition enabled her to
+live comfortably and without care, and she knew very well that
+any assurances she might give would not have produced the
+slightest effect.</p>
+<p>A short time after her return to Wratschewo, several women
+fell ill.&nbsp; This was, of course, laid at the door of
+Ignatjewa, particularly as one of these women, the daughter of a
+peasant, had been attacked immediately after being refused a
+slight favour by her.&nbsp; Whenever any misfortune whatsoever
+happened in the village, all fingers pointed to Ignatjewa as the
+source of it.&nbsp; At the beginning of the present year a
+dismissed soldier, in the interest of the community, actually
+instituted criminal proceedings against her before the local
+urjadnik, the chief of the police of the district, the immediate
+charge preferred being that she had bewitched his wife.</p>
+<p><!-- page 205--><a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+205</span>Meanwhile the feeling in the village against her became
+so intensified that it was resolved by the people, pending the
+decision on the complaint that had been lodged, to take the law
+into their hands so far as to fasten her up in her cottage.</p>
+<p>The execution of this resolve was not delayed a moment.&nbsp;
+Led by Kauschin, Nikisorow, Starovij, and an old man of seventy,
+one Schipensk, whose wife and daughters were at the time supposed
+to be suffering from her witchcraft, a crowd of villagers set out
+on the way to Ignatjewa&rsquo;s dwelling.&nbsp; Nikisorow had
+provided himself with hammer and nails, and Iwanow with some
+chips of pinewood &ldquo;to smoke out the bad
+spirits.&rdquo;&nbsp; Finding the cottage door locked, they beat
+it in, and while a portion of them nailed up the windows the
+remainder crowded in and announced to the terrified woman that,
+by unanimous decision, she was, for the present, to be kept
+fastened up in her house.&nbsp; Some of them then proceeded to
+look through the rooms, where they found, unfortunately, several
+bottles containing medicaments.&nbsp; Believing these to be
+enchanted potions, and therefore conclusive proofs of
+Ignatjewa&rsquo;s guilt, it was decided, on the suggestion of
+Nikisorow, to burn her and her devilish work there and
+then.&nbsp; &ldquo;We must put an end to it,&rdquo; shouted the
+peasants in chorus; &ldquo;if we let her off now we shall be
+bewitched one and all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Kauschin, who held in his hand a lighted chip of pine-wood,
+which he had used &ldquo;to smoke out the spirits&rdquo; and to
+light him about the premises, instantly applied it to a bundle of
+straw lying in a room, after which all hastily left.&nbsp;
+Ignatjewa attempted in vain to follow them.&nbsp; The agonised
+woman then tried to get out at the windows, but these were
+already nailed up.&nbsp; In front of the cottage stood the
+people, blankly staring at the spreading flames, and listening to
+the cries of their victim without moving a muscle.</p>
+<p>At this point Ignatjewa&rsquo;s brother came on the scene, and
+ran towards the cottage to rescue his sister.&nbsp; But a dozen
+<!-- page 206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+206</span>arms held him back.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let her
+out,&rdquo; shouted the venerable Schipensk, the husband and
+father of the bewitched women.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll answer for
+it, that we won&rsquo;t, father; we have put up with her long
+enough,&rdquo; replied one of the band.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Lord be
+praised!&rdquo; exclaimed another, &ldquo;let her burn away; she
+bewitched my daughters too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The little room in which Ignatjewa had taken refuge was not as
+yet reached by the fire.&nbsp; Appeals were now made to her to
+confess herself a witch, the brother joining, probably in the
+hope that if she did so her life might be spared.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But I am entirely innocent,&rdquo; the poor woman cried
+out.&nbsp; One of the bystanders, apparently the only one in
+possession of his five senses, made another attempt at rescue,
+but was hindered by the mob.&nbsp; He then, in loud tones, warned
+them of the punishment which would certainly await them, but in
+vain, no attention was paid to him.&nbsp; On the contrary, the
+progress of the flames not appearing rapid enough, it was
+endeavoured to accelerate it by shoving the snow from the roof
+and loosening the frame-work.&nbsp; The fire now extended
+rapidly, one beam after another blazed up, and at length the roof
+fell in on the wretched woman.</p>
+<p>The ashes smouldered the whole night; on the following morning
+nothing was found remaining but the charred bones of
+Ignatjewa.</p>
+<p>The idea now, it would seem, occurred to the murderers that
+perhaps, after all, their action had not been altogether
+lawful.&nbsp; They accordingly resolved to bribe the local
+authority, who had already viewed the scene of the affair, to
+hush it up.&nbsp; For this purpose they made a collection, and
+handed him the proceeds, twenty-one roubles ninety copecks.&nbsp;
+To their astonishment he did not accept the money, but at once
+reported the horrible deed to his superior officer.&nbsp; Sixteen
+of the villagers were, in consequence, brought up for trial at
+Tichwin before the district court of Novgorod on the charge of
+murdering Agrafena Ignatjewa, in the manner above described.</p>
+<p><!-- page 207--><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+207</span>After a protracted hearing with jury the following
+result was arrived at:&mdash;Kauschin, who had first set fire to
+the building; Starovij, who had assisted in accelerating the
+burning; and Nikisorow, the prime mover in the matter, who had
+nailed up the windows, were found guilty, and sentenced by the
+judge to some slight ecclesiastical penance, while the remaining
+thirteen, including the aged Schipensk&mdash;who had used his
+influence to prevent a rescue&mdash;went scot free.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Spanish Gipsies, in Grellmann&rsquo;s day, would resort to
+the most wicked and inhuman practices.&nbsp; Before taking one of
+their horses to the fair they would make an incision in some
+secret part of the skin, through which they would blow the
+creature up till his flesh looked fat and plump, and then they
+would apply a strong sticking plaster to prevent the air
+escaping.&nbsp; Wolfgang Franz says they make use of another
+device with an eel.&nbsp; Grellmann says of the Spanish Gipsies
+in his day that dancing was another means of getting something;
+they generally practised dancing when they were begging,
+particularly if men were about the streets.&nbsp; Their dances
+were of the most disgusting kind that could be conceived; the
+most lascivious attitudes and gestures, young girls and married
+women, travelling with their fathers, would indulge in, to the
+extent of frisking about the streets in a state of nudity.</p>
+<p>Further inquiries among the Gipsies more than ever satisfy me
+that my first statement last August, viz., that five per cent. of
+them could not read and write, is being more than fully borne out
+by facts brought under my notice; in fact, I question if there
+will be three per cent. of the Gipsies who can read and
+write.&nbsp; The following letter has been sent to me by a friend
+to show that there is one Gipsy in the country, at least, who
+knows how to put a letter together, and as it is somewhat of a
+curiosity I give it, as exactly as possible as I received it, of
+course leaving out the name, and without note or comment.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><!-- page 208--><a
+name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+208</span>&ldquo;Newtown Moor,<br />
+&ldquo;the 22nd, 1877.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear Sir,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I recivd your last Letter, and proude to say that I
+shall (if alls well) endeavor to cum on the day mentioned.&nbsp;
+I shall start from hear 5.36 a.m., and be in Edinburgh betwen 3
+and 4.&nbsp; I have no more to say very particular, only feel
+proude of having the enviteation (we are all well hear) with the
+exception of my little Daughter.&nbsp; She still keeps about the
+same.&nbsp; I shall finish (this little bit) by sending all our
+very kind love and respects to Mrs. --- and yourself.&nbsp;
+Hopeing this will find you boath in good helth (I shall go on
+with a little bit of something else)&nbsp; (by the way, a little
+filling up which I hope you will parden me for taking up so much
+of your time.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;I am yours<br />
+&ldquo;Very obediently,t<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Welsh Harper</span>.</p>
+<p>(Now a little more about what my poor old mother leant me when
+a child) and before I go on any further I want you (if you will
+be so kind) as to perticullery&mdash;understand me&mdash;that the
+ch has a curious sound&mdash;also the LR, as, for instence,
+chommay, in staid hommay, choy in place of hoi.&nbsp; Chotche yoi
+instaid of <i>hotche</i> yoi.&nbsp; Matteva ma tot <i>in
+staid</i> of lat eva ma tot and so on.&nbsp; I shall now commence
+with the feminine and the musculin gender (but I must mind as I
+don&rsquo;t put my foot in it) as you know a hundred times more
+than I do about these last words&mdash;the same time the maight
+be a little picket up by <i>them</i>.&nbsp; <i>Well</i>, hear
+goes to make a start.&nbsp; (You must not always laugh.)</p>
+</blockquote>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;Singular<br />
+&ldquo;Masculine gender.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Feminine gender.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>M.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>F.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Dad</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dai</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dada</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Daia</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Chavo</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chai</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chavay</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Chaia</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Tieno</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tienoy</p>
+</td>
+<td colspan="2"><p>Tickna</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><!-- page 209--><a name="page209"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 209</span>Morsh</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Jovel</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Morsha</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Jovya</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Gongeo</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gangee</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gongea</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gongeya</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Racloo</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Raclee</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Raclay&nbsp; or</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Racklay</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Pal</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Pen</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Palla</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Peoya</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Pella</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Penya</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Cock</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Bebey</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<blockquote><p>(I shall finish this) as you know yourself it will
+take me to long to go on with more of it.&nbsp; I shall now sho
+how my poor mother use to speak her English.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">The whol Famaly Camping with
+Horses</span>, <span class="smcap">Donkeys</span>, <span
+class="smcap">and Dogs</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On the first weakning in the morning (mother speaking
+to my Father in the Tent)&mdash;&ldquo;Now, man, weak dear Boys
+up to go and geather some sticks to light the fire, and to see
+whare dem Hoses and Donkeys are.&nbsp; I think I shoud some
+marshas helen a pray the Drom and coving the collas out of the
+pub.&nbsp; Mother again&mdash;Now, boy, go and get some water to
+put in the ole kettle for breakfast.&nbsp; The Boy&mdash;I
+davda&mdash;I must go and do every bit a thing.&nbsp; Why
+don&rsquo;t you send dat gel to cer some thing some times her
+crie chee tal only wishing talkay all the blessed time.&nbsp;
+Mother, I am going to send her to the farm House for milk (jack
+loses mony) when a Bran of fire is flying after him, and he (the
+boy) over a big piece of wood, and hurts his knea.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The girl goes for the milk (and she has a river to go
+threw) when presently a Bull is heard roreng.&nbsp; Mother, dare
+now, boy, go and meet your sister; does de Bull roreing after
+her.&nbsp; She will fall down in a faint in de middle of de
+riber.&nbsp; Boy sar can I gal ear yoi ta ma docadom me heroi ta
+shom quit leam (the old woman), go, man, go, man, and stick has
+dat charey chai is a beling da da say dat dat is a very bad after
+jovyas.&nbsp; Strenge men brings the Horses and donkeys up to the
+tents, and begins to scould very much.&nbsp; (The little girl
+comes with the milk.)&nbsp; The girl <!-- page 210--><a
+name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>said to her
+brother that she may fall over the wooden in the river for what
+he cared; yet the boy said that when she would fall down she
+would chin a bit, and all the fish would come and nibble at
+her.&nbsp; Horras and her bull; and then they began the scrubble,
+and begins to scould her brother for not going to meet her, when
+they boath have a scuffel over the fire, and very near knocks the
+jockett over, when the boy hops away upon one leg, and hops upon
+one of the dog&rsquo;s paws&mdash;un-seen&mdash;and dog runs away
+barking, and runs himself near one of the Donkeys, and the Donkey
+gives him a kick, until he is briging in the horse.&nbsp; The old
+woman: Dare now, dare now, ockkie now chorro jocked mardo.&nbsp;
+Breakfast is over with a deal of boather, and a little laughing
+and cursing and swaring.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They strike the tents.&nbsp; (The old woman)&nbsp; Men
+chovolay nen sig waste ja mangay.&nbsp; I am a faling a vaver
+drom codires, and you will meet me near old Town.&nbsp; Be shewer
+and leave a <i>pattern</i> by the side of the cross road, if you
+sal be dare before me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;(The old man and the Boys Pitches the Tents) and gets
+himself ready to go to the Town.&nbsp; The old woman comes up,
+and one of the girls with her&mdash;boath very tired and havey,
+loaded with <i>choben</i> behind her back, anugh to frighten
+waggens and carts of the road with her humpey back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;(They intend to stay in this delightfull camping place
+for a good many days.)&nbsp; To day is soposid to be a very hot
+day, and a fare day in a Town about three miles and &frac12; from
+there.&nbsp; The old woman and one of her Daughters goes out as
+usual.&nbsp; The old man takes a couple of Horses to the Fare to
+try and sell.&nbsp; (The boys go a fishing.)&nbsp; The day is
+very bright and hot.&nbsp; (The old man soon comes home.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One of the prityist girls takes a strol by herself down
+to a butyfull streem of water to have herself a wash, and she
+begins singing to the sound of a waterfall close by her, when all
+of a suden a very nice looking young gentleman, who got tiard
+fishing in the morning, and the day being very hot, <!-- page
+211--><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+211</span>took a bit of a lull on his face, his basket on his
+back, and Fishing-rod by his side (the girl did not see him) nor
+him her) until he was atracted by some strange sound, when all of
+a instant he sprung upon his heels, and to his surprise seen a
+most butyfull creature with her bear bosom and her long black
+hair and butyfull black eyes, white teeth, and a butyfull
+figure.&nbsp; He stared with all the eyes he had, and he made a
+advance towards her, and when she seen him she stared also at
+him, and aproaching slowly towards her and saying, from whence
+comest thou hear, my butyfull maid (and staring at her butyfull
+figure) thinking that she was some angel as droped down (when she
+with a pleasant smile by showing her ivory and her sparkling
+eyes)&nbsp; Oh, my father&rsquo;s tents are not fare off, and
+seen the day very warm I thought to have a little wash.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gentleman Well indeed I have been fishing to day, and
+cot a few this morning; but the day turned out so excesably hot I
+was obliged to go in to a shade and have a sleep, but was alarmed
+at your sweet voice mingling with the murmuring waters.&nbsp;
+They boath steer up to the camp, when now and then as he is
+speaking to her on the road going up, a loude and shrill laugh is
+heard many times&mdash;the same time he does not sho the least
+sign of vulgaraty by taking any sort of liberty with her
+whatever.&nbsp; They arrive at the tents, when one or the little
+boys says to his dady Dady, dady, there is a rye a velin a
+pra.&nbsp; The gentleman sitts himself down and pulls out a big
+Flask very near full of Brandy and toboco, and offers to the old
+man.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By this time that young girl goes in her Tent and pull
+down the front, and presently out she comes butyfully dressed,
+which bewitched the young gentleman, and he said that they were
+welcome to come there to stop as long as they had a mind so as
+they would not tear the Headges.&nbsp; He goes and leaves them
+highly delighted towards hime, and he should pay them another
+visit.&nbsp; This camping ground belonged to the young
+gentleman&rsquo;s father, and is situated in <!-- page 212--><a
+name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 212</span>a butyfull
+part of Derbyshire.&nbsp; One of the little girls sees two young
+ladys coming a little sideways across the common from a
+gentleman&rsquo;s house which is very near, which turns out to be
+the gentleman&rsquo;s two sisters.&nbsp; The little girl, Mamey,
+mamey, der is doi Rawngas avelin accai atch a pray.&nbsp; The
+young ladys comes to the tents and smiles, when the old woman
+says to one of them, Good day, meyam, it&rsquo;s a very fine day,
+meyam; shall I tell you a few words, meyam?&nbsp; The old woman
+takes them on one side and tells them something just to please
+them, now and then a word of truth, the rest a good lot of
+lies.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The old man goes off for a stroll with a couple of
+dogs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One of the young boys asks his mother for some money,
+and she refuses him, or says she has got none.&nbsp; The boy
+says, Where is the &pound;000 tooteys sold froom those doi
+Rawngas maw did accai I held now from them they pend them not
+appopolar?&nbsp; One of the other brothers says to him, Hear,
+Abraham, ile lend you 5s.&nbsp; Will you, my blessed
+brother.&nbsp; Yes, I will; hear it is.&nbsp; Now we will boath
+of us go to the gav togeather.&nbsp; One gets his fiddle ready
+and the other the Tamareen.&nbsp; The harp is too heavy to
+carry.&nbsp; They go to call at the post office for a
+chinginargery&mdash;they boath come home rather wary.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The next day the Boys go a fishing again and bring home
+a good lot (as the day was not near so hot as the day before) and
+comes home in good time to play the harp and violin (and
+sometimes the Tambureen) for the county gouges [green horns], as
+a good many comes to have a dance on the green&mdash;the
+collection would be the boys pocket money.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a great deal of amusement found by those that
+us to follow Barns.&nbsp; The have many country people coming
+them to hear there music and to dance on the green, or sometimes
+in the barn, but most oftener in the house in a big kitchen, and
+the country people would be staring at the collays, Gipsies, with
+all there eyes, and the Gipsies would stare at the people to see
+them such Dinalays [fools].</p>
+<p><!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+213</span>&ldquo;Those who followed Barns, us to call
+gentlemen&rsquo;s houses with the Harps, and us to be called in
+and make a good thing of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear Mr.&mdash;With your permission I will leave of
+now, and let you know a little more when I come.&nbsp; Hoping
+that I have not trespased on your time to read such
+follishness.&nbsp; All that I have written has happened.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;I again beg to remain,<br />
+&ldquo;Yours very respectfully,<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Welshanengay Bory
+Boshahengbo</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">[Hedge Fiddler.]</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg to acquaint you that I am the oldest living Welsh
+Harper in the world at the present time.&nbsp; Mr. Thomas G---,
+Welsh Harper to the Prince of Wales, is next to me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It would be perhaps a difficult task to find a score of
+Gipsies out of the 15,000 to 20,000 there are in this country who
+can write as well as the foregoing letter.</p>
+<p>The following may be considered a fair specimen of the high
+class or &ldquo;Gentleman Gipsy,&rdquo; so much admired by those
+who have got the Gipsy spell round their necks, the Gipsy
+spectacles before their eyes, the Gipsy charm in their pocket,
+and who can see nothing but what is lively, charming,
+fascinating, and delightful in the Gipsy, from the crown of his
+head to the sole of his foot.&nbsp; To those of my friends I
+present them with an account of Ryley Bosvil as a man after their
+own heart, at the same time I would call their attention to his
+ending, as related by Borrow.</p>
+<p>Ryley Bosvil was a native of Yorkshire, a county where, as the
+Gipsies say, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a deadly sight of
+Bosvils.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was above the middle height, exceedingly
+strong and active, and one of the best riders in Yorkshire, which
+is saying a great deal.&nbsp; He was thoroughly versed in all the
+arts of the old race; he had two wives, never went to church, and
+considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth <!--
+page 214--><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+214</span>and there was an end of him.&nbsp; He frequently used
+to say that if any of his people became Gorgios he would kill
+them.&nbsp; He had a sister of the name of Clara, a nice,
+delicate girl, about fourteen years younger than himself, who
+travelled about with an aunt; this girl was noticed by a
+respectable Christian family, who, taking great interest in her,
+persuaded her to come and live with them.&nbsp; She was
+instructed by them, in the rudiments of the Christian religion,
+appeared delighted with her new friends, and promised never to
+leave them.&nbsp; After the lapse of about six weeks there was a
+knock at the door, and a dark man stood before it, who said he
+wanted Clara.&nbsp; Clara went out trembling, had some discourse
+with the man in an unknown tongue, and shortly returned in tears,
+and said that she must go.&nbsp; &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; said her
+friends.&nbsp; &ldquo;Did you not promise to stay with
+us?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;I did so,&rdquo; said the girl, weeping
+more bitterly; &ldquo;but that man is my brother, who says I must
+go with him; and what he says must be.&rdquo;&nbsp; So with her
+brother she departed, and her Christian friends never saw her
+again.&nbsp; What became of her?&nbsp; Was she made away
+with?&nbsp; Many thought she was, but she was not.&nbsp; Ryley
+put her into a light cart, drawn by a &ldquo;flying pony,&rdquo;
+and hurried her across England, even to distant Norfolk, where he
+left her with three Gipsy women.&nbsp; With these women the
+writer found her encamped in a dark wood, and had much discourse
+with her both on Christian and Egyptian matters.&nbsp; She was
+very melancholy, bitterly regretted her having been compelled to
+quit her Christian friends, and said that she wished she had
+never been a Gipsy.&nbsp; She was exhorted to keep a firm grip of
+her Christianity, and was not seen again for a quarter of a
+century, when she was met on Epsom Downs on the Derby day, when
+the terrible horse, &ldquo;Gladiateur,&rdquo; beat all the
+English steeds.&nbsp; She was then very much changed indeed,
+appearing as a full-blown Egyptian matron, with two very handsome
+daughters flaringly dressed in genuine Gipsy fashion, to whom she
+was giving motherly counsels as to the <!-- page 215--><a
+name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>best means
+to <i>hok</i> and <i>dukker</i> the gentlefolk.&nbsp; All her
+Christianity she appeared to have flung to the dogs, for when the
+writer spoke to her on that very important subject she made no
+answer save by an indescribable Gipsy look.&nbsp; On other
+matters she was communicative enough, telling the writer, amongst
+other things, that since he saw her she had been twice married,
+and both times very well, for that her first husband, by whom she
+had the two daughters, whom the writer &ldquo;kept staring
+at,&rdquo; was a man every inch of him, and her second, who was
+then on the Downs grinding knives with a machine he had, though
+he had not much manhood, being nearly eighty years old, had
+something much better, namely, a mint of money, which she hoped
+shortly to have in her possession.</p>
+<p>Ryley, like most of the Bosvils, was a tinker by profession;
+but though a tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of
+heart.&nbsp; His grand ambition was to be a great man among his
+people, a Gipsy king (no such individuals as either Gipsy kings
+or queens ever existed).&nbsp; To this end he furnished himself
+with clothes made after the costliest Gipsy fashion; the two
+hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were
+broad gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the
+fore-buttons were English &ldquo;spaded guineas,&rdquo; the
+buttons of the waistcoat were half-guineas, and those of the
+collar and the wrists of his shirt were seven-shilling
+gold-pieces.&nbsp; In this coat he would frequently make his
+appearance on a magnificent horse, whose hoofs, like those of the
+steed of a Turkish Sultan, were cased in shoes of silver.&nbsp;
+How did he support such expense? it may be asked.&nbsp; Partly by
+driving a trade in &ldquo;wafedo loovo,&rdquo; counterfeit coin,
+with which he was supplied by certain honest tradespeople of
+Brummagem; partly and principally by large sums of money which he
+received from his two wives, and which they obtained by the
+practice of certain arts peculiar to Gipsy females.&nbsp; One of
+his wives was a truly remarkable woman.&nbsp; She was of the
+Petalengro or Smith <!-- page 216--><a name="page216"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 216</span>tribe.&nbsp; Her Christian name, if
+Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri, and from her
+exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called by
+the Gipsies Yocky Shuri&mdash;that is, smart or clever Shuri,
+Yocky being a Gipsy word signifying &ldquo;clever.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+She could dukker&mdash;that is, tell fortunes&mdash;to
+perfection, by which alone, during the racing season, she could
+make a hundred pounds a month.&nbsp; She was good at the big
+hok&mdash;that is, at inducing people to put money into her hands
+in the hope of it being multiplied; and, oh, dear! how she could
+caur&mdash;that is, filch gold rings and trinkets from
+jewellers&rsquo; cases, the kind of thing which the Spanish
+Gipsies call ustibar pastesas&mdash;filching with hands.&nbsp;
+Frequently she would disappear and travel about England, and
+Scotland too, dukkering, hokking, and cauring, and after the
+lapse of a month return and deliver to her husband, like a true
+and faithful wife, the proceeds of her industry.&nbsp; So no
+wonder that the Flying Tinker, as he was called, was enabled to
+cut a grand appearance.&nbsp; He was very fond of hunting, and
+would frequently join the field in regular hunting costume, save
+and except that instead of the leather hunting cap he wore one of
+fur, with a gold band round it, to denote that though he mixed
+with Gorgios he was still a Romany chal.&nbsp; Thus equipped, and
+mounted on a capital hunter, whenever he encountered a Gipsy
+encampment he would invariably dash through it, doing all the
+harm he could, in order, as he said, to let the juggals know that
+he was their king, and had a right to do what he pleased with his
+own.&nbsp; Things went on swimmingly for a great many years, but,
+as prosperity does not continue for ever, his dark hour came at
+last.&nbsp; His wives got into trouble in one or two expeditions,
+and his dealings in wafedo loovo to be noised about.&nbsp;
+Moreover, by his grand airs and violent proceedings, he had
+incurred the hatred of both Gorgios and Gipsies, particularly of
+the latter, some of whom he had ridden over and lamed for
+life.&nbsp; One day he addressed his two wives&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><!-- page 217--><a name="page217"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 217</span>&ldquo;The Gorgios seek to hang
+me,<br />
+The Gipsies seek to kill me;<br />
+This country we must leave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Shuri</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll join with you to heaven,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll fare with you, Yandors,<br />
+But not if Lura goes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Lura</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll join with you to heaven<br />
+And to the wicked country,<br />
+Though Shuri goeth too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Ryley</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Since I must choose betwixt you,<br />
+My choice is Yocky Shuri,<br />
+Though Lura loves me best.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Lura</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My blackest curse on Shuri;<br />
+Oh, Ryley, I&rsquo;ll not curse you,<br />
+But you will never thrive.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>She then took her departure, with her cart and donkey, and
+Ryley remained with Shuri.</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Ryley</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve chosen now betwixt ye,<br />
+Your wish you now have gotten,<br />
+But for it you shall smart.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He then struck her with his fist on the cheek and broke her
+jaw-bone.&nbsp; Shuri uttered no cry or complaint, only
+mumbled&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Although with broken jaw-bone,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll follow thee, my Riley,<br />
+Since Lura doesn&rsquo;t fal.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thereupon Ryley and Yocky Shuri left Yorkshire and wended
+their way to London, where they took up their abode in the
+Gipsyry near Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush.&nbsp; Shuri went about
+dukkering and hokking, but not with the spirit of former times,
+for she was not quite so young as she had been, and her jaw,
+which was never properly cured, pained her very <!-- page
+218--><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+218</span>much.&nbsp; Ryley went about tinkering, but he was
+unacquainted with London and its neighbourhood, and did not get
+much to do.&nbsp; An old Gipsy man, who was driving about a
+little cart filled with skewers, saw him standing in a state of
+perplexity at a place where four roads met:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Old
+Gipsy</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Methinks I see a brother.<br />
+Who&rsquo;s your father?&nbsp; Who&rsquo;s your mother?<br />
+And what be your name?&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Ryley</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A Bosvil was my father,<br />
+A Bosvil was my mother,<br />
+And Ryley is my name.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Old
+Gipsy</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to see you, brother;<br />
+I am a kaulo camlo. <a name="citation218a"></a><a
+href="#footnote218a" class="citation">[218a]</a><br />
+What service can I do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Ryley</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m jawing petulengring, <a
+name="citation218b"></a><a href="#footnote218b"
+class="citation">[218b]</a><br />
+But do not know the country;<br />
+Perhaps you&rsquo;ll show me round.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Old
+Gipsy</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll sikker tulle prala!<br />
+Ino bikkening escouyor, <a name="citation218c"></a><a
+href="#footnote218c" class="citation">[218c]</a><br />
+And av along with me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The old Gipsy showed Ryley about the country for a week or
+two, and Ryley formed a kind of connection and did a little
+business.&nbsp; He, however, displayed little or no energy, was
+gloomy and dissatisfied, and frequently said that his heart was
+broken since he had left Yorkshire.&nbsp; Shuri did her best to
+cheer him, but without effect.&nbsp; Once when she bade him get
+up and exert himself, he said that if he did it would be of no
+use, and asked her whether she did not remember the parting
+prophecy of his other wife, that he would never thrive.&nbsp; At
+the end of about two years he ceased <!-- page 219--><a
+name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>going his
+rounds, and did nothing but smoke under the arches of the
+railroad and loiter about beershops.&nbsp; At length he became
+very weak and took to his bed; doctors were called in by his
+faithful Shuri, but there is no remedy for a bruised
+spirit.&nbsp; A Methodist came and asked him, &ldquo;What was his
+hope?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;My hope,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is that
+when I am dead I shall be put into the ground, and my wife and
+children will weep over me,&rdquo; and such, it may be observed,
+is the last hope of every genuine Gipsy.&nbsp; His hope was
+gratified.&nbsp; Shuri and his children, of whom he had
+three&mdash;two stout young fellows and a girl&mdash;gave him a
+magnificent funeral, and screamed and shouted and wept over his
+grave.&nbsp; They then returned to the &ldquo;arches,&rdquo; not
+to divide his property among them, and to quarrel about the
+division, according to Christian practice, but to destroy
+it.&nbsp; They killed his swift pony&mdash;still swift though
+twenty-seven years of age&mdash;and buried it deep in the ground
+without depriving it of its skin.&nbsp; Then they broke the
+caravan to pieces, making of the fragments a fire, on which they
+threw his bedding, carpets, curtains, blankets, and everything
+which would burn.&nbsp; Finally, they dashed his mirrors, china,
+and crockery to pieces, hacked his metal pots, dishes, and what
+not to bits, and flung the whole on the blazing pile. <a
+name="citation219"></a><a href="#footnote219"
+class="citation">[219]</a>&nbsp; Such was the life, such the
+death, and such were the funeral obsequies of Ryley Bosvil, a
+Gipsy who will be long remembered amongst the English Romany for
+his buttons, his two wives, grand airs, and last not least, for
+having been the composer of various stanzas in the Gipsy tongue,
+which have plenty of force if nothing else to recommend
+them.&nbsp; One of these, addressed to Yocky Shuri, runs as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><!-- page 220--><a name="page220"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 220</span>&ldquo;Beneath the bright sun there
+is none,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is none<br
+/>
+I love like my Yocky Shuri;<br />
+With the greatest delight in blood I would fight<br />
+To the knees for my Yocky Shuri.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>How much better and happier it would have been for this poor,
+hardened, ignorant, old Gipsy, if, instead of indulging in such
+rubbish as he did in the last hours of an idle and wasted life,
+he could, after a life spent in doing good to the Gipsies and
+others over whom he had influence, as the shades of the evening
+of life gathered round him, sung, from the bottom of his
+heart&mdash;fetching tears to his eyes as it did mine a Sunday or
+two ago&mdash;the following verses to the tune of
+&ldquo;Belmont:&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When in the vale of lengthened years<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My feeble feet shall tread,<br />
+And I survey the various scenes<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through which I have been led,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How many mercies will my life<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Before my view unfold!<br />
+What countless dangers will be past!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What tales of sorrow told!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This scene will all my labours end,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This road conduct on high;<br />
+With comfort I&rsquo;ll review the past,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And triumph though I die.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On the first Sunday in February this year I found myself
+surrounded by a black, thick London fog&mdash;almost as dense as
+the blackest midnight, and an overpowering sense of suffocation
+creeping over me&mdash;in the midst of an encampment of Gipsies
+at Canning Town, and, acting upon their kind invitation, I crept
+into one of their tents, and there found about a dozen Gipsy men
+of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg
+shavings.&nbsp; Some of their faces looked full of intelligence
+and worthy of a better vocation, and others seemed as if they had
+had the &ldquo;cropper&rdquo; at work round their ears; so short
+was their hair <!-- page 221--><a name="page221"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 221</span>that any one attempting to
+&ldquo;pull it up by the roots&rdquo; would have a difficult
+task, unless he set to it with his teeth.&nbsp; They looked to me
+as if several of them had worn bright steel ornaments round their
+wrists and had danced at a county ball, and done more stepping
+upon the wheel of fortune than many people imagine; at any rate,
+they were quite happy in their way, and seemed prepared for
+another turn round when needful.&nbsp; Their first salutation
+was, &ldquo;Well, governor, how are you?&nbsp; Sit you down and
+make yourself comfortable, and let&rsquo;s have a chat.&nbsp;
+Never mind if it is Sunday, send for some &lsquo;fourpenny&rsquo;
+for us.&rdquo;&nbsp; I partly did as they bid me, but, owing to
+the darkness of the tent and the fog, I sat upon a seat that was
+partly covered with filth, consequently I had an addition to my
+trousers more than I bargained for.&nbsp; I told them my object
+was not to come to send for &ldquo;fourpenny,&rdquo; but to get a
+law passed to compel the Gipsy parents to send their children to
+school, and to have their tents registered and provided with a
+kind of school pass book; and, before I had well finished my
+remarks, one of the Gipsies, a good-looking fellow, said,
+&ldquo;I say, Bill, that will be a capital thing, won&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;God bless you, man, for it,&rdquo; was
+the remark of another, and so the thing went the round among
+them.&nbsp; By this time there were some score or more Gipsy
+women and children at the tent door, or, I should rather say, rag
+coverlet, who heard what had passed, and they thoroughly fell in
+with the idea.&nbsp; The question next turned upon
+religion.&nbsp; They said they had heard that there were
+half-a-dozen different religions, and asked me if it was
+true.&nbsp; One said he was a Roman Catholic; but did not believe
+there was a hell.&nbsp; Another said he was a Methodist, but
+could not agree with their singing and praying, and so it went
+round till they asked me what religion was.&nbsp; I told them in
+a way that seemed to satisfy them, and I also told them some of
+its results.&nbsp; I could not learn that any of these Gipsies
+had ever been in a place of worship.</p>
+<p><!-- page 222--><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+222</span>I mentioned to them that I wanted to show, during my
+inquiries, both sides of the question, and should be glad if they
+would point out to me the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up
+to and consider as a good pattern for them to follow.&nbsp; Here
+they began to scratch their heads, and said I had put them
+&ldquo;a nightcap on.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Upon my soul,&rdquo;
+said one, &ldquo;I should not know where to begin to look for
+one,&rdquo; and then related to me the following
+story:&mdash;&ldquo;The Devil sent word to some of his agents for
+them to send him the worst man they could find upon the face of
+the earth.&nbsp; So news went about among various societies
+everywhere, consultations and meetings were held, and it was
+decided that a Gipsy should be sent, as none of the societies or
+agents could find one bad enough.&nbsp; Accordingly a passport
+was procured, and they started the Gipsy on his way.&nbsp; When
+he came to the door of hell he knocked for admittance.&nbsp; The
+Devil shouted out, &lsquo;Who is there?&rsquo;&nbsp; The Gipsy
+cried out, &lsquo;A Gipsy.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;All right,&rsquo;
+said the Devil; &lsquo;you are just the man I am wanting.&nbsp; I
+have been on the look-out for you some time.&nbsp; Come in.&nbsp;
+I have been told the Gipsies are the worst folks in all the
+world.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Gipsy had not been long in hell before
+the Devil perceived that he was too bad for his place, and the
+place began to swarm with young imps to such a degree that the
+Devil called the Gipsy to him one day, and said, &lsquo;Of all
+the people that have ever come to this place you are the
+worst.&nbsp; You are too bad for us.&nbsp; Here is your
+passport.&nbsp; Be off back again!&rsquo;&nbsp; The Devil opened
+the door, and said, as the Gipsy was going, &lsquo;Make yourself
+scarce.&rsquo;&nbsp; So you see,&rdquo; said Lee to me, &ldquo;we
+are too bad for the Devil.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll go anywhere, fight
+anybody, or do anything.&nbsp; Now, lads, drink that
+&lsquo;fourpenny&rsquo; up, and let&rsquo;s send for some
+more.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is Gipsy life in England on a Sunday
+afternoon within the sound of church bells.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p222b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her pipe"
+title=
+"A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her pipe"
+src="images/p222s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The proprietor of the <i>Weekly Times</i> very readily granted
+permission for one of the principals of his staff to accompany me
+to one of the Gipsy encampments a Sunday or two ago <!-- page
+223--><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>on
+the outskirts of London.&nbsp; Those who know the writer would
+say the article is truthful, and not in the least
+overdrawn:&mdash;&ldquo;The lane was full of decent-looking
+houses, tenanted by labourers in foundries and gas and
+waterworks; but there were spaces between the rows of houses,
+forming yards for the deposit of garbage, and in these unsavoury
+spots the Gipsies had drawn up their caravans, and pitched their
+smoke-blackened tents.&nbsp; These yards were separated from each
+other by rows of cottages, and each yard contained families
+related near or distantly, or interested in each other&rsquo;s
+welfare by long associations in the country during summer time,
+and in such places as we found them during the winter
+season.&nbsp; After spending several hours with these people in
+their tents and caravans, and passing from yard to yard, asking
+the talkative ones questions, we came to the conclusion that, in
+the whole bounds of this great metropolis, it would have been
+impossible to have found any miscalling themselves Gipsies whose
+mode of living more urgently called for the remedial action of
+the law than the tenants of Lamb-lane.&nbsp; In the first place,
+there was not a true Gipsy amongst them; nor one man, woman, or
+child who could in any degree claim relationship with a
+Gipsy.&nbsp; They were, all of them, idle loafers, who had
+adopted the wandering life of the Gipsy because of the
+opportunities it afforded of combining a maximum of idle hours
+with a minimum of work.&nbsp; The men exhibited this in their
+countenances, in the attitudes they took up, by the whining drawl
+with which they spoke; the women, by their dirtiness and
+inattention to dress; and the children, by their filthy
+condition.&nbsp; The men and women had fled from the restraints
+of house life to escape the daily routine which a home involved;
+the men had no higher ambition than to obtain a small sum of
+money on the Saturday to pay for a few days&rsquo; food.&nbsp;
+There was not one man amongst them who could solder a broken
+kettle; a few, however, could mend a chair bottom, but there all
+industrial ability ended; and the <!-- page 224--><a
+name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>others got
+their living by shaving skewers from Monday morning to Friday
+night, which were sold to butchers at 10d. or 1s. the
+stone.&nbsp; These men stayed at home, working over the brazier
+of burning coke during the week, while their wives hawked small
+wool mats or vases, but nothing of their own manufacture; and the
+grown-up lads, on market-days, added to the general industry by
+buying flowers in Covent-garden, and hawking them in the suburbs
+of the metropolis.&nbsp; We were assured by Mr. Smith that this
+class of pseudo-Gipsy was largely on the increase, and to check
+their spread Mr. Smith suggests that the provisions of an Act of
+Parliament should be mainly directed.&nbsp; Only one of all we
+saw and spoke to on Sunday was &lsquo;a scholar&rsquo;&mdash;that
+is, could read at all&mdash;and this was a lad of about fourteen,
+who had spent a few hours occasionally at a Board school.&nbsp;
+With all the others the knowledge that comes of reading was an
+absolute blank.&nbsp; They knew nothing, except that the proceeds
+of the previous week had been below the average; social events of
+surpassing interest had not reached them, and the future was
+limited by &lsquo;to-morrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; We questioned them upon
+their experiences of the past winter, and the preference they had
+for their tents over houses was emphatically marked.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Brick houses,&rsquo; said one woman, who was suckling a
+baby, &lsquo;are so full of draughts.&rsquo;&nbsp; Night and day
+the brazier of burning coke was never allowed to go low, and
+under the tent the ground was always dry, however wet it might be
+outside, because of the heat from the brazier; besides, they lay
+upon well-trodden-down straw, six or eight inches deep, and
+covered themselves with their clothes, their wraps, their filthy
+rugs, and tattered rags, and were as warm as possible.&nbsp; The
+tents had many advantages over a brick house.&nbsp; Besides
+having no draughts, there was no accumulation of snow upon the
+tops of the tents; and so these witless people were content to
+endure poverty, hunger, cold, and dirt for the sake of minimising
+their contribution to the general good of the whole
+commonwealth.&nbsp; The poorest working man in <!-- page 225--><a
+name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 225</span>London who
+does an honest week&rsquo;s work is a hero compared with such men
+as these.&nbsp; It would be impossible to nurture sentiment in
+any tent in Lamb-lane.&nbsp; There was no face with a glimmer of
+honest self-reliance about it, no face bearing any trace of the
+strange beauty we had noticed in other encampments, and no form
+possessed of any distinguishing grace.&nbsp; The whole of the
+yards were redolent of dirt; and the people, each and all,
+inexcusably foul in person.&nbsp; In several yards little boys or
+girls sat on the ground in the open air, tending coke fires over
+which stood iron pots, and, as the water boiled and raised the
+lids, it was plain that the women were taking advantage of the
+quiet hours of the afternoon for a wash.&nbsp; Before we came
+away from the last yard, lines had been strung across all the
+yards, and the hastily-washed linen rags were fluttering in the
+air.&nbsp; One tent was closed to visitors.&nbsp; It was then
+four o&rsquo;clock, and a woman told us confidentially her friend
+was washing a blanket, which she would have to dry that same
+afternoon, as it would be &lsquo;wanted&rsquo; at night; but
+&lsquo;the friend&rsquo; professed her readiness to take charge
+of anything we had to spare for the washerwoman&mdash;a mouthful
+of baccy, a &lsquo;sucker&rsquo; for the baby, or &lsquo;three
+ha&rsquo;pence for a cup of tea.&rsquo;&nbsp; Boys were there of
+fourteen and sixteen, with great rents in the knees of their
+corduroys, who only went out to hawk one day in the
+week&mdash;Saturday.&nbsp; They started with a light truck for
+Covent-garden at four in the morning, and would have from 4s. to
+6s. to lay out in flowers.&nbsp; When questioned as to what
+flowers they had bought on the previous day, one lad said they
+were &lsquo;tulips, hyacinths, and cyclaments,&rsquo; but nobody
+could give us an intelligible description of the last-named
+flowers.&nbsp; Two lads generally took charge of the flower
+truck, and the result of the day&rsquo;s hawking was usually a
+profit of half-a-crown to three shillings.&nbsp; These lads also
+assisted during the week in shaving skewers, and accompanied
+their fathers to market when they had a load to sell.&nbsp; In
+one tent we found a dandy-hen sitting; she had been so <!-- page
+226--><a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+226</span>occupied one week, and the presence of the children and
+adults, who shared her straw bed, in no way discomposed
+her.&nbsp; We found that baccy and &lsquo;suckers&rsquo; were the
+most negotiable exchanges with these people.&nbsp; The women,
+young and old, small boys and the men, all smoked, and the day
+became historic with them because, of the extra smokes they were
+able to have.&nbsp; The &lsquo;suckers&rsquo; were the largest
+specimen of &lsquo;bulls&rsquo; eyes&rsquo; we could
+find&mdash;not those dainty specimens sold at the West-end or in
+the Strand, but real whoppers, almost the size of pigeons&rsquo;
+eggs; and yet there was no baby whose mouth was not found equal
+to the reception and the hiding of the largest; and we noticed as
+a strange psychological fact that no baby would consent, though
+earnestly entreated by its mother, to suffer the
+&lsquo;sucker&rsquo; to leave its mouth for the mother to look
+at.&nbsp; The babies knew better, shaking their wary little heads
+at their mothers.&nbsp; Instinct was stronger than
+obedience.&nbsp; We were not sorry to get away from Lamb-lane,
+with its filthy habitations, blanket washings, ragged boys and
+girls, lazy men and women.&nbsp; For the genuine Gipsy tribe, and
+their mysterious promptings to live apart from their fellows in
+the lanes and fields of the country, we have a sentimental pity;
+but with such as these Lamb-lane people, off-scourings of the
+lowest form of society, we have no manner of sympathy; and we
+hope that a gracious Act of Parliament may soon rid English
+social life of such a plague, and teach such people their duty to
+their children and to society at large&mdash;things they are too
+ignorant and too idle to learn for themselves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My son sends me the following account of a visit he made to a
+Gipsy encampment near London:&mdash;I visited the camp at Barking
+Road this afternoon.&nbsp; Possibly you thought I might not go if
+you gave me a correct description of the route, for I certainly
+went through more muddy streets and over lock-bridges than your
+instructions mentioned.&nbsp; Presuming I was near the camp, I
+inquired of a policeman, and was surprised with the reply that
+there used to be one, but <!-- page 227--><a
+name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>he had not
+heard anything of it for a long while.&nbsp; His mind was
+evidently wandering, or else he meant it as a joke, for we were
+then standing within three hundred yards of the largest
+encampment I have yet seen.&nbsp; It is situated at the back of
+Barking Road, in what may be termed a field, but it certainly is
+not a green one, for the only horse and donkey that I saw were
+standing against boxes eating&mdash;perhaps corn.</p>
+<p>I am surprised that the Gipsies should choose such an exposed,
+damp place for camping-ground, as it is always partly under
+water, and the only shelter afforded being a few houses at the
+back and one side; the rest faces, and is consequently exposed
+to, the bleak winds blowing over the marsh and the river.</p>
+<p>At the entrance I was met by a poor woman taking a child to
+the doctor, her chief dread being that if she did not the law
+would be down upon her.&nbsp; She had put the journey off to the
+last minute, for the poor thing looked nearly dead then.</p>
+<p>Once in the camp one could not but notice the miserable
+appearance of the place.&nbsp; Women and children, not one of
+whom could read and write, with scarcely any clothing, the latter
+without shoes or stockings.&nbsp; Twenty to twenty-five old,
+ragged, and dirty tents&mdash;not canvas, but old, worn-out
+blankets&mdash;separated by the remains of old broken vans,
+buckets, and rubbish that must have taken years to
+accumulate.&nbsp; Everything betokened age and poverty.&nbsp;
+Evidently this field has been a camping-ground for some
+years.&nbsp; Three old vans were all the place could boast of,
+and one of those was made out of a two-wheeled cart.</p>
+<p>I was for the first ten minutes fully occupied in trying to
+keep a respectable distance from a number of dogs of all sizes
+and breeds, which had the usual appetite for fresh meat and tweed
+trowsering, and, at the same time, endeavouring in vain to find
+solid ground upon which to stand, for the place at the entrance
+and all round the tents was one regular mass of deep
+&ldquo;slush.&rdquo;&nbsp; It soon became known that my <!-- page
+228--><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+228</span>pockets were plentifully supplied with half-ounces of
+tobacco and sweets.&nbsp; These I soon disposed off, especially
+the latter, for there seemed no end to the little bare-footed
+children that could walk, and those that couldn&rsquo;t were
+brought in turn by their sisters or brothers.&nbsp; I was invited
+to visit all the tents, but I could gain but little information
+beyond an account of the severe winter, bad state of trade, your
+visit in one of the black, dense fogs, &amp;c.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p228b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Inside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s Van&mdash;Mrs. Simpson&rsquo;s"
+title=
+"Inside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s Van&mdash;Mrs. Simpson&rsquo;s"
+src="images/p228s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The men followed the occupation of either tinkers or
+peg-makers, and all the young women will pull out their pipe and
+ask for tobacco as readily as the old ones.</p>
+<p>The camp is one of the Lees.&nbsp; The majority of the men,
+women, and children are of light complexion, and, as for a
+dark-eyed beauty, one was not to be found.&nbsp; I stayed most of
+the time under the &ldquo;blanket&rdquo; of the old man, Thomas
+Lee, who is a jolly old fellow about sixty, and the father of
+eleven young children.&nbsp; He was evidently the life of the
+camp, for they all flock round his tent to hear his interesting
+snatches of song and story.</p>
+<p>He had heard that Her Majesty had sent &pound;50 to assist you
+in getting the children educated, and just before I left I was
+pleased to hear him give vent to his feelings with the rough but
+patriotic speech that &ldquo;She was a rare good woman, and a
+Queen of the right sort.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It must not be inferred from what I have said, or shall say,
+that there are no good Gipsies among them.&nbsp; Here and there
+are females to be found ready at all hours and on all occasions
+to do good both to the souls and bodies of Gipsies and
+house-dwellers as they travel with their basket from door to door
+hawking their wares; and to illustrate the truth of this I cannot
+do better than refer to the case of the good and kind-hearted
+Mrs. Simpson, who is generally located with her husband and some
+grand-children in her van in the neighbourhood near Notting Hill,
+on the outskirts of London.&nbsp; Mrs. Simpson tells me that she
+is not a thorough Gipsy, only a half one.&nbsp; Her father was
+<!-- page 229--><a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+229</span>one of the rare old Gipsy family of Lees, of Norfolk,
+and her mother was a Gorgio or Gentile, who preferred following
+the &ldquo;witching eye&rdquo; and &ldquo;black locks&rdquo; to
+the rag and stick hovel&mdash;or, to be more aristocratic,
+&ldquo;the tent&rdquo;&mdash;whose roof and sides consisted of
+sticks and canvas, with an opening in the roof to serve as a
+chimney, through which the smoke arising from the hearth-stick
+fire could pass, excepting that which settled on the hands and
+face.&nbsp; Grass, green, decayed, or otherwise, to serve as a
+carpet, the brown trampled turf taking the place of mosaic and
+encaustic tile pavements, straw instead of a feather-bed, and a
+soap-box, tea-chest, and like things doing duty as drawing-room
+furniture.&nbsp; Mrs. Simpson, when quite a child, was always
+reckoned most clever in the art of deception, telling lies and
+fortunes out of a small black Testament, of which she could not
+read a sentence or tell a letter; sometimes reading the planets
+of silly geese, simpletons, and fools out of it when it was
+upside down, and when detected she was always ready with a
+plausible excuse, which they, with open mouths, always swallowed
+as Gospel; and for more than twenty-five years she kept herself
+and family in this way with sufficient money to keep them in
+luxury, loose living, and idleness, till the year of 1859, when,
+by some unaccountable means, her conscience, which, up to this
+time, had been insensible, dull, and without feeling, became
+awakened, sharp, and alive.&nbsp; Probably this quickening took
+place in consequence of her hearing a good Methodist minister in
+a mission-room in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; The result was that
+the money she took by telling fortunes began to burn her fingers,
+and to make it sit upon her conscience as easy as possible she
+had a large pocket made in her dress so that she could drop it in
+without much handling.&nbsp; It was no easy thing to give up such
+an easy way of getting a living to face the realities of an
+honest pedlar&rsquo;s life, in the midst of &ldquo;slamming of
+doors,&rdquo; &ldquo;cold-shoulders,&rdquo; &ldquo;scowls,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;frowns,&rdquo; and insults; and a woman with less
+determination of character would never <!-- page 230--><a
+name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 230</span>have
+attempted it&mdash;or, at least, if attempted, it would soon have
+been given up on account of the insurmountable difficulties
+surrounding it.&nbsp; Many times she has sat by the wayside with
+her basket, after walking and toiling all day, and not having
+taken a penny with which to provide the Sunday&rsquo;s dinner,
+when at the last extremity Providence has opened her way and
+friends have appeared upon the scene, and she has been enabled to
+&ldquo;go on her way rejoicing,&rdquo; and for the last twenty
+years she has been trying to do all the good she can, and to day
+she is not one penny the loser, but, on the other hand, a gainer,
+by following such a course.&nbsp; Personally, I have received
+much encouragement and valuable information at her hands to help
+me in my work to do the Gipsy children good in one form or
+other.&nbsp; I have frequently called to see the grand old Gipsy
+woman, sometimes unexpectedly, and when I have done so I have
+either found her reading the Bible or else it has been close to
+her elbow.&nbsp; Its stains and soils betoken much wear and
+constant use.&nbsp; Very different to the old woman who put her
+spectacles into her Bible as she set it upon the clock, and lost
+them for more than seven years.&nbsp; She is a firm believer in
+prayer; in fact, it seems the very essence of her life, and she
+can relate numbers of instances when and where God has answered
+her petitions.&nbsp; On her bed-quilt are the following texts of
+scripture, poetry, &amp;c., which, as she says, these, with other
+portions of God&rsquo;s word, she &ldquo;has learnt to read
+without any other aid except His Holy
+Spirit:&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;For God so loved the world that He
+gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should
+not perish but have everlasting life.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Every
+kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a
+house divided against a house falleth.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+whoso hath this world&rsquo;s goods and seeth his brother have
+need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how
+dwelleth the love of God in him?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;All things
+whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing ye shall
+receive.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
+want.&nbsp; <!-- page 231--><a name="page231"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 231</span>He maketh me to lie down in green
+pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
+death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy
+staff they comfort me.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;I am the door; by Me
+if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out
+and find pasture.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Let nothing be done through
+strife, but in lowliness of mind; let each esteem others better
+than themselves.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Look not every man on his
+own things, but every man also on the things of
+others.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Let your speech be always with grace,
+seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every
+man.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Wives submit yourselves unto your
+husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Husbands
+love your own wives and be not bitter against them.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Children obey your parents in all things, for this is well
+pleasing unto the Lord.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Fathers provoke not
+your children to anger lest they be discouraged.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Servants obey in all things your masters according to the
+flesh, not with eye service as man pleases, but in singleness of
+heart fearing God.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The fruit of the spirit is
+love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,&rdquo;
+&amp;c.&nbsp; &ldquo;The wages of sin is death.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Let us run the race with patience.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Judge not, that ye be not judged.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even
+so to them.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;He that cometh unto Me I will in
+no wise cast out.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Come unto Me all ye that
+labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I am the way, the truth, and the life.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Whatsoever ye find to do, do it with all your
+might.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And God shall wipe away all tears from
+their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor
+crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former
+things are passed away.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;He that overcometh
+shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be
+My son.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And they shall see His face and His
+name shall be in their foreheads.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And there
+shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light
+of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall
+reign for ever and ever.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p><!-- page 232--><a name="page232"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 232</span>&ldquo;Rock of Ages, cleft for
+me,<br />
+Let me hide myself in Thee;<br />
+Let the water and the blood,<br />
+From Thy riven side which flowed,<br />
+Be of sin the double cure,<br />
+Save me from its guilt and power.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;While I draw this fleeting breath,<br />
+When mine eyes shall close in death,<br />
+When I soar to worlds unknown,<br />
+See Thee on Thy judgment throne;<br />
+Rock of Ages, cleft for me,<br />
+Let me hide myself in Thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Just as I am, without one plea,<br />
+But that Thy blood was shed for me,<br />
+And that Thou bidd&rsquo;st me come to Thee,<br />
+O Lamb of God, I come, I come!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just as I am&mdash;Thy love unknown<br />
+Has broken every barrier down;<br />
+Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,<br />
+O Lamb of God, I come, I come!&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;<br />
+The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;<br />
+When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,<br />
+Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Swift to its close ebbs out life&rsquo;s little day;<br
+/>
+Earth&rsquo;s joys grow dim, its glories pass away!<br />
+Change and decay in all around I see;<br />
+O Thou who changest not, abide with me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I need Thy presence every passing hour;<br />
+What but Thy grace can foil the tempter&rsquo;s power?<br />
+Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?<br />
+Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Upon these promises of help, comfort, warning, encouragement,
+and consolation, she has many times rested her wearied body after
+returning from her day&rsquo;s trudging and toil, and under these
+she has slept peacefully as in the arms of death, ready to answer
+the Master&rsquo;s summons, and to meet with her dear little boy
+who has crossed the river, <!-- page 233--><a
+name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>when He
+shall say, &ldquo;It is enough; come up hither,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;sit on My throne.&rdquo;&nbsp; Although she is a big,
+powerful woman, and has been more so in years that are past, when
+any one begins to talk about Heaven and the happiness and joy in
+reserve for those who have a hope of meeting with loved ones
+again, when the cares and anxieties of life are ended, it is not
+long before they see big, scalding, briny tears rolling down her
+dark, Gipsy-coloured face, and she will frequently edge in words
+during the conversation about her &ldquo;Dear Saviour&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Blessed Lord and Master.&rdquo;&nbsp; I may mention the
+names of other warm-hearted Gipsies who are trying to improve the
+condition of some of the adult portion of their brethren and
+sisters&mdash;dwellers upon the turf, and clod scratchers, who
+feed many of their poor women and children upon cabbage broth and
+turnip sauce, and &ldquo;bed them down,&rdquo; after kicks,
+blows, and ill-usage, upon rotten straw strewn upon the damp
+ground.&nbsp; Mrs. Carey, Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, Mrs. Hedges, and
+the three Gipsy brothers Smith, Mrs. Lee, and a few others, have
+not laboured without some success, at the same time they are
+powerless to improve the condition of the future generations of
+Gipsy women and children, young mongrels and hut-dwelling
+Gorgios, by applying the civilising influences of education and
+sanitary measures to banish heathenism worse than that of Africa,
+idleness, immorality, thieving, lying, and deception of the
+deepest dye from our midst, as exhibited in the dwellings of the
+rag and stick hovels to be seen flitting about the outskirts,
+fringe, and scum of our own neglected ragamuffin population,
+roaming about under the cognition that the name of a Gipsy is
+nauseous and disgusting in most people&rsquo;s mouths on account
+of the damning evil practices they have followed and carried out
+for centuries upon the honest and industrious artisans,
+tradesmen, and others they have been brought in contact
+with.&nbsp; A raw-boned Gipsy, with low, slanting forehead,
+deep-set eyes, large eyebrows, thick lips, wide mouth, skulkingly
+slow gait, slouched hat, and a large <!-- page 234--><a
+name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+234</span>grizzly-coloured dog at his heels, in a dark, narrow
+lane, on a starlight night, is not a pleasant state of things for
+a timid and nervous man to grapple with; nevertheless this is one
+side of a Gipsy&rsquo;s life as he goes prowling about in quest
+of his prey, and as such it is seen by those who know something
+of Gipsy life.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;And they return at evening: they growl like
+a dog and compass the city;<br />
+They&mdash;they prowl about for food.<br />
+If (or since) they are not satisfied they spend the night (in the
+search).&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Sunday at Home.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Even my friends, the canal-boatmen, look upon Gipsies as the
+lowest of the low, and lower down the social scale than any
+boatman to be met with.&nbsp; Some of them have gone so far as to
+try to shake my nerves by telling me that, now I had taken the
+Gipsy women and children in hand, they would not give sixpence
+for my life.&nbsp; I could only reply with a smile, and tell them
+that I was in safe keeping till the work was done, as in the case
+of the canal movement.&nbsp; Frowns, dogs, sticks, stones, and
+oaths did not frighten me.&nbsp; The time had arrived when the
+vagabondish life of a Gipsy&mdash;so called&mdash;should be
+unmasked and the plain truth made known; and for this the Gipsies
+will thank me, if they take into consideration the object I have
+in view and the end I am seeking.&nbsp; My object is to elevate
+them, through the instrumentality of sanitary officer and
+schoolmaster being at work among the children, into respectable
+citizens of society, earning an honest livelihood by honourable
+and legitimate means; far better to do this than to go sneaking
+about the country, begging, cadging, lying, and stealing all they
+can lay their hands upon, and training their children to put up
+with the scoffs, sneers, and insults of the Gorgios or Gentiles
+for the sake of pocketing a penny at the cost of losing their
+manhood.&nbsp; A thousand times better live a life such as would
+enable them to look <!-- page 235--><a name="page235"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 235</span>everybody straight in the face than
+burrowing and scratching their way into the ground, making
+skewers at one shilling per stone, and being considered as
+outlaws, having the mark of Cain upon their forehead, with their
+hands against everybody and everybody against them.&nbsp; There
+is no honour in a scamp&rsquo;s life, credit in being a thief,
+glory surrounding a rogue, and halo over the life of a vagabond
+and a tramp.&nbsp; To see a half-naked, full grown-man and his
+wife, with six or eight children, sitting on the damp ground in
+rag huts large enough only for a litter of pigs, scratching
+roasted potatoes out of the dying embers of a coke fire, as
+thousands are doing to-day, is enough to freeze the blood in
+one&rsquo;s veins, make one utter a shriek of horror and despair,
+and to bring down the wrath of God upon the country that allows
+such a state of things in her midst.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;How dark yon dwelling by the solemn
+grove!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><!-- page 236--><a name="page236"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 236</span>Part V.<br />
+The sad Condition of the Gipsies, with Suggestions for their
+Improvement.</h2>
+<p>One thing that strikes me in going through the writings of
+those authors in this country who have endeavoured to deal with
+the Gipsy question is, their hesitation to tackle the Gipsy
+difficulty at home.&nbsp; On the surface of the books they have
+written there appears a disposition to mince the subject, at all
+events, that amount of courage has not been put into their works
+that characterised Grellmann&rsquo;s work upon the Gipsies of his
+own country.&nbsp; If an account similar to Grellmann&rsquo;s had
+appeared concerning our English Gipsies a century ago, and
+energetic action had been taken by our law-makers, instead of
+publishing an account of the Hungarian and other Continental
+Gipsies, it is impossible to calculate the beneficent results
+that would have accrued long before this, both to the Gipsies
+themselves and the country at large.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p236b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller&rsquo;s van near Latimer Road"
+title=
+"Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller&rsquo;s van near Latimer Road"
+src="images/p236s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>One writer deals principally with the Scotch Gipsies, another
+with the Spanish Gipsies, another is trying to prove the Egyptian
+origin of the Gipsies, another is tracing their language, another
+treats upon our English Gipsies in a kind of
+&ldquo;milk-and-watery&rdquo; fashion that will neither do them
+good nor harm&mdash;he pleases his readers, but leaves the
+Gipsies where he found them, viz., in the ditch.&nbsp; Another
+went to work on the principle of praying and believing for them;
+but, I am sorry to say, in his circumscribed sphere his faith and
+works fell flat, on account, no doubt, of this dear, good <!--
+page 237--><a name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+237</span>man and his friends undertaking to do a work which
+should in that day have been undertaken by the State, at least,
+that part of it relating to the education of the Gipsy
+children.</p>
+<p>The Gipsy race is supposed to be the most beautiful in the
+world, and amongst the Russian Gipsies are to be found
+countenances, which, to do justice to, would require an abler pen
+than mine; but exposure to the rays of the sun, the biting of the
+frost, and the pelting of the pitiless sleet and snow destroys
+the beauty at a very early age, and if in infancy their personal
+advantages are remarkable, their ugliness at an advanced age is
+no less so, for then it is loathsome and
+appalling:&mdash;&ldquo;He wanted but the dark and kingly crown
+to have represented the monster who opposed the progress of
+Lucifer whilst careering in burning arms and infernal glory to
+the outlet of his hellish prison.&rdquo;&nbsp; In our own country
+a number of Gipsies sit as models, for which they get one
+shilling per hour.&nbsp; They are not in demand as perfect
+specimens of the human figure from the crown of the head to the
+sole of the foot; but few of them, owing to their low, debasing
+habits, have arrived at that state of perfection.&nbsp; I know
+one real, fine, old Gipsy woman who sits to artists for the back
+of her head only, on account of her black, frizzy, raven
+locks.&nbsp; One will sit for her eyes, another for the nose,
+another for the hands and feet, another for the colour
+only.&nbsp; Alfred Smith sits for his feet, and there are others
+who sit for their legs and arms.&nbsp; No class of people, owing
+to their mixture with other classes, tribes, and nations,
+presents a greater variety of models for the artist than the
+Gipsy.&nbsp; If an artist wants to paint a thief he can find a
+model among the Gipsies.&nbsp; If he wants to paint a dark
+highwayman lurking behind a hedge after his prey he goes to the
+Gipsy.&nbsp; If he wants to paint Ajax he goes to the
+Gipsy.&nbsp; If he wants to paint a Grecian, Roman, or Spaniard
+he goes to the Gipsy.&nbsp; Of course there are exceptions, but
+if an artist wants to paint a large, fine, intellectual-looking
+figure, with an open countenance, he <!-- page 238--><a
+name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 238</span>keeps away
+from the Gipsies and seeks his models elsewhere.&nbsp; Dregs
+among the Gipsies have produced queens for the artists.</p>
+<p>Gipsies with a mixture of English blood in their veins have
+produced men with pluck, courage, and stamina, strongly built,
+with plenty of muscle and bone.&nbsp; Two &ldquo;bruisers&rdquo;
+of the Gipsy vagabond class have worn the champion&rsquo;s belt
+of the world; and, on the other hand, this mixture of English and
+Gipsy blood has produced some fine delicate Grecian forms of
+female beauty, dove-like, soft in eye, hand, and heart&mdash;the
+flashy fire in the eye of a Gipsy has been reduced to the modesty
+and innocence and simplicity of a child.&nbsp; Our present race
+of Gipsies, under the influence of education, refinement, and
+religion, will, if properly and wisely taken in hand and dealt
+with according to the light of reason and truth, produce a class
+of men and women well qualified to take their share, for weal or
+for woe, in the struggle of life.</p>
+<p>Some first-rate songsters and musicians have been produced
+among the Gipsies, and whose merits have been acknowledged.&nbsp;
+Perhaps the highest compliment ever paid to a singer was paid by
+Catalini herself to one of the daughters of a tanned and tawny
+skin.&nbsp; It is well known in Russia that the celebrated
+Italian was so enchanted with the voice of a Moscow Gipsy (who,
+after the former had displayed her noble talent before a splendid
+audience in the old Russian capital, stepped forward and poured
+forth one of her national strains) that she tore from her own
+shoulders a shawl of cashmere which had been presented to her by
+the Pope, and, embracing the Gipsy, insisted on her acceptance of
+the splendid gift, saying that it was intended for the matchless
+songster, which she now perceived she herself was not.&nbsp; No
+doubt there are many good voices among our Gipsies; what is
+required to bring them out is education and culture.&nbsp; Our
+best Gipsy songsters and musicians are in Wales.</p>
+<p><!-- page 239--><a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+239</span>The following is a specimen of a Gipsy poetic effusion,
+which my Gipsy admirers will not consider an extraordinarily
+high-flown production&mdash;the outcome of nearly one million
+Gipsies who have wandered up and down Europe for more than three
+hundred years, as related by Borrow.</p>
+<h3>TWO GIPSIES.</h3>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Two Gipsy lads were transported,<br />
+Were sent across the great water;<br />
+Plato was sent for rioting,<br />
+And Louis for stealing the purse<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of a great lady.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And when they came to the other country,<br />
+The country that lies across the water,<br />
+Plato was speedily hung,<br />
+But Louis was taken as a husband<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By a great lady.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You wish to know who was the lady:<br />
+&rsquo;Twas the lady from whom he stole the purse;<br />
+The Gipsy had a black and witching eye,<br />
+And on account of that she followed him<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Across the great water.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Smart and Crofton, speaking poetically and romantically of
+Gipsy life, say as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With the first spring sunshine comes the old longing to
+be off, and soon is seen, issuing from his winter quarters, a
+little cavalcade, tilted cart, bag and baggage, donkeys and dogs,
+rom, romni, and tickni, chavis, and the happy family is once more
+under weigh for the open country.&nbsp; With dark, restless eye
+and coarse, black hair fluttered by the breeze, he slouches
+along, singing as he goes, in heart, if not in precise
+words&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I loiter down by thorpe and town,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For any job I&rsquo;m willing;<br />
+Take here and there a dusty brown,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And here and there a shilling.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>No carpet can please him like the soft green turf, and no <!--
+page 240--><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+240</span>curtains compare with the snow-white blossoming
+hedgerow thereon.&nbsp; A child of Nature, he loves to repose on
+the bare breast of the great mother.&nbsp; As the smoke of his
+evening fire goes up to heaven, and the savoury odour of roast
+hotchi witchi or of canengri soup salutes his nostrils, he sits
+in the deepening twilight drinking in with unconscious delight
+all the sights and sounds which the country affords; with his
+keen senses alive to every external impression he feels that</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis sweet to see the evening star
+appear,<br />
+&rsquo;Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From leaf to leaf.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He dreamily hears the distant bark of the prowling fox, and
+the melancholy hootings of the wood owls; he marks the shriek of
+the night-wandering weasel, and the rustle of the bushes as some
+startled forest creature darts into deep coverts; or, perchance,
+the faint sounds from a sequestered hamlet of a great city.&nbsp;
+Cradled from infancy in such haunts as these &lsquo;places of
+nestling green for poets made,&rsquo; and surely for Gipsies too,
+no wonder if, after the fitful fever of town life, he sleeps
+well, with the unforgotten and dearly-loved lullabies of his
+childhood soothing him to rest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following is in their own Gipsy language to each other,
+and exhibits a true type of the feeling of revenge they foster to
+one another for wrongs done and injuries received, and may be
+considered a fair specimen of the disposition of thousands of
+Gipsies in our midst:&mdash;&ldquo;Just see, mates, what a
+blackguard he is.&nbsp; He has been telling wicked lies about us,
+the cursed dog.&nbsp; I will murder him when I get hold of
+him.&nbsp; That creature, his wife, is just as bad.&nbsp; She is
+worse than he.&nbsp; Let us thrash them both and drive them out
+of our society, and not let them come near us, such cut-throats
+and informers as they are.&nbsp; They are nothing but
+murderers.&nbsp; They are informers.&nbsp; We shall all come to
+grief through their misdoings.&rdquo;&nbsp; Not <!-- page
+241--><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+241</span>much poetry and romance in language and characters of
+this description.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;These Indians ne&rsquo;er forget<br />
+Nor evermore forgive an injury.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The following is a wail of their own, taken from Smart and
+Crofton, and will show that the Gipsies themselves do not think
+tent life is so delightful, happy, and free as has been pictured
+in the imaginative brain of novel writers, whose knowledge has
+been gained by visiting the Gipsies as they have basked on the
+grassy banks on a hot summer day, surrounded by the warbling
+songsters and rippling brooks of water, as clear as crystal, at
+their feet, sending forth dribbling sounds of enchantment to fall
+upon musical ears, touching the cords of poetic affection and
+lyric sympathy:&mdash;&ldquo;Now, mates, be quick.&nbsp; Put your
+tent up.&nbsp; Much rain will come down, and snow, too&mdash;we
+shall all die to-night of cold; and bring something to make a
+good fire, too.&nbsp; Put the tent down well, much wind will come
+this night.&nbsp; My children will die of cold.&nbsp; Put all the
+rods in the ground properly to make it stand well.&nbsp; The poor
+children cry for food.&nbsp; My God! what shall I do to give them
+food to eat?&nbsp; I have nothing to give them.&nbsp; They will
+die without food.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My object in this part will be to deal with the Gipsy question
+in a hard, matter of fact way, both as regards their present
+condition and the only remedy by which they are to be
+improved.&nbsp; No one believes in the power of the Gospel more
+than I do as to its being able to rescue the very dregs of
+society from misery and wretchedness; but in the case of the
+Gipsies and canal-boatmen they cannot be got together so as to be
+brought under its influence.&nbsp; Their darkness, ignorance, and
+flitting habits, prevent them either reading about Jesus or being
+brought within the magic spell of the Gospel.&nbsp; When once the
+Gipsy children have learned to read and write I shall then have
+more faith in the power of God&rsquo;s truth reaching the hearts
+of the Gipsies and producing better results.</p>
+<p><!-- page 242--><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+242</span>The following letter has been handed to me by the
+uncle, to show what a little, dark-eyed Gipsy girl of twelve
+years of age can do.&nbsp; Notwithstanding all its faults it is a
+credit to the little beauty, especially if it is taken into
+consideration that she has had no father to teach her, and she
+has chiefly been her own schoolmaster and mistress.&nbsp; She is
+the only one who can read and write in a large family.&nbsp; Her
+books have been sign-boards, guide-posts, and mile-stones, and
+her light the red glare of a coke fire.&nbsp; I give the letter
+to show two things; first, that there is a strong desire among
+the poor Gipsy children for education; second, that there is that
+mental calibre about the Gipsy children of the present generation
+that only requires fostering, handling, educating, and caring for
+as other children are to produce in the next generation a class
+of people of whom no country need be ashamed.&nbsp; They will be
+equal to stand shoulder to shoulder with other labouring
+classes.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(Copy of envelope.)</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;JOB CLATAN<br />
+&ldquo;Char bottomar<br />
+&ldquo;at ash be hols in<br />
+&ldquo;Darbyshere.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(Copy of letter.)</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;febury 18 1880.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear uncel and Aunt</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wright these few li to you hoping find you all
+well.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fanny Vickers as sent you a rose father and Mother as
+sent there best love to you I think it is very strang you have
+never wrote it is Twenty year if live till may it is a strang
+thing you doant com to see her&nbsp; She is stark stone blind and
+lives with son john at gurtain&nbsp; I hope and trust you will
+send us word how you are getting&nbsp; Fanny mother <!-- page
+243--><a name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>is
+not only a very poor crater somtimes Mother often thinks she
+should often like to see your bazy and joby you might com land
+see us in the summer if we had nothing elce I ca il find them
+something to eat&nbsp; if mother never see you in this world she
+is hopining to see you in heaven&nbsp; so no more from your
+afexenen brother and sister Vickers&nbsp; good buy * * * * Kiss
+all on you * * * *&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In speaking of the Gipsies in Scotland sixty years ago, Mr.
+Deputy-Sheriff Moor, of Aberdeenshire, says as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;Occasionally vagrants, both single and in
+bands, appear in this part of the country, resorting to fairs,
+when they commit depredations on the unwary.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sir
+Walter Scott, Bart., says of the Gipsies:&mdash;&ldquo;A set of
+people possessing the same erratic habits, and practising the
+trade of tinkers, are well known in the Borders, and have often
+fallen under the cognisance of the law.&nbsp; They are often
+called Gipsies, and pass through the country annually in small
+bands, with their carts and asses.&nbsp; The men are tinkers,
+poachers, and thieves upon a small scale,&rdquo; and he goes on
+to say that &ldquo;some of the more atrocious families have been
+extirpated.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Riddell, Justice of Peace for
+Roxburghshire, says:&mdash;&ldquo;They are thorough desperadoes
+of the worst class of vagabonds.&nbsp; Those who travel through
+this county give offence chiefly by poaching and small
+thefts.&nbsp; All of them are perfectly ignorant of
+religion.&nbsp; They marry and cohabit amongst each other, and
+are held in a sort of horror by the common people.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Mr. William Smith, the Baillie of Kelso, and a gentlemen of high
+position, says:&mdash;&ldquo;Some kind of honour peculiar to
+themselves seems to prevail in their community.&nbsp; They reckon
+it a disgrace to steal near their homes, or even at a distance if
+detected.&nbsp; I must always except that petty theft of feeding
+their shilties and asses on the farmers&rsquo; grass and corn,
+which they will do whether at home or abroad.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he
+further says, &ldquo;I am sorry to say, however, that when
+checked in their licentious appropriations they are much addicted
+both to threaten and to <!-- page 244--><a
+name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 244</span>execute
+revenge.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Smith always visited the Gipsies upon
+one of the estates of which he had the charge, consequently he
+would be likely to know more about them than most people.&nbsp; A
+number of other gentleman confirmed these statements.&nbsp; By
+comparing these remarks with the statements of Mr. Harrison in a
+letter published in the <i>Standard</i> last August, backing up
+my case, it will be seen that the Scotch Gipsies if anything have
+degenerated.&nbsp; Mr. Harrison&rsquo;s letter will be found in
+Part II.</p>
+<p>Much has been said and written with reference to their health
+and age.&nbsp; For my own part I firmly believe that the great
+ages to which they say they live&mdash;of course there are many
+exceptions&mdash;are only myths and delusions, and another of
+their dodges to excite sympathy.&nbsp; From the days of their
+debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable
+phrase for Gipsies, &ldquo;old hags,&rdquo; they seem to jump
+from sixty to between seventy and eighty at a bound.&nbsp; I was
+talking to one I considered an old woman as to her age only a day
+or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful tone, &ldquo;I am a long
+way over seventy,&rdquo; and I asked her if she could tell me the
+year in which she was born, to which she replied that she
+&ldquo;was sixteen when the good Queen was crowned.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The following case, related to me by the tradesman himself, at
+Battersea&mdash;a sharp, quick, business gentleman, who boasted
+to me that he had never been sold before by any one&mdash;will
+show faintly how clever the Gipsy women are at lying, deception,
+and cheating:&mdash;Three pretty, well-dressed Gipsy women went
+into his shop one day last summer, and said that they had
+arranged to have a christening on the morrow, and as beer got
+into the heads of their men, and made them wild, which they did
+not like to see on such occasions, they had decided to have a
+quiet, little, respectable affair, and in place of beer they were
+going to have wine, cakes, and biscuits after their tea; and they
+ordered some currant cake, several bottles of wine, tea, sugar,
+and other things required on such occasions, to the amount of two
+pounds fourteen <!-- page 245--><a name="page245"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 245</span>shillings.&nbsp; The Gipsies asked
+to have the bill made out and the goods packed in a hamper.&nbsp;
+And while this was being done the Gipsies said to the tradesman:
+&ldquo;Now, as we have ordered so much from you, we think that
+you ought to buy a mat or two and other things of
+us.&rdquo;&nbsp; Without consulting his wife, he agreed to buy
+one or two things, to the amount of eleven shillings, which the
+tradesman had thought would have been deducted from their
+account; but the Gipsies thought differently&mdash;and here was
+the craft&mdash;and said, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t understand
+figures.&nbsp; You had better pay us for the mats, &amp;c., and
+we will pay you for the wine.&rdquo;&nbsp; The tradesman, who was
+thrown off his guard, paid them the eleven shillings.&nbsp; With
+this they walked out of his shop, saying that they would take the
+bill with them, and send a man with the money and a barrow for
+the wine, cake, &amp;c., in a few minutes, which they did not,
+but left the tradesman a wiser but sadder man for spending eleven
+shillings in things he did not require; and his remarks to me
+were, &ldquo;No more Gipsies for me, thank you.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve
+had quite plenty of Gipsies for my lifetime.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cases have been known when the Gipsy women have gone among the
+farmers&rsquo; cattle and rubbed their nostrils with some
+nastiness to such an extent as to cause the cattle to loathe
+their food.&nbsp; The Gipsy in the lane&mdash;who of course knows
+all about the affair&mdash;goes to the farmer and tells him he
+can cure his cattle.&nbsp; This is agreed upon.&nbsp; All the
+Gipsy does is to visit the cattle secretly and slyly, and rub off
+the nastiness he has put on.&nbsp; The cattle immediately begin
+to eat their food, and the Gipsy gets his fee.&nbsp; They kill
+lambs by sticking pins into their heads.</p>
+<p>Tallemant says that near Peye, in Picardy, a Gipsy offered a
+stolen sheep to a butcher for one hundred sous, or five francs;
+but the butcher declined to give more than four francs for
+it.&nbsp; The butcher then went away; whereupon the Gipsy pulled
+the sheep from a sack into which he had put it, and substituted
+for it a child belonging to his tribe.&nbsp; He then ran after
+the butcher, and said, &ldquo;Give me <!-- page 246--><a
+name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 246</span>five
+francs, and you shall have the sack into the
+bargain.&rdquo;&nbsp; The butcher paid him the money, and went
+away.&nbsp; When he got home he opened the sack, and was much
+astonished when he saw a little boy jump out of it, who in an
+instant caught up the sack and ran off.&nbsp; &ldquo;Never was a
+poor man so hoaxed as this butcher.&rdquo;&nbsp; When they want
+to leave a place where they have been stopping they set out in an
+opposite direction to that in their right course.&nbsp; The
+Gipsies have a thousand other tricks&mdash;so says one of the
+Gipsy fraternity named Pechou de Ruby.&nbsp; Paul Lacroix says
+that when they take up their quarters in any village they steal
+very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the neighbouring
+parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner.&nbsp; If
+they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and
+make a rapid flight from the place.&nbsp; They make counterfeit
+money, and put it into circulation.&nbsp; They play all sorts of
+games; they buy all sorts of horses, whether sound or unsound,
+provided they can manage to pay for them in their own base
+coin.&nbsp; When they buy food, they pay for it in good money the
+first time, as they are held in such distrust; but when they are
+about to leave a neighbourhood they again buy something, for
+which they tender false coin, receiving the change in good
+money.&nbsp; In harvest time all doors are shut against them,
+nevertheless they contrive, by means of picklocks and other
+instruments, to effect an entrance into houses, when they steal
+linen, clocks, silver, and any other movable article which they
+can lay their hands upon.&nbsp; They give a strict account of
+everything to their captain, who takes his share.&nbsp; They are
+very clever in making a good bargain.&nbsp; When they know of a
+rich merchant living in the place, they disguise themselves,
+enter into communication with him, and swindle him, after which
+they change their clothes, have their horses shod the reverse
+way, and the shoes covered with some soft material, lest they
+should be heard, and gallop away.&nbsp; Grellmann
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;The miserable condition of the Gipsies may be
+imagined <!-- page 247--><a name="page247"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 247</span>from the following facts: many of
+them, and especially the women, have been burned, by their own
+request, in order to end their miserable existence; and we can
+give the case of a Gipsy, who, having been arrested, flogged, and
+conducted to the frontier, with the threat that if he re-appeared
+in the country he would be hanged, resolutely returned after
+three successive and similar threats at three different places,
+and implored that the capital sentence might be carried out, in
+order that he might be released from a life of such
+misery.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he goes on to say that &ldquo;these
+unfortunate people were not even looked upon as human beings, for
+during a hunting party the huntsmen had no scruple whatever in
+killing a Gipsy woman who was suckling her child, just as they
+would have done any wild beast which came in their
+way.&rdquo;&nbsp; And he further says that they received
+&ldquo;into their ranks all those whose crime, the fear and
+punishment of an uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming
+life continually threw in their path; they made use of them
+either to find their way into countries of which they were
+ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise have been
+impracticable.&nbsp; They were not slow to form an alliance with
+profligate characters, who sometimes worked in concert with
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A century ago it was somewhat romantic, and answered very well
+as a contrast to civilisation, to see a number of people moving
+about the country, dressed in beaver hats and bonnets, scarlet
+cloaks and hoods, short petticoats, velvet coats with silver
+buttons, and a plentiful supply of gold rings.&nbsp; The novelty
+of their person, with dark skin and eyes, black hair, and their
+fortune-telling proclivities, and other odd curiosities and
+eccentricities, answered well for a time as a kind of eye-blinder
+to their little thefts and like things; but that day is
+over.&nbsp; Their silver buttons are all gone to pot.&nbsp; Their
+silk velvet coats, plush waistcoats, and diamond rings have
+vanished, never more to return with their present course of life;
+patched breeches, torn coats, slouched hats, and washed gold
+rings have taken their <!-- page 248--><a
+name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 248</span>places, and
+ragged garments in place of silk dresses for the poor Gipsy
+women.&nbsp; The Gipsy men &ldquo;lollock&rdquo; about, the women
+tell fortunes, and the children gambol on the ditch banks with
+impunity, nobody caring to interfere with them in any way.&nbsp;
+This kind of thing, as regards dash and show, is to a great
+extent passed, and those men who put on a show of work at all, it
+is as a general thing at tinkering, chair-mending, peg-splitting,
+skewer-making, and donkey buying.&nbsp; The men make the skewers
+and sell them at prices varying from one shilling to two
+shillings per stone; the wood for the skewers they do not always
+buy.&nbsp; A friend of mine told me a couple of months since that
+the Gipsies had broken down his fences with impunity, and had
+taken five hundred young saplings out of his plantation for this
+purpose.&nbsp; Chairs are bottomed at prices ranging from one
+shilling and upwards.&nbsp; Some of them do scissor-grinding, for
+which they charge exorbitant prices.&nbsp; Sir G. H. Beaumont,
+Bart., of Coleorton Hall, told me very recently that one of the
+Boswell gang had charged him two shillings for grinding one
+knife.&nbsp; Some of the women, who are not good hands at
+fortune-telling, sell artificial flowers, combs, brushes, lace,
+&amp;c.&nbsp; The women who are good at fortune-telling can make
+a good thing out of it, even at this late day, in the midst of so
+much light and Christianity, and they carry it out very adroitly
+and cleverly too.&nbsp; Two or three months ago I was invited by
+some Gipsy friends to have tea with them on the outskirts of
+London.&nbsp; They very kindly sent for twopenny worth of butter
+for me, and allowed me the honour of using the only cup and
+saucer, which they said were over one hundred years old.&nbsp;
+The tea for the grown-up sons and daughters was handed round in
+mugs, jugs, and basins.&nbsp; The good old man cut my bread and
+butter with his dark coloured hands pretty thin, but the bread
+for his sons and daughters was like pieces of bricks, which, with
+pieces of bacon, he pitched at them without any ceremony, and as
+they caught it they, although men and women, <!-- page 249--><a
+name="page249"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 249</span>kept saying
+&ldquo;Thank you, pa,&rdquo; &ldquo;Thank you, pa,&rdquo; and
+down it went without either knives or forks, or very little
+grinding.&nbsp; We were all sitting upon the floor, my table
+being an undressed brick out of some old building, and it was
+with some difficulty I could keep the pigs that were running
+loose in the yard from taking a piece off my plate, but with a
+pretty free use of my toe I kept sending the little grunters
+squeaking away.&nbsp; After tea I felt a little curious to know
+what was in the big old Gipsy dame&rsquo;s basket, for I had an
+idea one or two hair-brushes, combs, laces, and other small
+trifles which lay on the top of a small piece of oilcloth
+covering the inside of the basket had, by their greasy
+appearance, done duty for many a long day.&nbsp; I told the old
+Gipsy dame that I was going home the next day, and should like to
+take a little thing or two for my little ones at home, as having
+been bought of a Gipsy woman near London.&nbsp; The sharp old
+woman was not long in offering me one or two of her trifles that
+lay on the top of her basket, but these I said were not so
+suitable as I should like.&nbsp; &ldquo;Had she nothing more
+suitable lower down as a small present?&rdquo;&nbsp; After a
+little fumbling and flustering she began to see my motive, and
+said, &ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; I see what you are after.&nbsp; I will
+tell you the truth and show you all.&rdquo;&nbsp; She turned the
+oilcloth off the basket, underneath of which were &ldquo;shank
+ends&rdquo; of joints, ham-bones, pieces of bacon, and
+crusts.&nbsp; &ldquo;These,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;have been
+given to me by servant girls and others for telling their
+fortunes, really lies, and I have brought them here for my
+children to live upon, and this is how we live.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p248b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Gipsy Fortune-tellers cooking their evening meal"
+title=
+"Gipsy Fortune-tellers cooking their evening meal"
+src="images/p248s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Fortune-telling is a soul-crushing and deadly crying evil, and
+it is far from being stamped out.&nbsp; A hawker&rsquo;s licence,
+about the size of one of these pages, covers a life-time of sin
+and iniquity in this respect.&nbsp; A basket with half-a-dozen
+brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and a pocket Bible,
+is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve them
+for a year.&nbsp; They generally prophecy good.&nbsp; Knowing the
+readiest way <!-- page 250--><a name="page250"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 250</span>to deceive, to a young lady they
+describe a handsome gentleman as one she may be assured will be
+her &ldquo;husband.&rdquo;&nbsp; To a youth they promise a pretty
+lady with a large fortune.&nbsp; And thus suiting their deluding
+speeches to the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects
+of those who employ them, they seldom fail to please their
+vanity, and often gain a rich reward for their fraud.</p>
+<p>A young lady in Gloucestershire allowed herself to be deluded
+by a Gipsy woman, of artful and insinuating address, to a very
+great extent.&nbsp; This lady admired a young gentleman, and the
+Gipsy promised that he would return her love.&nbsp; The lady gave
+her all the plate in the house, and a gold chain and locket, with
+no other security than a vain promise that they should be
+restored at a given period.&nbsp; As might be expected, the
+wicked woman was soon off with her booty, and the lady was
+obliged to expose her folly.&nbsp; The property being too much to
+lose, the woman was pursued and overtaken.&nbsp; She was found
+washing her clothes in a Gipsy camp, with the gold chain about
+her neck.&nbsp; She was taken up, but on restoring the articles
+was allowed to escape.</p>
+<p>The same woman afterwards persuaded a gentleman&rsquo;s groom
+that she could put him in possession of a great sum of money if
+he would first deposit with her all he then had.&nbsp; He gave
+her five pounds and his watch, and borrowed for her ten more of
+two of his friends.&nbsp; She engaged to meet him at midnight in
+a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and that he
+there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold
+covered with a clean napkin.&nbsp; He went with his pickaxe and
+shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having
+his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about
+money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was
+soon to receive.&nbsp; Of course he met no Gipsy; she had fled
+another way with the property she had so wickedly obtained.&nbsp;
+While waiting her arrival a hare started suddenly from its
+resting-place and so alarmed him that he as suddenly took <!--
+page 251--><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+251</span>to his heels and made no stop till he reached his
+master&rsquo;s house, where he awoke his fellow-servants and told
+to them his disaster.</p>
+<p>This woman, who made so many dupes, rode a good horse, and
+dressed both gaily and expensively.&nbsp; One of her saddles cost
+thirty pounds.&nbsp; It was literally studded with silver, for
+she carried on it the emblems of her profession wrought in that
+metal&mdash;namely, a half moon, seven stars, and the rising
+sun.&nbsp; Poor woman! <i>her</i> sun is set.&nbsp; Her sins have
+found her out.&nbsp; Fortune-tellers die hard without exception,
+so I am told by the Gipsies themselves.</p>
+<p>Some time ago a gentleman followed several Gipsy
+families.&nbsp; Arriving at the place of their encampment his
+first object was to gain their confidence.&nbsp; This was
+accomplished; after which, to amuse their unexpected visitant,
+they showed forth their night diversions in music and dancing;
+likewise the means by which they obtained their livelihood, such
+as tinkering, fortune-telling, and conjuring.&nbsp; That the
+gentleman might be satisfied whether he had obtained their
+confidence or not, he represented his dangerous situation, in the
+midst of which they all with one voice cried, &ldquo;Sir, we
+would kiss your feet rather than hurt you!&rdquo;&nbsp; After
+manifesting a confidence in return, the master of this formidable
+gang, about forty in number, was challenged by the gentleman for
+a conjuring match.&nbsp; The challenge was instantly
+accepted.&nbsp; The Gipsies placed themselves in a circular form,
+and both being in the middle commenced with their conjuring
+powers to the best advantage.&nbsp; At last the visitor proposed
+the making of something out of nothing.&nbsp; This proposal was
+accepted.&nbsp; A stone which never existed was to be created,
+and appear in a certain form in the middle of a circle made on
+the turf.&nbsp; The master of the gang commenced, and after much
+stamping with his foot, and the gentleman warmly exhorting him to
+cry aloud, like the roaring of a lion, he endeavoured to call
+forth nonentity into existence.&nbsp; Asking him if he could do
+it, he answered, &ldquo;I am not strong <!-- page 252--><a
+name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+252</span>enough.&rdquo;&nbsp; They were all asked the same
+question, which received the same answer.&nbsp; The visitor
+commenced.&nbsp; Every eye was fixed upon him, eager to behold
+this unheard-of exploit; but (and not to be wondered at) he
+failed! telling them he possessed no more power to create than
+themselves.&nbsp; Perceiving the thought of insufficiency
+pervading their minds, he thus spoke: &ldquo;Now, if you have not
+power to create a poor little stone, and if 1 have not power
+either, what must that power be which made the whole world out of
+nothing?&mdash;men, women, and children! that power I call God
+Almighty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I have been told that the dislike they have to rule and order
+has led many of them to maim themselves by cutting off a finger,
+that they might not serve in either the army or the navy; and I
+believe there is one instance known of some Gipsies murdering a
+witness who was to appear against some of their people for
+horse-stealing; the persons who were guilty of the deed are dead,
+and in their last moments exclaimed with horror and despair,
+&ldquo;Murder, murder.&rdquo;&nbsp; But these circumstances do
+not stamp their race without exception as infamous monsters in
+wickedness.</p>
+<p>The following is a remarkable instance of the love of costly
+attire in a female Gipsy of the old school.&nbsp; The woman
+alluded to obtained a very large sum of money from three maiden
+ladies, pledging that it should be doubled by her art in
+conjuration.&nbsp; She then decamped to another district, where
+she bought a blood-horse, a black beaver hat, a new side-saddle
+and bridle, a silver-mounted whip, and figured away in her
+ill-obtained finery at the fairs.&nbsp; It is not easy to imagine
+the disappointment and resentment of the covetous and credulous
+ladies, whom she had so easily duped.&nbsp; With the present race
+of our gutter-scum Gipsies the last remnant of Gipsy pride is
+nearly dead&mdash;poverty, rags, and despair taking the
+place.</p>
+<p>Gipsies of the old type are not strangers to
+pawnbrokers&rsquo; shops; but they do not visit these places for
+the same <!-- page 253--><a name="page253"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 253</span>purposes as the vitiated poor of our
+trading towns.&nbsp; A pawnshop is their bank.&nbsp; When they
+acquire property illegally, as by stealing, swindling, or
+fortune-telling, they purchase valuable plate, and sometimes in
+the same hour pledge it for safety.&nbsp; Such property they have
+in store against days of adversity and trouble, which on account
+of their dishonest habits often overtake them.&nbsp; Should one
+of their families stand before a judge of his country, charged
+with a crime which is likely to cost him his life, or to
+transport him, every article of value is sacrificed to save him
+from death or apprehended banishment.&nbsp; In such cases they
+generally retain a counsel to plead for the brother in
+adversity.&nbsp; Their attachment to the horse, donkey, rings,
+snuff-box, silver spoons, and all things, except the clothes, of
+the deceased relatives is very strong.&nbsp; With such articles
+they will never part, except in the greatest distress, and then
+they only pledge some of them, which are redeemed as soon as they
+possess the means.</p>
+<p>It has been stated by some writers, that there is hardly a
+Gipsy in existence who could not, if desired, produce his ten or
+twenty pounds &ldquo;at a pinch.&rdquo;&nbsp; Some of those who
+work, no doubt, could; but it is entirely erroneous, as many
+other statements relating to the Gipsies, to imagine that the
+whole of them are as well off as all this.&nbsp; Smith tells us
+that there is not one in twenty who can show one pound, much less
+twenty.&nbsp; A Gipsy named Boswell travelled about in the
+Midland counties with a large van pretty well stocked with his
+wares, and everybody, especially the Gipsies, thought he was a
+rich man; but in course of time it came to pass that he died,
+which event revealed the fact that he was not worth
+half-a-crown.&nbsp; No class of men and women under the sun has
+been more wicked than the Gipsies, and no class has prospered
+less.&nbsp; By their evil deeds for centuries they have brought
+themselves under the curse of God and the lash of the law
+wherever they have been.</p>
+<blockquote><p><!-- page 254--><a name="page254"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 254</span>&ldquo;To our foes we leave a shame!
+disgrace can never die;<br />
+Their sons shall blush to hear a name still blackened with a
+lie.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Their miserable condition, the persecution, misrepresentation,
+and the treatment they are receiving are due entirely to their
+own evil-doing&mdash;lying, cheating, robbing, and murder bring
+their own reward.&nbsp; The Gipsies of to-day are drinking the
+dregs of the cups they had mixed for others.&nbsp; The sly wink
+of the eye intended to touch the heart of the innocent and simple
+has proved to be the electric spark that has reached heaven, and
+brought down the vengeance of Jehovah upon their heads.&nbsp; The
+lies proceeding from their bad hearts have turned out to be a
+swarm of wasps settling down upon their own pates; their stolen
+goods have been smitten with God&rsquo;s wrath; the horses,
+mules, and donkeys in their unlawful possession are steeds upon
+which the Gipsies are riding to hell; and the fortune-telling
+cards are burning the fingers of the Gipsy women; in one word,
+the curse of God is following them in every footstep on account
+of their present sins, and not on account of their past
+traditions.&nbsp; Immediately they alter their course of life,
+and &ldquo;cease to do evil and learn to do well&rdquo;&mdash;no
+matter whether they are Jews or barbarians, bond or
+free&mdash;the blessing of God will follow, and they will begin
+to thrive and prosper.</p>
+<p>Smoking and eating tobacco adds another leaden weight to those
+already round their neck, and it helps to bow them down to the
+ground&mdash;a short black pipe, the ranker and oftener it has
+been used the more delicious will be the flavour, and the better
+they will like it.&nbsp; When their &ldquo;baccy&rdquo; is
+getting &ldquo;run out,&rdquo; the short pipe is handed round to
+the company of Gipsies squatting upon the ground, without any
+delicacy of feeling, for all of them to &ldquo;have a
+pull.&rdquo;&nbsp; Spittoons are things they never use.&nbsp;
+White, scented, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs are not often
+brought into request upon their &ldquo;lovely faces.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+They prefer allowing the bottom of the dresses the honour of
+appearing before his worship &ldquo;the nose.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Nothing pleases the <!-- page 255--><a name="page255"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 255</span>Gipsies better than to give them
+some of the weed.&nbsp; I saw a poor, dying, old Gipsy woman the
+other day.&nbsp; Nothing seemed to please her so much, although
+she could scarcely speak, as to delight in referring to the sins
+of her youth, of a kind before referred to, and no present was so
+acceptable to her as &ldquo;a nounce of baccy.&rdquo;&nbsp; She
+said she &ldquo;would rather have it than gold,&rdquo; and I
+&ldquo;could not have pleased her better.&rdquo;&nbsp; I doubt
+whether she lived to smoke it.&nbsp; I think I am speaking within
+the mark when I state that fully three-fourths of the Gipsy women
+in this country are inveterate smokers.&nbsp; It is a black,
+burning shame for us to have such a state of things in our
+midst.&nbsp; In nine cases out of ten the children of drunken,
+smoking women will turn out to be worthless scamps and vagabonds,
+and a glance at the Gipsies will prove my statements.</p>
+<p>Eternity will reveal their deeds of darkness&mdash;murders,
+immorality, torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor
+slaves of women, beastly and murderous brutality to their poor
+children.&nbsp; There is a terrible reckoning coming for the
+&ldquo;Gipsy man,&rdquo; who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick,
+with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm
+and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body
+to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with
+sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet,
+and snow can find its way without let or hinderance; who can take
+upon his knees a dog and fondle it in his bosom, and, at the same
+time, spit in his wife&rsquo;s face with oaths and cursing, and
+send her out in the snow on a piercing-cold winter&rsquo;s day,
+half clad and worse fed, with child on her back and basket on her
+arm, to practise the art of double-dyed lying and deception on
+honest, simple people, in order to bring back her ill-gotten
+gains to her semi-clad hovel, on which to fatten her &ldquo;lord
+and master,&rdquo; by half-cleaned knuckle-bones, ham-shanks, and
+pieces of bacon that fall from the &ldquo;rich man&rsquo;s
+table.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 256--><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+256</span>The following is a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies
+in the Midlands I have visited.&nbsp; In the room downstairs
+there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a
+three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a
+rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place.&nbsp; The Gipsy
+father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in
+prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type,
+marked with small-pox, and plenty of tongue&mdash;by the way, I
+may say I have not yet seen a dumb and deaf Gipsy.&nbsp; She
+turned up her dress sleeves and showed me how she had &ldquo;made
+the blood run out of another Gipsy woman for hitting her
+child.&rdquo;&nbsp; As she came near to me exhibiting her
+fisticuffing powers, I might have been a little nervous years
+ago; but dealing with men and things in a rough kind of fashion
+for so many years has taken some amount of nervousness of this
+kind out of me.</p>
+<p>It may be as well to remark here that the Gipsy women can do
+their share of fighting, and are as equally pleased to have a
+stand-up fight as the Gipsy men are.&nbsp; One of these Gipsy
+women lives with a man who is not a thorough Gipsy, who spends a
+deal of his time under lock and key on account of his poaching
+inclinations; and other members of this large family are on the
+same kind of sliding scale, and not one of whom can read or
+write.</p>
+<p>It is not pleasant to say strong things about clergymen, for
+whom I have the highest respect; nevertheless, there are times
+when respect for Christ&rsquo;s church, duty to country, love for
+the children and anxiety for their eternal welfare, compels you
+to step out of the beaten rut to expose, though with pain,
+wrong-doing.&nbsp; In a day and Sunday school-yard connected with
+the Church of England, not one hundred miles from London, there
+are to be seen&mdash;and I am informed by them, except during the
+hop-picking season, that it is their camping-ground, and has been
+for years&mdash;one van, in which there are man, wife, young
+woman, and a daughter of about fourteen years of age; the young
+woman <!-- page 257--><a name="page257"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 257</span>and daughter sleep in a kind of box
+under the man and his wife.&nbsp; In another part of the yard is
+a Gipsy tent, where God&rsquo;s broad earth answers the purpose
+of a table, and a &ldquo;batten of straw&rdquo; serves as a
+bed.&nbsp; There is a woman, two daughters, one of whom is of
+marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a youth I
+should think about sixteen years of age.&nbsp; I should judge
+that the mother and her two daughters sleep on one bed at one end
+of the tent and the youth at the other; there is no partition
+between them, and only about seven feet of space between each bed
+of litter.&nbsp; In another tent there is man, wife, and one
+child.&nbsp; When I was there, on the Sunday afternoon, they were
+expecting the Gipsy &ldquo;to come home to his tent drunk and
+wake the baby.&rdquo;&nbsp; In another tent there was a Gipsy
+with his lawful wife and three children.&nbsp; One of the Gipsy
+women in the yard frequently came home drunk, and I have seen her
+smoking with a black pipe in her mouth three parts tipsy.&nbsp;
+Now, I ask my countrymen if this is the way to either improve the
+habits and morals of the Gipsies themselves, or to set a good
+example to day and Sunday scholars.&nbsp; Drunkenness is one of
+the evil associations of Gipsy life.&nbsp; Brandy and
+&ldquo;fourpenny,&rdquo; or &ldquo;hell fire,&rdquo; as it is
+sometimes called, are their chief drinks.&nbsp; A Gipsy of the
+name of Lee boasted to me only a day or two since that he had
+been drunk every night for more than a fortnight, his language
+being, &ldquo;Oh! it is delightful to get drunk, tumble into a
+row, and smash their peepers.&nbsp; What care we for the
+bobbies.&rdquo;&nbsp; They seldom if ever use tumblers.&nbsp; A
+large jug is filled with this stuff, in colour and thickness
+almost like treacle and water, leaving a kind of salty taste
+behind it as it passes out of sight; but, I am sorry to say, not
+out of the body, mind, or brain, leaving a trail upon which is
+written&mdash;more! more! more!&nbsp; Under its influence they
+either turn saints or demons as will best serve their
+purpose.&nbsp; The more drink some of the Gipsy women get the
+more the red coloured piety is observable in their faces, and
+when I have been <!-- page 258--><a name="page258"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 258</span>talking to them, or otherwise, they
+have said, &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; &ldquo;Bless the Lord,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Oh, it is nice to be &rsquo;ligious and Christany,&rdquo;
+as they have closed round me; and with the same breath they have
+begun to talk of murder, bloodshed, and revenge, and to say,
+&ldquo;How nice it is to get a living by telling
+lies.&rdquo;&nbsp; Half an ounce of tobacco and a few gentle
+words have a most wonderful effect upon their spirits and nerves
+under such circumstances.&nbsp; I have frequently seen drunken
+Gipsy women in the streets of London.&nbsp; Early this year I met
+one of my old Gipsy women friends in Garrett Lane, Wandsworth,
+with evidently more than she could carry, and a weakness was
+observable in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far
+gone as not to know who I was.&nbsp; She tried to make a curtsy,
+and in doing so very nearly lost her balance, and it took her
+some ten yards to recover her perpendicular.&nbsp; With a little
+struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and pursued
+her way to the tent.</p>
+<p>In December of last year four Gipsies, of Acton Green, were
+charged before the magistrates at Hammersmith with violently
+assaulting an innkeeper for refusing to allow them to go into a
+private part of his house.&nbsp; A terrible struggle ensued, and
+a long knife was fetched out of their tents, and had they not
+been stopped the consequences might have been fearful.&nbsp; They
+were sent to gaol for two months, which would give them time for
+reflection.&nbsp; A few days ago two Gipsies from the East End of
+London were sent to gaol for thieving, and are now having their
+turn upon the wheel of fortune.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Whirl fiery circles, and the moon is
+full:<br />
+Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow,<br />
+And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast;<br />
+Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns,<br />
+And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands;<br />
+Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads.<br />
+Here serpents dash their stings into my face,<br />
+All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives<br />
+<!-- page 259--><a name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+259</span>His red-hot talons in my burning scalp.<br />
+Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears<br />
+Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down<br />
+Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies<br />
+Scorch deep like melting minerals.&nbsp; Murther!&nbsp;
+Fire!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Cries the Gipsy, as he rolls about on his bed of filthy
+litter, in a tent whose only furniture is an old tin bucket
+pierced with holes, a soap-box, and a few rags, with a
+poor-looking, miserable woman for a wife, and a lot of wretched
+half-starved, half-naked children crying round him for
+bread.&nbsp; &ldquo;Give us bread!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Give us
+bread!&rdquo; is their piteous cry.</p>
+<p>The Gipsy in Hungary is a being who has puzzled the wits of
+the inhabitants for centuries, and the habits of the Hungarian
+Gipsies are abominable; their hovels, for they do not all live in
+tents and encampments, are sinks of the vilest poverty and filth;
+their dress is nothing but rags, and they live on carrion; and it
+is in this pitiable condition they go singing and dancing to
+hell.&nbsp; Nothing gives them more pleasure than to be told
+where a dead pig, horse, or cow may be found, and the Gipsies,
+young and old, will scamper to fetch it; decomposition rather
+sharpens their ravenous appetites; at any rate, they will not
+&ldquo;turn their noses up&rdquo; at it in disgust; in fact,
+Grellmann goes so far as to say that human flesh is a dainty
+morsel, especially that of children.&nbsp; What applies to the
+Hungarian Gipsies will to a large extent apply to the Gipsies in
+Spain, Germany, France, Russia, and our own country.&nbsp; There
+is no proof of our Gipsies eating children; but if I am to
+believe their own statements, the dead dogs, cats, and pigs that
+happen to be in their way run the risk of being potted for soup,
+and causing a &ldquo;smacking of the lips&rdquo; as the heathens
+sit round their kettle&mdash;which answers the purpose of a
+swill-tub when not needed for cooking&mdash;as it hangs over the
+coke fire, into which they dip their platters with relish and
+delight.&nbsp; What becomes of the dead donkeys, mules, ponies,
+and horses that die during their trafficking is best known to
+<!-- page 260--><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+260</span>themselves.&nbsp; No longer since than last winter I
+was told by some Gipsies on the outskirts of London that some of
+their fraternity had been seen on more than one occasion picking
+up dead cats out of the streets of London to take home to their
+dark-eyed beauties and lovely damsels.&nbsp; Only a few days
+since I was told by a lot of Gipsies upon Cherry Island, and in
+presence of some of the Lees, that some of their fraternity, and
+they mentioned some of their names, had often picked up snails,
+worms, &amp;c., and put them alive into a pan over their coke
+fires, and as the life was being frizzled out of the creeping
+things they picked them out of the pan with their fingers and put
+them into their months without any further ceremony.&nbsp; I
+cannot for the life of me think that human nature is at such a
+low ebb among them as to make this kind of life general.&nbsp; At
+most I should think cases of this kind are exceptional.&nbsp;
+Their food, whether it be animal or vegetable, is generally
+turned into a kind of dirty-looking, thick liquid, which they
+think good enough to be called soup.&nbsp; Their principal meal
+is about five o&rsquo;clock, upon the return of the mother after
+her hawking and cadging expeditions.&nbsp; Their bread, as a
+rule, is either bought, stolen, or begged.&nbsp; When they bake,
+which is very seldom, they put their lumps of dough among the red
+embers of their coke fires.&nbsp; Sometimes they will eat like
+pigs, till they have to loose their garments for more room, and
+other times they starve themselves to fiddle-strings.&nbsp; A few
+weeks since, when snow was on the ground, I saw in the outskirts
+of London eight half-starved, poor, little, dirty, Gipsy children
+dining off three potatoes, and drinking the potato water as a
+relish.&nbsp; They do not always use knife and fork.&nbsp; Table,
+plates, and dishes are not universal among them.&nbsp; Their
+whole kitchen and table requirements are an earthen pot, an iron
+pan, which serves as a dish, a knife, and a spoon.&nbsp; When the
+meal is ready the whole family sit round the pot or pan, and then
+&ldquo;fall to it&rdquo; with their fingers and teeth,
+Adam&rsquo;s knives and forks, and the ground providing the <!--
+page 261--><a name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+261</span>table and plates.&nbsp; Boiled pork is, as a rule,
+their universal, every-day, central pot-boiler, and the longer it
+is boiled the harder it gets, like the Irishman who boiled his
+egg for an hour to get it soft, and then had to give it up as a
+bad job.&nbsp; Some of these kind-hearted folks have, on more
+than one occasion, given me &ldquo;a feed&rdquo; of it.&nbsp; It
+is sweet and nice, but awfully satisfying, and I think two meals
+would last me for a week very comfortably; all I should require
+would be to get a good dinner off their knuckle-bones, roll
+myself up like a hedgehog, doze off like Hubert Petalengro into a
+semi-unconscious state, and I should be all right for three or
+four days.&nbsp; &ldquo;Beggars must not be
+choosers.&rdquo;&nbsp; They have done what they could to make me
+comfortable, and for which I have been very thankful.&nbsp; I
+have had many a cup of tea with them, and hope to do so
+again.</p>
+<p>One writer observes:&mdash;&ldquo;Commend me to Gipsy life and
+hard living.&nbsp; Robust exercise, out-door life, and pleasant
+companions are sure to beget good dispositions both of body and
+mind, and would create a stomach under the very ribs of death
+capable of digesting a bar of pig-iron.&rdquo;&nbsp; Their habits
+of uncleanliness are most disgusting.&nbsp; Occasionally you will
+meet with clean people, and children with clean, red, chubby
+faces; but in nine cases out of ten they are of parents who have
+had a different bringing up than squatting about in the mud and
+filth.&nbsp; One woman I know at Notting Hill, and who was born
+in an Oxfordshire village, is at the present time surrounded with
+filth of the most sickening kind, which she cannot help, and to
+her credit manages to keep her children tolerably clean and nice
+for a woman of her position.&nbsp; There is another at Garrett
+Lane, Wandsworth; another at Sheepcot Lane, Battersea; two at
+Upton Park; one at Cherry Island; two at Hackney Wick, and
+several others in various parts on the outskirts of London.&nbsp;
+At Hackney Wick I saw twenty tents and vans, connected with which
+there were forty men and women and about seventy children of all
+ages, entirely devoid of all <!-- page 262--><a
+name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>sanitary
+arrangements.&nbsp; A gentleman who was building some property in
+the neighbourhood told me that he had seen grown-up youths and
+big girls running about entirely nude in the morning, and
+squatting about the ground and leaving their filth behind them
+more like animals than human beings endowed with souls and
+reason.&nbsp; When I was there it was with some difficulty I
+could put my foot in a clean place.&nbsp; The same kind of thing
+occurs in a more or less degree wherever Gipsies are located,
+and, sad to relate, house-dwelling Gipsies are very little better
+in this respect.&nbsp; Grellmann, speaking of the German and
+Hungarian Gipsies many years ago, says:&mdash;&ldquo;We may
+easily account for the colour of their skin.&nbsp; The
+Laplanders, Samoyeds, as well as the Siberians, have bronze,
+yellow-coloured skins, in consequence of living from their
+childhood in smoke and dirt, as the Gipsies do.&nbsp; These would
+long ago have got rid of their swarthy complexions if they had
+discontinued this Gipsy manner of living.&nbsp; Observe only a
+Gipsy from his birth till he comes to man&rsquo;s estate, and one
+must be convinced that their colour is not so much owing to their
+descent as to the nastiness of their bodies.&nbsp; In summer the
+child is exposed to the scorching sun, in winter it is shut up in
+a smoky hut.&nbsp; Some mothers smear their children over with
+black ointment, and leave them to fry in the sun or near the
+fire.&nbsp; They seldom trouble themselves about washing or other
+modes of cleaning themselves.&nbsp; Experience also shows us that
+it is more their manner of life than descent which has propagated
+this black colour of the Gipsies from generation to
+generation.&rdquo;&nbsp; I am told, and I verily believe it, that
+many of the children are not washed for years together.&nbsp; I
+have seen over and over again dirt peeling off the poor
+children&rsquo;s bodies and faces like a skin, and leaving a kind
+of white patch behind it, presenting a kind of a piebald
+spectacle.&nbsp; Some of the children never take their clothes
+off till they drop off in shreds.&nbsp; Many of the Gipsies, both
+old and young, have only one suit of <!-- page 263--><a
+name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+263</span>clothes.&nbsp; English delicacy of feeling and
+sentiment for female virtue must stand abashed with horror at
+this kind of civilisation in the nineteenth century of Christian
+England.&nbsp; I have seen washing done on the Sunday afternoon
+among them, and while the clothes have been drying on the line
+the women and children have been roasting themselves before the
+fires in nearly a nude state.&nbsp; A Sunday or two ago a poor
+Gipsy woman was washing her only smoky-looking blanket late in
+the afternoon, and upon which she would have to lay that
+night.&nbsp; It was a cold, wintry, drizzling afternoon, and how
+it was to get dry was a puzzle to me.&nbsp; A Gipsy woman, named
+Hearn, said to me a few days ago, in answer to some conversation
+relating to their dirty habits; &ldquo;The reason for the Gipsies
+not washing themselves oftener was on account of their catching
+cold after each time they washed.&rdquo;&nbsp; She &ldquo;only
+washed herself once in a fortnight, and she was almost sure to
+catch cold after it.&rdquo;&nbsp; In some things the real old
+Gipsies are very particular, <i>i.e.</i>, they will on no account
+take their food out of cups, saucers, or basins, that have been
+washed in the same pansions in which their linen has been washed;
+so sensitive are they on this point that if they found out that
+by an accident this custom had been transgressed they would
+immediately break the vessel to pieces.&nbsp; This is a custom
+picked up by the Gipsies among the Jews in their wandering from
+India through the Holy Land.&nbsp; Another practice they adopt in
+common with the Jews is, swearing or taking oaths over their dead
+relations.&nbsp; The customs, practices, and words picked up by
+them during their wanderings have added to their
+mystification.&nbsp; While they will respect certain delicacy
+observed among the Jews, they will eat pork, the most detestable
+of all food in the eyes of the Israelites, and will even pay a
+greater price for it than for beef or mutton.&nbsp; An
+Englishwoman, who had married a Gipsy named Smith, told me very
+recently, in presence of her mother-in-law and another woman,
+that she had seen her husband eat a small <!-- page 264--><a
+name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 264</span>plate of
+cooked snails as a dainty.&nbsp; While the daughter-in-law was
+telling me this, the old Gipsy mother-in-law, with one foot in
+the grave, not far from Mary&rsquo;s Place, near the Potteries,
+Notting Hill, was trying to make me believe what a choice dish
+there was in store for me if I would allow her to cook me a
+hedgehog.&nbsp; She said I should &ldquo;find it nicer than the
+finest rabbit or pheasant I had ever tasted.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+fine, old, Gipsy woman, as regards her appearance, although
+suffering from congestion of lungs and inflammation, and
+expecting every moment to be her last, would joke and make fun as
+if nothing was the matter with her.&nbsp; When I questioned her
+upon the sin of lying, she said, &ldquo;If the dear Lord spares
+me, I shall tell lies again.&nbsp; I could not get on without it;
+how could I?&nbsp; I could not sell my things without
+lies.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was rather severe, and this was a pleasing
+feature in the old woman&rsquo;s character, upon a Gipsy who was
+pretending to &ldquo;&rsquo;ligious,&rdquo; and yet living upon
+the money gained by his wife in telling fortunes.&nbsp; She said,
+&ldquo;If I must be &lsquo;&rsquo;ligious,&rsquo; I would be
+&lsquo;&rsquo;ligious.&rsquo;&nbsp; You might,&rdquo; said the
+old woman, &ldquo;as well eat the devil as suck his broth.&nbsp;
+Ah! I hate the fellow.&rdquo;&nbsp; After asking her, and getting
+her interpretation of &ldquo;God bless you&rdquo; in Romany,
+which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti&mdash;and she was the only Gipsy
+round London who could put the words in Romany&mdash;and some
+other conversation accompanied with &ldquo;coppers and
+baccy,&rdquo; &amp;c., and to which she replied,
+&ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; with as much earnestness as if she was the
+greatest saint outside heaven, we parted.</p>
+<p>Much has been said and written years ago about the chastity,
+fidelity, and faithfulness of the Gipsies towards each
+other.&nbsp; This may have been the case, and in a few
+exceptional cases it holds good now; but if I am to believe these
+men themselves they are very isolated indeed, and what I have
+said upon this point about the brick-yard <i>employ&eacute;s</i>
+in my &ldquo;Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of
+England,&rdquo; and also those living in canal-boats, in
+&ldquo;Our <!-- page 265--><a name="page265"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 265</span>Canal Population,&rdquo; holds good,
+but with ten times more force concerning the Gipsies.&nbsp;
+Immorality abounds to a most alarming degree.&nbsp; Incest,
+wantonness, lasciviousness, lechery, whoring, bigamy, and every
+other abomination low, degrading, carnal appetites, propensity,
+and lust originate and encourage they practise openly, without
+the least blush; in fact, I question if many of them know what it
+is to blush at all.</p>
+<p>I have heard a deal of disgusting, filthy language in my time
+among brick-yard and canal-boat women, but not a tithe so
+sickening as among some Gipsy women.&nbsp; I pitied them, and to
+look upon them as charitably as possible I set it down to their
+extreme ignorance of the language they used.&nbsp; A Gipsy at
+Upton Park last week named D--- gloried to my face in the fact
+that he was not married.&nbsp; This same man has a brother not
+far from Mitcham Common living with two sisters in an unlawful
+state.&nbsp; Abraham Smith, a Gipsy at Upton Park, who is over
+seventy, and tells me that he is trying to serve God and get to
+heaven, mentioned a case to me of a Gipsy and a woman at Hackney
+Wick.&nbsp; The man has several children by a woman now living
+with another man, and the woman has several children by another
+man.</p>
+<p>This Gipsy, S---, and his woman S---, turned both lots of
+their former own children adrift upon the wide, wide world,
+uncared for, unprotected, and abandoned, while they are living
+and indulging in sin to their hearts&rsquo; content, without the
+least shame and remorse.&nbsp; Inquire of whoever I may, and look
+whichever way Providence directs me among the various phases of
+Gipsy life, I find the same black array of facts staring me in
+the face, the same dolorous issues everywhere.&nbsp; The words
+reason, honour, restraint, and fidelity are words not to be found
+in their vocabulary.&nbsp; My later inquiries fully confirm my
+previous statements as to two-thirds living as husband and wife
+being unmarried.&nbsp; I have not found a Gipsy to contradict
+this statement.&nbsp; Abraham Smith fully agrees with it.</p>
+<p><!-- page 266--><a name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+266</span>The marriage ceremony of the Gipsies is a very off-hand
+affair.&nbsp; Formerly there used to be some kind of ceremony
+performed by a friend.&nbsp; Now the ceremony is not performed by
+any one.&nbsp; Of course there are a few who get married at the
+church, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is
+performed by the clergyman gratuitously.&nbsp; As soon as a boy
+has arrived in his teens he begins to think that something more
+than eating and drinking is necessary to him, and as the children
+of Gipsies are under no kind of parental, moral, or social
+restraint, a connection is easily formed with girls of twelve,
+some of them of close relationship.&nbsp; After a few hours, in
+many cases, of courtship, they go together, and the affair so far
+is over.&nbsp; They leave their parents&rsquo; tents and set up
+one for themselves, and for a short time this kind of life
+lasts.&nbsp; In course of time children are born, the only
+attendant being, in many instances, another Gipsy woman, or it
+may be members of their own families see to the poor woman in her
+hour of need.&nbsp; If they have no vessel in which to wash the
+newly-born child, they dig a hole in the ground, which is filled
+with cold water, and the Gipsy babe is washed in it.&nbsp; This
+being over, the poor little thing is wrapped in some old
+rags.&nbsp; This was the custom years ago, and I verily believe
+the Gipsies have gone backwards instead of forwards in matters of
+this kind.</p>
+<p>The following brief account of a visit&mdash;one of many I
+have made to Gipsy encampments at Hackney Marshes and other
+places during the present winter&mdash;will give some faint idea
+of what Gipsy life is in this country, as seen by me during my
+interviews with the Gipsies.&nbsp; The morning was dark; the snow
+was falling fast; about six inches of snow and slush were upon
+the ground&mdash;my object being in this case, as in others,
+viz., to visit them at inclement seasons of the weather to find
+as many of the Gipsies in their tents as possible, and as I
+closed my door I said, &ldquo;Lord, direct me,&rdquo; and off I
+started, not knowing which way to go.&nbsp; Ultimately I found my
+way to Holborn, and took the &rsquo;bus, and, <!-- page 267--><a
+name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 267</span>as I
+thought, to Hackney, which turned out to be &ldquo;a delusion and
+a snare,&rdquo; for at the terminus I found myself some two and a
+half miles from the Marshes; however, I was not going to turn
+back if the day was against me, and after laying in a stock of
+sweets for the Gipsy children, and &ldquo;baccy&rdquo; for the
+old folks, I commenced my squashy tramp till I arrived at the
+Marshes; the difficulty here was the road leading to the tents
+being covered ankle deep with snow and water, but as my feet were
+pretty well wet I could be no worse off if I paddled through
+it.&nbsp; Consequently, after these little difficulties were
+overcome, I found myself in the midst of about a score of tents
+and vans of all sizes and descriptions, connected with which
+there were not less than thirty-five grown-up Gipsies and about
+sixty poor little Gipsies.&nbsp; The first van I came to was a
+kind of one-horse cart with a cover over it; inside was a strong,
+hulking-looking fellow and a poor, sickly-looking woman with five
+children.&nbsp; The woman had only been confined a few days, and
+looked more fit for &ldquo;the box&rdquo; than to be washing on
+such a cold, wintry day.&nbsp; On a bed&mdash;at least, some
+rags&mdash;were three poor little children, one of whom was sick,
+which the mother tried to prevent by putting her dirty apron to
+the child&rsquo;s mouth.&nbsp; The large, piercing eyes of this
+poor, death-looking Gipsy child I shall never forget; they have
+looked into my innermost soul scores of times since then, and
+every time I think about this sight of misery the sickly
+child&rsquo;s eyes seem to cry out, &ldquo;Help me!&nbsp; Help
+me!&rdquo;&nbsp; The poor woman said it was the marshes that
+caused the illness, but my firm opinion is that it was neither
+more nor less than starvation.&nbsp; The poor woman seemed to be
+given up to despair.&nbsp; A few questions put to her in the
+momentary absence of the man elicited the fact that she was no
+Gipsy.&nbsp; She had been brought up as a Sunday-school scholar
+and teacher, and had been beguiled away from her home by this
+&ldquo;Gipsy man.&rdquo;&nbsp; She said she could tell me a lot
+if I would come some other time.&nbsp; She also said,
+&ldquo;Gipsy life as it is at present carried out ought <!-- page
+268--><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 268</span>to
+be put a stop to, and would be if people knew all.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+With a few coppers given to her and the children we parted.&nbsp;
+In another tent on the marshes there was a man, woman, and six
+children.&nbsp; The tent was about twelve feet long, six feet six
+inches wide, and an average height of about three feet, making a
+total of about two hundred and thirty-four cubic feet of space
+for man, wife, and six children.&nbsp; These were of both sexes,
+grown-up and in their teens.&nbsp; Their bed was straw upon the
+damp ground, and their sheets, rags.&nbsp; The man was
+half-drunk, and the poor children were running about half-naked
+and half-starved.&nbsp; The woman had some Gipsy blood in her
+veins, but the man was an Englishman, and had, so he said, been a
+soldier.&nbsp; With a few coppers and sweets among the children,
+and in the midst of &ldquo;Good-byes!&rdquo; and &ldquo;God bless
+you&rsquo;s!&rdquo; I left them, promising to pay them another
+visit.&nbsp; Out of these twenty families only three were
+properly married, and only two could read and write, and these
+were the poor woman who had been a Sunday-school scholar and the
+man who had been a soldier, and, strange to say, the children of
+these two people could not read a sentence or tell a
+letter.&nbsp; No minister ever visited them, and not one ever
+attended a place of worship.&nbsp; In a visit to an encampment in
+another part of London I came across a poor Irishwoman, who had
+been allured away from her respectable home at the age of sixteen
+by one of the Gipsy gang.&nbsp; When I saw her she was sitting
+crying, with two half-starved children by her side, who, owing to
+the coke fire, had bad eyes.&nbsp; Their home was an old ragged
+tent, and their bed, rotten straw.&nbsp; When I saw them, and it
+was about one o&rsquo;clock, they had not tasted food for
+twenty-four hours.&nbsp; I sent for a loaf for them, and they set
+to work upon it with as much relish as if they had been gnawing
+at the leg of a Christmas fat turkey.&nbsp; The poor Gipsy woman
+had been a Sunday-school scholar, and could read and write, but
+neither her husband nor children could tell a letter.&nbsp; Her
+taking to Gipsy life had broken her father&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp;
+Her eldest child, <!-- page 269--><a name="page269"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 269</span>a fine little girl of about seven
+years of age, had been taken from her by her friends, and was
+being educated and cared for.&nbsp; A few weeks since the little
+daughter was anxious to see her mother, consequently she was
+taken to her tent; but, sad to relate, instead of the daughter
+going to kiss her mother, as she would expect, she turned away
+from her with a shudder and a shriek, and for the whole day the
+child did nothing but cry.&nbsp; It would not touch a morsel of
+anything.&nbsp; The only pleasant look that came upon its
+countenance was as it was leaving.&nbsp; As the poor child was
+leaving the tent she would not kiss her mother or say the usual
+&ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo; as she went away.&nbsp; This poor woman,
+as in the case of the woman at Hackney, said she could tell me a
+lot of things, which she would some time, and said, &ldquo;Gipsy
+life ought to be put a stop to, for there was something about it
+more than people knew,&rdquo; and I thoroughly believe what this
+poor woman says.&nbsp; It is my firm conviction that there is
+much more in connection with Gipsy life than many people imagine,
+or is dreamt of in their philosophy.&nbsp; There is a substratum
+of iniquity lower than any writers have ever touched.&nbsp; There
+are certain things in connection with their dark lives, hidden
+and veiled by their slang language, that may not come out in my
+day, but most surely daylight will be shed upon them some
+day.&nbsp; They will kill and murder each other, fight and
+quarrel like hyenas, but certain things they will not divulge,
+and so long as the well-being of society is not in danger I
+suppose we have no right to interfere.&nbsp; A query arises
+here.&nbsp; Their past actions back me up in this theory.&nbsp;
+Upon Mitcham Common last week there were nearly two hundred tents
+and vans.&nbsp; In one tent, which may be considered a specimen
+of many others, there were two men and their wives, and about
+twelve children of both sexes and of all ages.&nbsp; In another
+tent there were nine children of both sexes and all ages, some of
+them men and women, and for the life of me I cannot tell how they
+are all packed when they sleep&mdash;I suppose like herrings in a
+box, pell-mell, &ldquo;all <!-- page 270--><a
+name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 270</span>of a
+heap.&rdquo;&nbsp; One of these Gipsy young women was a model,
+and has her time pretty much occupied during the day.&nbsp; I
+have been among house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midland counties,
+and have found twelve to fifteen men, women, and children,
+squatting about on the floor, which they used as a workshop,
+sitting-room, drawing-room, and bed-room; although there was a
+bed-room up-stairs it was not often used&mdash;so I was told by
+the landlady.</p>
+<p>There is much more sickness among the Gipsies than is
+generally known, especially among the children.&nbsp; They have
+strong faith in herbs; the principal being chicken-weed,
+groundsel, elder leaves, rue, wild sage, love-wort, agrimony,
+buckbean, wood-betony, and others; these they boil in a saucepan
+like they would cabbages, and then drink the decoction.&nbsp;
+They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last
+extremity.&nbsp; They are very much like the man who tried by
+degrees to train his donkey to live and work without food, and
+just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and so it is with the
+poor Gipsy children.&nbsp; It kills them to break them in to the
+hardships of Gipsy life.&nbsp; Occasionally I have heard of
+Gipsies who act as human beings should do with their
+children.&nbsp; A well-to-do Gipsy whom I know&mdash;one of the
+Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson&mdash;has spent over &pound;30 in
+doctors&rsquo; bills this winter for his children&rsquo;s
+good.&nbsp; Not one Gipsy in a thousand would do likewise.</p>
+<p>Gipsies die like other folk, although before doing so they may
+have lived and quarrelled like the Kilkenny cats among other
+Gipsies; but at death these things are all forgotten, and a Gipsy
+funeral seems to be the means to revive all the good they knew
+about the person dead and a burying of all the bad connected with
+the dead Gipsy&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; I am now referring to a few of
+the better class of Gipsies.&nbsp; Gipsies, as a rule, pay
+special regard to the wishes of a dying Gipsy, and will sacrifice
+almost anything to carry them out.&nbsp; I attended the funeral
+of a house-dwelling Gipsy, Mrs. Roberts, at Notting Hill, a few
+weeks ago.&nbsp; The editor and proprietor of the <i>Suburban
+Press</i>, <!-- page 271--><a name="page271"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 271</span>refers to this funeral in his
+edition under date February 28th, as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;On
+Monday last a noteworthy event took place in the humble locality
+of the Potteries, Notting Dale.&nbsp; In this district are
+congregated a miscellaneous population of the poorest order, who
+get what living they can out of the brick-fields or adjoining
+streets and lanes, or by costermongering, tinkering, &amp;c.,
+&amp;c.&nbsp; They dwell together in the poorest and most
+melancholy-looking cottages, some in sheds and outhouses, or in
+dilapidated vans, for it is the resort and <i>locale</i> of many
+of the Gipsies that wander in the western suburbs.&nbsp; Yet all
+these make up a kind of community and live together as friends
+and neighbours, and every now and again they show themselves
+amenable to good influences, and characters of humble mark and
+power arise among them.&nbsp; To those who sympathise with the
+poet who sings of the</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Short and simple annals of the
+poor,&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>we scarcely know a region that can be studied to greater
+advantage.&nbsp; In the present instance it was the funeral of an
+old inhabitant of the Gipsy tribe, one of the oldest, most
+respected, and loved of all the nomads, and related in some way
+to many Gipsy families in London and the neighbouring
+counties.&nbsp; Abutting from the Walmer Road is a good sized
+court or alley called &lsquo;Mary Place,&rsquo; and in a nook of
+one of the small cottages here lived Mrs. Roberts for a number of
+years, who has been described to us by one who long enjoyed her
+acquaintance as &lsquo;a very superior woman, intelligent and
+happy Christian.&rsquo;&nbsp; So that she must indeed have shone
+in that humble and sombre spot as a &lsquo;gem of purest ray
+serene,&rsquo; though not exactly as the flower</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&lsquo;Born to blush
+unseen,<br />
+And waste its sweetness on the desert air.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p272b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Outside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s van"
+title=
+"Outside a Christian Gipsy&rsquo;s van"
+src="images/p272s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>For the comprehensive genius of Christian sympathy and labour
+had found her out, and she was known and respected, and her
+influence was felt by all around her.&nbsp; She lived for <!--
+page 272--><a name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+272</span>years a widow, but with five grown-up, strong, and
+thrifty children&mdash;two sons and three daughters and troops of
+friends&mdash;to cheer her latter days.&nbsp; The
+preliminaries&mdash;a service of song conducted by Mr. Adams and
+his sons&mdash;were soon over, and the coffin being lifted
+through the window was placed on the strong shoulders which had
+been appointed to convey it to Brompton Cemetery, a distance of
+some three miles.&nbsp; It was a neat coffin, covered with black
+cloth, and when the pall had been thrown over it affectionate
+hands placed upon it two or three large handsome wreaths of
+immortals white as snow, and so the procession moved off followed
+by weeping sons, daughters, and friends, and a host of
+sympathising neighbours, to the strains of the &lsquo;Dead March
+in Saul.&rsquo;&nbsp; <i>Requiescat in pace</i>.&nbsp; Among
+those present at this interesting ceremony standing next to us,
+and sharing in part our umbrella, was a gentleman whose name and
+vocation we were not aware until afterwards.&nbsp; We were glad,
+however, to learn that we were unwittingly conversing with no
+other than Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the
+philanthropic and well-known promoter of the
+&lsquo;Brick-maker&rsquo;s&rsquo; and &lsquo;Canal
+Boatman&rsquo;s&rsquo; Acts, who has specially devoted himself to
+the improvement of the social condition of these too-neglected
+people.&nbsp; He is now giving his attention to the case of the
+Gipsies, and specially to the children, to whom he is anxious to
+see extended among other things the provisions of the School
+Board Act.&nbsp; The great and good work of Mr. Smith has already
+attracted the attention of a number of charitable Christian
+people, and it has not been overlooked by Her Majesty the Queen,
+who, with her accustomed care and kindness, has expressed her
+special interest therein.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was a good, Christian
+woman, and I think I am speaking within bounds when I say that
+there is not one in five hundred like she was.&nbsp; Before she
+died she wished for two things to be carried out at her
+funeral&mdash;one was that she should be carried on
+Gipsies&rsquo; shoulders all the way to Brompton Cemetery, a
+distance of some miles; and the <!-- page 273--><a
+name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 273</span>other was
+that Mr. Adams, a gentleman in the neighbourhood, should conduct
+a service of song just before the funeral <i>cort&eacute;ge</i>
+left the humble domicile; both requests were carried out,
+notwithstanding that it was a pouring wet day.&nbsp; The service
+of song was very impressive, surrounded as we were by some two
+hundred Gipsies and others of the lowest of the low, living in
+one of the darkest places in London.&nbsp; Some stood with their
+mouths open and appeared as if they had not heard of the name of
+Jesus before, and there were others whose features betokened
+strong emotion, and upon whose cheeks could be seen the trickling
+tears as we sung, among others:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Shall we gather at the river,<br />
+Where bright angels&rsquo; feet have trod,<br />
+With its crystal tide for ever<br />
+Flowing by the throne of God?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yes, we&rsquo;ll gather at the
+river,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The beautiful, the beautiful
+river,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That flows by the throne of
+God.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Soon we&rsquo;ll reach the silvery river,<br />
+Soon our pilgrimage will cease,<br />
+Soon our happy hearts will quiver,<br />
+With the melody of peace.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yes, we&rsquo;ll gather at the
+river,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The beautiful, the beautiful
+river,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That flows by the throne of
+God.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It has frequently been stated that the Gipsies never allow
+their poor to go into the union workhouses; this statement is
+both erroneous, false, and misleading.&nbsp; Clayton, a Gipsy, at
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch, told me only the other day that he knew an old
+Gipsy woman who was living in the Melton Mowbray Union Workhouse
+at the present time, and mentioned some others who had died in
+the union, a few connected with his own family.&nbsp; Abraham
+Smith, a respectable and an old Christian Gipsy, mentioned the
+names of a dozen or more Gipsies of his acquaintance who had died
+in the <!-- page 274--><a name="page274"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 274</span>union workhouse, some in the
+Biggleswade Union, of the name of Shaw.&nbsp; There was a time
+when there was a little repugnance to the union, but this feeling
+has died out, thus adding another proof that the Gipsies, in many
+respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more
+ago; and this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government
+interference as regards the education of the children.&nbsp;
+Abraham Smith also further stated that nearly all the old people
+belonging to one family of S--- had died in the workhouse in
+Bedfordshire.&nbsp; Another thing has forced itself upon my
+attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor
+unfortunate idiots among them.&nbsp; I know, for a fact, of one
+family where there are two poor creatures, one of whom is in the
+asylum, and of another family where there is one, and a number in
+various parts where they are semi-idiotic, and only next door to
+the asylum.&nbsp; These painful facts will plainly show to all
+Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their
+country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the
+Gipsies to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense
+manner by those at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a
+position as to help themselves to some of the blessings we are in
+possession of ourselves.&nbsp; During all my inquiries, when the
+Gipsies have not fallen in with all I have said with reference to
+Gipsy life, they have all agreed without exception to the plan I
+have sketched out for the education of their children and the
+registration of their tents, &amp;c.</p>
+<p>In the days of Hoyland and Borrow the Gipsies were very
+anxious for the education of their children and struggled hard
+themselves to bring it about.&nbsp; Sixty years ago one of the
+Lovells sent three of his children to school, at No. 5, George
+Street, taught by Partak Ivery, and paid sixpence per week each
+with them; but the question of religion came up and the children
+were sent home.&nbsp; The schoolmaster, Ivery, said that he had
+had six Gipsy children sent to his school, and when placed among
+the other children they <!-- page 275--><a
+name="page275"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 275</span>were
+reduceable to order.&nbsp; It is a standing disgrace and a shame
+to us as a nation professing Christianity that at this time we
+had in our midst ten to fifteen thousand poor little heathen
+children thirsting for knowledge, and no one to hand it to them
+or put them in the way to help themselves.&nbsp; The sin lays at
+some one&rsquo;s door, and I would not like to be in their shoes
+for something.&nbsp; While this dense ignorance was manifest
+among the poor Gipsy children at our doors we were scattering the
+Bibles all over the world, and sending missionaries by hundreds
+to foreign lands and supporting them by hundreds of thousands of
+pounds gladly subscribed by our hard-working artisans and
+others.&nbsp; Not that I am finding fault with those who take an
+interest in foreign missions in the least&mdash;would to God that
+more were done for every nation upon the face of the
+globe&mdash;but I do think in matters relating to the welfare of
+the children we ought to look more at home.</p>
+<p>With reference to missionary effort among the Gipsies, I must
+confess that I am not a strong advocate for a strictly sectarian
+missionary organisation to be formed with headquarters in London,
+and a paid staff of officials, to convert the Gipsies.&nbsp; If
+the act is passed upon the basis I have laid down, the result
+will be that in course of time the Gipsies will be
+localised.&nbsp; I am strongly in favour of all sections of
+Christ&rsquo;s Church dealing with our floating population,
+whether upon land or water, in their own localities, and in a
+kind of spirit of holy rivalry among themselves, if I may use the
+term.&nbsp; For the life of me I cannot see why temporary wooden
+erections, something of the &ldquo;penny-gaff&rdquo; style,
+should not be erected upon race-courses, and in the market-places
+during fair time, in which religious services could be held free
+from all sectarian bias, and which could be called the
+Showman&rsquo;s or Gipsy&rsquo;s Church.&nbsp; There are times
+when a short interesting service could be held without coming in
+collision with the steam whistles of the
+&ldquo;round-abouts,&rdquo; &ldquo;big drums,&rdquo; reports from
+the &ldquo;rifle galleries,&rdquo; the screams and shouts of
+stall-keepers; <!-- page 276--><a name="page276"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 276</span>and at any rate, I think it would be
+better to have a number of organisations at work rather than one,
+dealing both with our Gipsies and canal-boatmen.&nbsp; In
+whatever form missionary effort is put forth, it must go further
+than that of a clergyman, who told me one Sunday afternoon last
+year, after he had been preaching in the most fashionable church
+in Kensington, to the effect that, if any of the large number of
+Gipsies who encamped in his parish in the country, and not far
+from the vicarage, &ldquo;raised their hats to him as he passed
+them, he returned the compliment.&rdquo;&nbsp; Poor stuff this to
+educate their children and to civilise and Christianise their
+parents.</p>
+<p>It is my decided opinion that if the Gipsy children had been
+taken hold of at that day, and placed side by side with the
+children of other working classes, we should not by this time
+have had a Gipsy wigwam flitting about our country; fifty
+years&rsquo; educational influences mean, to a great extent,
+their present and eternal salvation.&nbsp; A tremendous
+responsibility and sin hangs, and will hang, about the necks of
+those who have in the past, or will in the future, shut the door
+of the school in the face of the poor Gipsy child, and turn it
+into the streets to perish everlastingly.&nbsp; I am confident
+the Gipsies will do their part if a simple plan for its
+accomplishment can be set in motion.&nbsp; Harshness, cruelty,
+and insult, rigid, and extreme measures will do no good with the
+Gipsies.&nbsp; Fiery persecution will only frustrate my
+object.&nbsp; God knows, they are bad enough, and I have no wish
+to mince matters, or to paint them white, as fiction has
+done.&nbsp; I have tried&mdash;how far I have succeeded it is not
+for me to say&mdash;to expose the evils, and not individuals,
+thoroughly, in accordance with my duty to my God, my country, and
+my conscience, without partiality, bias, or fear, be the
+consequences what they may.&nbsp; To write a book full of glowing
+colour, pictures, fancies, imagination, and fiction, is both more
+profitable and pleasant.&nbsp; The waft of a scented
+pocket-handkerchief across one&rsquo;s face by the hand of a fair
+<!-- page 277--><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+277</span>and lovely damsel is only as a fleeting shadow and a
+passing vapour; they quickly come and they quickly go, leaving no
+footstep behind them; a shooting star and a flitting comet, and
+all is in darkness blacker than ever.&nbsp; Somehow or other the
+Gipsies will, if possible, encamp near a school, but they lack
+the power to enter, and some of them, no doubt, could send their
+children to school for a few days occasionally; but the Gipsies
+have got it in their heads that their children are not wanted,
+and this is the case with the show people&rsquo;s children.&nbsp;
+Last autumn I saw myself an encampment of Gipsies upon Turnham
+Green; there were about thirty Gipsy children playing upon the
+school-fence, not one of whom could either read or write.&nbsp;
+The school was only half full, and the teacher was looking very
+pleasantly out of the door of the school upon the poor, ignorant
+children as they were rolling about in the mud.&nbsp; In another
+part of London a Gipsy owns some cottages, with some spare land
+between each cottage; upon this land there is her own van and a
+number of other vans and tents, for which standing ground they
+pay the Gipsy woman a rent of one shilling and sixpence per week
+each.&nbsp; Neither herself nor any of the Gipsies connected with
+the encampment could tell a letter, and there were some sixty to
+seventy men, women, and children of all ages; and the strange
+part of the thing is, the Gipsy woman&rsquo;s tenants in her
+cottages were compelled by the School Board officer to send their
+children to school, while the Gipsy children were running wild
+like colts, and revelling in dirt and filth in the
+neighbourhood.&nbsp; A similar state of things to this exists in
+a more or less degree with all the other encampments on the
+outskirts of London.&nbsp; At one of the large encampments I
+tried to find if there were really any who could read and write,
+and to put this to the test I took the <i>Christian World</i> and
+the <i>Christian Globe</i> with me.&nbsp; The Gipsy lad who they
+said was &ldquo;a clever scholard&rdquo; was brought to me, and I
+put the <i>Christian World</i> before him to see if he could read
+the large <!-- page 278--><a name="page278"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 278</span>letters; sad to say, instead of
+<i>Christian World</i>, he called it &ldquo;Christmas,&rdquo; and
+there he stuck and could get no further.&nbsp; I have said some
+strong things, and endeavoured to lay bare some hard facts
+relating to Gipsy life in the preceding part of this book, with a
+view to enlist help and sympathy for the poor children, and not
+to submit the Gipsy fathers to insult and ridicule.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p277b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Four little Gipsies sitting for the Artist outside their tent,
+dressed for the occasion, and who can neither read nor write"
+title=
+"Four little Gipsies sitting for the Artist outside their tent,
+dressed for the occasion, and who can neither read nor write"
+src="images/p277s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the mother is often
+necessitated to leave her tent in the morning, and seldom returns
+to it before night.&nbsp; Their children are then left in or
+about their solitary camps, having many times no adult with them;
+the elder children then have the care of the younger ones.&nbsp;
+Those who are old enough gather wood for fuel; nor is stealing it
+thought a crime.&nbsp; By the culpable neglect of the parents in
+this respect the children are often exposed to accidents by fire,
+and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to
+death are not unfrequent.&nbsp; One poor woman relates that two
+of her children have thus lost their lives by fire during her
+absence from her tent at different periods, and some years ago a
+child was scalded to death at Southampton.</p>
+<p>The following account will faintly show something of the
+hardships of Gipsy children&rsquo;s lives:&mdash;It was winter,
+and the weather was unusually cold, there being much snow on the
+ground.&nbsp; The tent, which was only covered with a ragged
+blanket, was pitched on the lee side of a small hawthorn
+bush.&nbsp; The children had stolen a few green sticks from the
+hedges, but they would not burn.&nbsp; There was no straw in the
+tent, and only one blanket to lay betwixt six children and the
+frozen ground, with nothing to cover them.&nbsp; The youngest of
+these children was three and the eldest seventeen years
+old.&nbsp; In addition to this wretchedness the smaller children
+were nearly naked.&nbsp; The youngest was squatted on the ground,
+her little feet and legs bare, and gnawing a frozen turnip which
+had been stolen from an adjoining field.&nbsp; None of them had
+tasted bread for more than a day.&nbsp; The <!-- page 279--><a
+name="page279"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 279</span>moment they
+saw their visitor, the little ones repeatedly shouted,
+&ldquo;Here is the gemman come for us!&rdquo;&nbsp; Some money
+was given to the eldest sister to buy bread with, at which their
+joy was greatly increased.&nbsp; Straw was also provided for them
+to sleep on, four were measured for clothes, and after a few days
+they were placed under proper care.&nbsp; The youngest child
+died, however, a short time after in consequence of having been
+so neglected in infancy.</p>
+<p>During last June a Gipsy woman, of the name of Bishop, was
+found in one of the tents, on a common just outside London, with
+her throat cut and her child lying dead by her side in a pool of
+blood, and the man with whom she cohabited&mdash;true to his
+Gipsy character&mdash;refused to answer any questions concerning
+this horrible affair.&nbsp; An impression has gone the round for
+years that the Gipsies are exceedingly kind and affectionate to
+their children, in some instances it, no doubt, is true, but they
+are rare indeed if I may judge from appearances.&nbsp; I have yet
+to learn that starvation, allowing their children to grow up
+infinitely worse than barbarians, subjecting them to fearful
+oaths and curses, and inflicting upon the poor children blows
+with sticks, used with murderous passion, to within an inch of
+their lives, exhibits much of the lamb-like spirit, dove-like
+innocence, and childish simplicity fiction would picture to our
+minds concerning these English barbarians as they camp on the
+mossy banks on a hot summer day.&nbsp; In the presence of myself
+and a friend one of these lawless fellows very recently hurled a
+log of wood at a poor Gipsy child&rsquo;s head for an offence
+which we could not learn, farther than it was for a trifling
+affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child&rsquo;s head, or
+death must have been the result.&nbsp; In visiting an encampment
+last autumn I came across six Gipsy children having their dinner
+off three small boiled turnips, and drinking the water as broth;
+the eldest girl, although dressed in rags, was going to sit the
+same afternoon for a leading artist upon a throne as a Spanish
+queen.&nbsp; In another part of London&mdash;<!-- page 280--><a
+name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 280</span>Mary
+Place&mdash;I found a family of Gipsies living under sticks and
+rags in the most filthy, sickening, and disgusting backyard I
+have ever been into&mdash;to such an extent was the stench that
+immediately I came out of it I had to get a little brandy or I
+should have fainted&mdash;the eldest girl of whom had her time
+pretty fully taken up by sitting as an artist&rsquo;s model in
+the costume of a peasant girl, sometimes gathering buttercups and
+daisies, at other times gathering roses and making button-holes
+for gentlemen&rsquo;s coats and placing them there with gentle
+hands and a smiling face; occasionally she would be painted as a
+country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture; at other times as
+a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and gambolling with
+children.&nbsp; What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to
+silks and satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a
+palace; from turnips and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits;
+from beds of rotten straw to crimson and gold-covered chairs;
+from trampling among dead cats to a carpet composed of wild
+flowers; from &ldquo;Get out you wretch and fetch some money, no
+matter how,&rdquo; to &ldquo;Come here, my dear, is there
+anything I can do for you?&rdquo; from the stench of a cesspool
+to the fragrance of the honeysuckle and sweetbriar, in one word,
+from hell to heaven all in an hour&mdash;such is one side of
+Gipsy life among the little Gipsies, not one of whom can read a
+sentence or write one word, and it is in this way Gipsy girls are
+found exposing their bodies to keep their big, healthy brothers
+and fathers at home in idleness and sin.&nbsp; Two such Gipsy
+girls have come under my own notice, and no doubt there are
+scores of similar cases.&nbsp; Gipsy children are fond of a great
+degree of heat, and sometimes lie so near to the coke fires as to
+be in danger of burning.&nbsp; I have seen them with their faces
+as red as if they were upon the point of being roasted, and yet
+they can bear to travel in the severest cold bare-headed, with no
+other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over
+them.&nbsp; The cause of their bodily qualities, at least some of
+them, arises from their education and hardy manner of life.&nbsp;
+<!-- page 281--><a name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+281</span>Formerly the Gipsies, when there was less English blood
+in their veins, could stand the extreme changes and hardships of
+the English climate much better than now.&nbsp; An Englishman,
+notwithstanding the fact that he has let go all moral and social
+respect and restraint over his conduct and joined the Gipsies,
+does not, and cannot, thrive and look well under their manner of
+living, and this I see more and more every day.&nbsp; I have been
+struck very forcibly lately in visiting some of the hordes of
+Gipsies with the vast number of children the Gipsies bring into
+the world and the few that are reared.&nbsp; At one encampment
+there were forty men and women and only about the same number of
+children to be seen.&nbsp; At another encampment I found double
+the quantity of children to adult Gipsies.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p281b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A top bedroom in a Gipsy&rsquo;s van for man, wife, and three
+children, the sons and daughters sleeping underneath"
+title=
+"A top bedroom in a Gipsy&rsquo;s van for man, wife, and three
+children, the sons and daughters sleeping underneath"
+src="images/p281s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>No one can deny the fact that some of the children look well,
+but, on the other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of
+this, pictures of starvation, neglect, bad blood, and
+cruelty.&nbsp; An Englishman is born for a nobler purpose than to
+lead a vagabond&rsquo;s life and end his days in scratching among
+filth and vermin in a Gipsy&rsquo;s wigwam, consequently, upon
+those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the
+sin attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep
+they take.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t lay at the door of their wigwam
+the sin of child-stealing, but this I have seen, <i>i.e.</i>,
+many strange-looking children in their tents without the least
+shadow of a similarity to the adults in either habits,
+appearance, manner, or conversation.&nbsp; Some of the poor
+things seemed shy and reserved, and quite out of their
+element.&nbsp; Sometimes the thought has occurred to me that they
+were the children of sin, and put out of the way to escape shame
+being painted upon the back of their parents.&nbsp; Sometimes my
+pity for the poor things has led me to put a question or two
+bearing upon the subject to the Gipsies, and the answer has been,
+&ldquo;The poor things have lost their father and
+mother.&rdquo;&nbsp; When I have asked if the fathers and mothers
+were Gipsies a little hesitation was manifested, and the subject
+<!-- page 282--><a name="page282"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+282</span>dropped with no satisfactory answer to my mind.&nbsp; I
+have my own idea about the matter.</p>
+<p>The hardships the women have to undergo are most
+heartrending.&nbsp; The mother, in order to procure a morsel of
+food, takes her three months&rsquo; old child either in her arms
+or on her back, and wanders the streets or lanes in foul or fair
+weather&mdash;in heat or cold.&nbsp; Some of them have told me
+that they walk on an average over twelves miles a day.&nbsp; They
+are the bread-winners.&nbsp; I have seen them on their return to
+their wigwams, in the depth of winter, with six inches of snow on
+the ground, and scantily clad, and with six little children
+crying round them for bread.&nbsp; No fire in the tent, and her
+husband idling about in other tents.&nbsp; In cases of
+confinements, the men have to do something, or they would all
+starve.&nbsp; For a few days they wake up out of their idle
+dreams.&nbsp; I know of Gipsy women who have trudged along with
+their loads, and their children at their heels, to within the
+last five minutes of their confinement.&nbsp; The children were
+literally born under the hedge bottom, and without any tent or
+protection whatever.&nbsp; A Gipsy woman told me a week or two
+since that her mother had told her that she was born under the
+hedge bottom in Bagworth Lane, in Leicestershire.&nbsp; When I
+questioned her on the subject, she rather gloried in the fact
+that they had not time to stick the tent-sticks into the
+ground.&nbsp; This kind of disgraceful procedure is not far
+removed from that of animals.&nbsp; I should think that I am
+speaking within compass when I state that two-thirds of the
+Gipsies travelling about the country have been born under what
+they call the &ldquo;hedge bottom,&rdquo; <i>i.e.</i>, in tents
+and like places.&nbsp; The Gipsy women use no cradles; the child,
+as a rule, sleeps on the ground.&nbsp; When a boy attains three
+years of age, so says Hoyland, the rags he was wrapped in are
+thrown on one side, and he is equally exposed with the parents to
+the severest weather.&nbsp; He is then put to trial to see how
+far his legs will carry him.&nbsp; Clayton told me that when he
+was a boy of about twelve, his father sent <!-- page 283--><a
+name="page283"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 283</span>him into
+the town and among the villages&mdash;with no other covering upon
+him only a piece of an old shirt&mdash;to bring either bread or
+money home, no matter how.</p>
+<p>Among some of the State projects put forth in Hungary more
+than a century since to improve the condition of the Gipsies, the
+following may be mentioned: (1) They were prohibited from
+dwelling in huts and tents, from wandering up and down the
+country, from dealing in horses, from eating animals which died
+of themselves and carrion.&nbsp; (2) They were to be called New
+Boors instead of Gipsies, and they were not to converse in any
+other language but that of any of the countries in which they
+chose to reside.&nbsp; (3) After some months from the passing of
+the Act, they were to quit their Gipsy manner of life and settle,
+like the other inhabitants, in cities or villages, and to provide
+themselves with suitable and proper clothing.&nbsp; (4) No Gipsy
+was allowed to marry who could not prove himself in a condition
+to provide for and maintain a wife and children.&nbsp; (5) That
+from such Gipsies who were married and had families, the children
+should be taken away by force, removed from their parents,
+relations, or intercourse with the Gipsy race, and to have a
+better education given to them.&nbsp; At Fahlendorf, in
+Sch&uuml;tt, and in the district of Prassburg, all the children
+of the New Boors (Gipsies) above five years old were carried away
+in waggons on the night of the twenty-first of December, 1773, by
+overseers appointed for that purpose, in order, that, at a
+distance from their parents or relations, they might be more
+usefully educated and sent to work.&nbsp; (6) They were to be
+taught the principles of religion, and their children
+educated.&nbsp; Their children were prohibited running about
+their houses, streets, or roads naked, and they were not to be
+allowed to sleep promiscuously by each other without distinction
+of sex.&nbsp; (7) They were enjoined to attend church regularly,
+and to give proof of their Christian disposition, and they were
+not to wear large cloaks, which were chiefly used to hide the
+<!-- page 284--><a name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+284</span>things they had stolen.&nbsp; (8) They were to be kept
+to agriculture, and were only to be permitted to amuse themselves
+with music when their day&rsquo;s work was finished.&nbsp; (9)
+The magistrates at every place were to be very attentive to see
+that no Gipsy wasted his time in idleness, and whoever was remiss
+in his work was to be liable to corporal punishment.</p>
+<p>All these suggestions and plans of operation may not suit
+English life; be that as it may, they were suitable to the
+condition of the Hungarian Gipsies, and no doubt laid the
+foundation for the improvement that has taken place among
+them.&nbsp; The Hungarian Gipsies are educated, and are tillers
+of the soil.&nbsp; If a plan similar in some respects had been
+carried out with our Gipsies at the same period, we should not by
+this time have had a Gipsy-tent in the country, or an uneducated
+Gipsy in our land.&nbsp; What a different aspect would have
+presented itself ere this, if the 5,000 Gipsies among us had been
+tilling our waste lands and commons for the last century.&nbsp;
+With proper management, these 5,000 Gipsy men could have bought
+and kept under cultivation some 20,000 acres of land for the
+well-being of themselves and for the good of the country.&nbsp;
+There is neglect, indifference, and apathy somewhere.&nbsp; The
+blame will lay heavily upon some one when the accounts are made
+up.</p>
+<p>It is appalling and humiliating to think that we, as a
+Christian nation, should have had in our midst for more than
+three centuries 15,000 to 20,000 poor ignorant Asiatic heathens,
+naturally sharp and clever, and next to nothing being done to
+reclaim them from their worse than midnight darkness.&nbsp; A
+heavy sin and responsibility lays at our doors.&nbsp; Take away
+John Bunyan, a few of the Smiths, Palmers, Lovells, Lees, Hearns,
+Coopers, Simpsons, Boswells, Eastwoods, Careys, Roberts, &amp;c.,
+and what do we find?&mdash;a black army of human beings who have
+done next to nothing&mdash;comparatively speaking&mdash;for the
+country&rsquo;s good.&nbsp; They have cadged at our doors, lived
+on our commons, worn our <!-- page 285--><a
+name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 285</span>roads, been
+fed from our tables, sent their paupers to our workhouses, their
+idiots to our asylums, and not contributed one farthing to their
+maintenance and support.&nbsp; Rates and taxes are unknown to
+them.&nbsp; There is only one instance of them paying rates for
+their vans, and that is at Blackpool.</p>
+<p>It is a black, burning shame and disgrace to see herds of
+healthy-looking girls and great strapping youths growing up in
+ignorance and idleness, not so much as exerting themselves to
+wash the filth off their bodies or make anything better than
+skewers.&nbsp; Their highest ambition is to learn slang, roll in
+the ditch, spread small-pox and fevers, threaten vengeance, and
+carry out revenge upon those who attempt to frustrate their evil
+designs.&nbsp; Excepting skewers, clothes-pegs, and a few other
+little things of this kind, they have not manufactured anything;
+the highest state of perfection they have arrived at is to be
+able to make and tie up a bundle of skewers, split a clothes-peg,
+tinker a kettle, mend a chair, see-saw on an old fiddle, rap
+their knuckles on a tambourine, clatter about with their feet,
+tickle the guitar, and make a squeaking noise through their
+teeth, that fiction and romance call singing.&nbsp; The most that
+can be said in their favour is, that a few of them have become
+respectable Christians and hard-working men and women, and have
+done something for the country&rsquo;s good&mdash;and whose fault
+is it that there are not more?&nbsp; They have been the agents of
+hell, working out Satan&rsquo;s designs, and we have stood by
+laughing and admiring their so-called pretty faces, scarlet
+cloaks, and &ldquo;witching eyes.&rdquo;&nbsp; For the life of me
+I can find no more bewitching beauty among them than can be found
+in our back slums any day, circumstances considered&mdash;and
+where does the blame lay?&mdash;upon our own shoulders for not
+paying more attention to the education and welfare of their
+children.&nbsp; It is truly horrible to think that we have had
+15,000 to 20,000 young and old Gipsies at work, carrying out the
+designs of the infernal regions at the tip end of the roots of
+our national life, vigour, and Christianity.</p>
+<p><!-- page 286--><a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+286</span>Only the other day the country was much shocked, and
+rightly so, at a hundred poor Russian emigrants landing upon our
+shores; and yet we have two hundred times this quantity of
+Gipsies among us, and we quietly stand by and take no notice of
+their wretched condition.&nbsp; The time will come, and that
+speedily, when we shall have the scales taken off our eyes, and
+the thin, flimsy veil of romance torn to shreds.&nbsp; Sitting by
+and admiring their &ldquo;pretty faces&rdquo; and &ldquo;witching
+eyes&rdquo; will not save their souls, educate their children, or
+put them in the way of earning an honest livelihood.&nbsp; It is
+not pity&mdash;whining, sycophantic pity&mdash;alone that will do
+them good.&nbsp; The Rev. Mr. Cobbin&rsquo;s Gipsy&rsquo;s
+petition, written fifty years ago,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Oh! ye who have tasted of mercy and
+love,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And shared in the blessings of pardoning grace,<br
+/>
+Let us the kind fruits of your tenderness prove,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And pity, oh! pity, the poor Gipsy race.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>has been little better than beating the air, and it may be
+repeated a thousand times, but if nothing further is done more
+than &ldquo;pity,&rdquo; the Gipsies will be worse off in fifty
+years hence than they are now, nor will presenting to them bread,
+cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb
+did half a century ago, render them permanent help.&nbsp; We must
+do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a little
+fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for
+themselves.&nbsp; Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to
+use their own wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers
+are the agencies to do it.&nbsp; The men are clever and can get
+money sufficient to keep their families comfortable even at
+skewer-making and chair-mending, &amp;c., if they will only
+work.&nbsp; All the police-officer must do will be to take charge
+of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle
+for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments.&nbsp; The
+State has taken in hand a more dangerous class&mdash;perhaps the
+most dangerous&mdash;in <!-- page 287--><a
+name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>India,
+viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest
+industry with most encouraging results.&nbsp; Before the
+Government tackled them, they were idling, loafing, rambling, and
+robbing all over the country, alike to our Gipsies; now they have
+settled down and become useful and good citizens.&nbsp; In Norway
+the Gipsies are put into prison, and there kept till they have
+learnt to read and write.&nbsp; In Hungary the Government has
+appointed a special Minister to look after them, and see that
+they are being properly educated and brought up.&nbsp; In Russia,
+the laws passed for their imprisonment has had the effect of
+causing them, to a great extent, to settle down to useful trades,
+and they are forming themselves into colonies.&nbsp; And so, in
+like manner, in Spain, Germany, France, and other European
+countries, steps have been taken to bring about an improvement
+among them.&nbsp; In these countries nearly the whole of the
+Gipsies can read and write; and we, of all others, who ought to
+have set the example a century ago in the way of educating the
+Gipsy children, have stood by with folded arms, and let them
+drift into ruin.&nbsp; I claim it to be our duty&mdash;and it
+will be to our shame if we do not&mdash;to see to the welfare of
+the Gipsy children for four reasons.&nbsp; First, that they are
+Indians, and under the rule of our noble Queen; second, that they
+are in our midst, and ought to take their share of the blessings,
+duties, and responsibilities pertaining to the rest of the
+community; third, that as a Christian nation, professing to lead
+the van and to set forth the blessings of Christianity and
+civilisation; and, fourth, their universal desire for the
+education of their children, and to contribute their quota,
+however small, to the country&rsquo;s good, and for the eternal
+welfare of their own children; and I do not think that there will
+be any objection on their part to it being brought about on the
+plan I have briefly sketched out.</p>
+<p>I fancy I can hear some of the artists who have been delighted
+with Gipsy models&mdash;the novelists who have hung many a tale
+upon the skirts of their garments&mdash;the <!-- page 288--><a
+name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 288</span>dramatists
+who have trotted them before the curtain to please the public,
+and some old-fashioned croakers, who delight in allowing things
+to be as they have always been&mdash;the same yesterday, to-day,
+and for ever&mdash;saying, &ldquo;let everybody look after their
+own children;&rdquo; and then, in a plaintive tone,
+singing&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Woodman, spare that tree!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Touch not a single bough;<br />
+In youth it sheltered me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And I&rsquo;ll protect it now.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>First,&mdash;I would have all movable or temporary
+habitations, used as dwellings, registered, numbered, and the
+name and address of the owner or occupier painted in a prominent
+place on the outside, <i>i.e.</i>, on all tents, Gipsy vans,
+auctioneers&rsquo; vans, showmen&rsquo;s vans, and like places,
+and under proper sanitary arrangements in a manner analogous to
+the Canal Boats Act of 1877.</p>
+<p>Second,&mdash;Not less than one hundred cubic feet of space
+for each female above the age of twelve, and each male above the
+age of fourteen; and not less than fifty cubic feet of space for
+each female young person under the age of twelve, and for each
+male under the age of fourteen.</p>
+<p>Third,&mdash;No male above the age of fourteen, and no female
+above the age of twelve, should be allowed to sleep in the same
+tent or van as man and wife, unless separate sleeping
+accommodation be provided for each male of the age of fourteen,
+and for each female of the age of twelve; and also with proper
+regard for partitions and suitable ventilation.</p>
+<p>Fourth,&mdash;A registration certificate to be obtained,
+renewable at any of the offices of the Urban or Rural sanitary
+authorities throughout the country, for which the owner or
+occupier of the tent or van should pay the sum of ten shillings
+annually, commencing on the first of January in each year.</p>
+<p>Fifth,&mdash;The compulsory attendance at school of all <!--
+page 289--><a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+289</span>travelling children, or others living in temporary or
+unrateable dwellings, up to the age required by the Elementary
+Education Acts, which attendance should be facilitated and
+brought about by means of a school pass-book, in which the
+children&rsquo;s names, ages, and grade could be entered, and
+which pass-book could be made applicable to children living and
+working on canal-boats, and also to other wandering
+children.&nbsp; The pass-book to be easily procurable at any
+bookseller&rsquo;s for the sum of one shilling.</p>
+<p>Sixth,&mdash;The travelling children should be at liberty to
+go to either National, British, Board, or other schools, under
+the management of a properly-qualified schoolmaster, and which
+schoolmaster should sign the children&rsquo;s pass-book, showing
+the number of times the children had attended school during their
+temporary stay.</p>
+<p>Seventh,&mdash;The cost for the education of these wandering
+children should be paid by the guardians of the poor out of the
+poor rates, a proper account being kept by the schoolmaster and
+delivered to the parochial authorities quarterly.</p>
+<p>Eighth,&mdash;Power to be given to any properly-qualified
+sanitary officer, School Board visitor or inspector, to enter the
+tents, vans, canal-boats, or other movable or temporary
+habitations, at any time or in any place, and detain, if
+necessary, for the purpose of seeing that the law was being
+properly carried out; and any one obstructing such officer in his
+duty, and not carrying out the law, to be subject to a fine or
+imprisonment for each offence.</p>
+<p>Ninth,&mdash;It would be well if arrangements could be made
+with lords of manors, the Government, or others who are owners of
+waste lands, to grant those Gipsies who are without vans, and
+living in tents only, prior to the act coming into force, a long
+lease at a nominal rent of, say, half an acre or an acre of land,
+for ninety-nine years, on purpose to encourage them to settle
+down to the cultivation of it, and to take to honest
+industry&mdash;as many of them are prepared to do.&nbsp; By this
+means a number of the Gipsies would collect <!-- page 290--><a
+name="page290"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 290</span>together on
+the marshes and commons, and no doubt other useful and profitable
+occupation would be the outcome of the Gipsies being thus
+localised, and in which their children could and would take an
+important part; and in addition to these things the social and
+educational advantages to be reaped by following such a course
+would be many.</p>
+<p>I have not the least doubt in my mind but that if a law be
+passed embodying these brief, but rough, suggestions, on the one
+hand, and steps are taken to encourage them to settle down, in
+accordance with the idea thrown out in clause nine, on the other,
+we shall not have in fifty years hence an uneducated Gipsy in our
+midst.&nbsp; Many of the Gipsies are anxious, I know, for some
+steps to be taken for the children to be brought up to
+work.&nbsp; The operation of the present Hawkers&rsquo; and
+Pedlars&rsquo; Act is acting very detrimental to the interests of
+the Gipsy children, as none are allowed to carry a licence under
+the age of sixteen, consequently all Gipsy children, except a few
+who assist in making pegs and skewers, are neither going to
+school nor yet are they learning a trade or in fact work of any
+kind; they are simply living in idleness, and under the influence
+of evil training that carries mischief underneath the
+surface.</p>
+<p>It is truly appalling to think that over seven hundred
+thousand sharp, clever, well-formed human beings, and with plenty
+of muscular power, have, as I have said before, been roaming
+about Europe for many centuries with no object before them, and
+accomplishing nothing.&nbsp; Something like ten millions of
+Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the other
+world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they
+done? what work have they accomplished?&nbsp; Alas! alas! worse
+than a cipher might be written against them.&nbsp; They have
+lived in the midst of beauty, songsters, romance, and fiction,
+and they have been surrounded by everything that would help to
+call forth natural energy, mechanical skill, and ability, but
+they have been in some senses like children playing in the street
+gutters.&nbsp; They have <!-- page 291--><a
+name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 291</span>the
+elements of success within them, but no one has taken them by the
+hand to put them upon the first step, at any rate, so far as
+England is concerned.&nbsp; It is grievous to think that not one
+of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way of all
+flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any
+poetry, worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much
+note&mdash;at least, I can only hear of one or two.&nbsp; They
+have fine voices as a rule, and except some half-dozen Gipsies no
+first-rate musicians have sprung from their midst.&nbsp; No
+engineer, no mechanic&mdash;in fact, no nothing.&nbsp; The
+highest state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few
+slippers for the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers
+to stick into meat, for which they have done nothing towards
+feeding; pegs to hang out other people&rsquo;s linen, some
+tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a little light
+smith work, and a few have made a little money by
+horse-dealing.&nbsp; There are others clever at &ldquo;making
+shifts&rdquo; and roadside tents, and will put up with almost
+anything rather than put forth much energy.&nbsp; Since the
+Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred and fifty
+thousand have been born, principally, as they say, &ldquo;under
+the hedge bottom,&rdquo; lived, and died.&nbsp; They are gone
+&ldquo;and their works do follow them.&rdquo;&nbsp; Their present
+degraded condition in this country may be laid upon our
+backs.</p>
+<p>This book, with its many faults and few virtues, is my own as
+in the case of my others, and all may be laid upon my back; and
+my object in saying hard and unpalatable things about the poor,
+ignorant Gipsy wanderers in our midst is not to expose them to
+ridicule, or to cause the finger of scorn to be pointed at them
+or to any one connected with them, but to try to influence the
+hearts of my countrymen to extend the hand of practical sympathy,
+and help to rescue the poor Gipsy children from dropping into the
+vortex of ruin, as so many thousands have done before.&nbsp; It
+is not unlikely but that I shall, in saying plain things about
+the Gipsies, expose myself to some inconvenience,
+misrepresentation, malice, and spite from <!-- page 292--><a
+name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 292</span>those who
+would keep the Gipsies in ignorance, and also from shadow
+philanthropists, who are always on the look out for other
+people&rsquo;s brains; but these things, so long as God gives me
+strength, will not deter me from doing what I consider to be
+right in the interest of the children, so long as I can see the
+finger of Providence pointing the way, and it is to Him I must
+look for the reward, &ldquo;Well done,&rdquo; which will more
+than repay me for all the inconvenience I have undergone, or may
+have still to undergo, in the cause of the &ldquo;little
+ones.&rdquo;&nbsp; That man is no real friend to the Gipsies who
+seeks to improve them by flattery and deception.&nbsp; A Gipsy,
+with all his faults, likes to be dealt fairly and openly
+with&mdash;a little praise but no flattery suits him.&nbsp; They
+can practise cunning, but they do not care to have any one
+practising it upon them.</p>
+<p>I dare not be sanguine enough to hope that I shall be
+successful, but I have tried thus far to show, first, the past
+and present condition of the Gipsies; second, the little we, as a
+nation, have done to reclaim them; and, third, what we ought to
+do to improve them in the future, so as to remove the stigma from
+our shoulders of having 20,000 to 30,000 Gipsies, show people,
+and others living in vans, &amp;c., in our midst, fast drifting
+into heathenism and barbarism, not five per cent. of whom can
+read and write, at least, so far as the Gipsies are concerned;
+and those children travelling with &ldquo;gingerbread&rdquo;
+stalls, rifle galleries, and auctioneers are but little better,
+for all the parents tell me their children lose in the summer
+what little they learn at school in the winter, for the want of
+means being adopted whereby their children could go to school
+during the daytime as they are travelling through the country
+with their wares, <i>i.e.</i>, at their halting-places.</p>
+<p>In bringing this book to a close, I would say, in the name of
+all that is just, fair, honourable, and reasonable, in the name
+of science, religion, philosophy, and humanity, and in the name
+of all that is Christ-like, God-like, and heavenly, <!-- page
+293--><a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 293</span>I
+ask, nay I claim, the attention of our noble Queen&mdash;whose
+deep interest in the children of the labouring population is
+unbounded&mdash;statesmen, Christians, and my countrymen to the
+condition of the Gipsies and their children, whose condition is
+herein feebly described, and whose cause I have ventured to take
+in hand, praying them to adopt measures and to pass such laws
+that will wipe out the disgrace of having so many thousands of
+poor, ignorant, uneducated, wretched, and lost Gipsy children in
+our midst, who cannot read and write, on the following
+grounds&mdash;</p>
+<p>First.&nbsp; Their Indian origin, which I venture to think has
+been satisfactorily proved, and over which country our Queen is
+the Empress; consequently, our Gipsies ought and have as much
+need to be taken in hand and their condition improved by the
+State as the Thugs in India have been, with such beneficial
+results, a class similar in many respects to our Gipsies.</p>
+<p>Second.&nbsp; As the Government in 1877 passed an act, called
+&ldquo;The Canal Boats Act,&rdquo; dealing pretty much with the
+same class of people as the Gipsies and other travelling
+children, they ought, in all fairness, to extend the principle to
+those living in tents and vans.</p>
+<p>Third.&nbsp; As small-pox, fevers, and other infectious
+diseases are at times very prevalent among them&mdash;a medical
+officer being called in only under the rarest occasion&mdash;and
+as the tents and vans are not under any sanitary arrangements,
+there is, therefore, urgent need for some sort of sanitary
+supervision and control to be exercised over their wretched
+habitations to prevent the spread of disease in such a stealthy
+manner.</p>
+<p>Fourth.&nbsp; As the Government took steps some three
+centuries ago to class the Gipsies as rogues and vagabonds, but
+took no steps at the same time to improve their condition or even
+to encourage them to get upon the right paths for leading an
+honourable and industrious life, the time has now come, I think,
+both in justice and equity, for <!-- page 294--><a
+name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>the
+Government to adopt some means to catch the young hedge-bottom
+&ldquo;Bob Rats,&rdquo; and to deal out to them measures that
+will Christianise and civilise them to such an extent that the
+Gipsies will not in the future be deserving of the epithets
+passed upon them by the Government for their sins of omission and
+commission.</p>
+<p>Fifth.&nbsp; By passing an Act of Parliament, as I suggest, or
+amending the Canal Boats Act, in accordance with the plan I have
+laid down, and embodying the suggestions herein contained, the
+Government will complete the educational system and bring under
+the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society,
+which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in
+the dark as their inclinations might lead them.</p>
+<p>Sixth.&nbsp; The families who are seeking a living as hawkers,
+show people, &amp;c., apart from the Gipsies, are on the
+increase.&nbsp; By travelling up and down the country in this way
+they not only escape rates and taxes, but their children are
+going without education, as no provision is made in the education
+acts to meet cases of this kind.&nbsp; By bringing the Gipsy
+children under the influence of the schoolmaster our law-makers
+will be adding the last stroke to the system of compulsory
+education introduced and carried into law through its first
+difficult and intricate phases by the Right Hon. W. E. Forster,
+M.P., when he was at the head of the Education Department under
+the Liberal Government, and through its second stages by the
+Right Hon. Lord Sandon, M.P., when he was at the head of the
+Education Department under the Conservative Government.</p>
+<p>Seventh.&nbsp; There is an universal desire among people of
+the classes I have before referred to for the education of their
+children, in fact, I have not met with one exception during my
+inquiries, and the Gipsies will be glad to make some sacrifices
+to carry it out if the Government will do their part in the
+matter.</p>
+<p>Eighth.&nbsp; The Gipsies and other travellers of the same
+<!-- page 295--><a name="page295"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+295</span>kind use our roads, locate on our commons, live in our
+lanes, and send their poor, halt, maimed, and blind to our
+workhouses, infirmaries, and asylums, towards the support of
+which they do not contribute one farthing.</p>
+<p>Ninth.&nbsp; As a Christian nation professing to send the
+Gospel all over the world, to preach glad tidings, peace upon
+earth and good-will towards men everywhere, to take steps for the
+conversion of the Gipsies in India, the African, the Chinese, the
+South Sea Islander, the Turk, the black, the white, the bond, the
+free, in fact everywhere where an Englishman goes the Gospel is
+supposed to go too, and yet&mdash;and it is with sadness, sorrow,
+and shame I relate it&mdash;we have had on an average during the
+last three hundred and sixty-five years not less than 15,000
+Gipsies moving among us, and not less than 150,000 have died and
+been buried, either under water, in the ditches, or on the
+roadside, on the commons, or in the cemeteries or churchyards,
+and we, as Christians of Christian England, have not spent
+150,000 pence to reclaim the adult Gipsies, or to educate their
+children.</p>
+<p>Tenth.&nbsp; As a civilised country we are supposed to lead
+the van in civilising the world by passing the most humane,
+righteous, just, and liberal laws, carrying them out on the plan
+of tempering justice with mercy; but in matters concerning the
+interests and welfare of the Gipsies we are, as I have shown
+previously, a long way in the rear.&nbsp; We have passed laws to
+improve the condition of the agricultural labourer&rsquo;s child,
+children working in mines, children working in factories,
+performing boys, climbing boys, children working in brick-yards,
+children working and living on canal-boats, and a thousand
+others; but we have done nothing for the poor Gipsy child or its
+home.&nbsp; In things pertaining to their present and eternal
+welfare they have asked for bread and we have given them a stone;
+and they have asked for fish and we have given them a
+serpent.&nbsp; We have allowed them to wander and lose themselves
+in the dark wilds of sin and <!-- page 296--><a
+name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 296</span>iniquity
+without shedding upon their path the light of Gospel truths or
+the blessings of education; and to-day the Gipsy children are
+dying, where thousands have died before, among the brambles and
+in the thicket of bad example, ignorance, and evil training, into
+which we have allowed them to stray blinded by the evil
+associations of Gipsy life.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;An aged woman walks along,<br />
+Her piercing scream is on the air,<br />
+Her head and streaming locks are bare,<br />
+She sadly sobs &lsquo;My child, my child!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A faint voice is heard in the distance calling out&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My dying daughter, where art thou?<br />
+Call on our gods and they shall come.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;So mote it be.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">London: Printed by <span
+class="smcap">Haughton &amp; Co.</span>, 10, Paternoster Row,
+E.C.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 297--><a name="page297"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 297</span>WORKS PUBLISHED<br />
+<span class="smcap">by</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">HAUGHTON &amp; Co.</span>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">10</span>, <span class="smcap">paternoster
+row</span>, <span class="smcap">london</span>.</h2>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Just Published</i>, <i>price</i>
+1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, <i>cloth boards</i>.</p>
+<h3>THE LIFE OF GEORGE SMITH,<br />
+OF COALVILLE.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The name of George Smith, of Coalville, is familiar as
+household words, and the unpretending memoir just published by
+Messrs. Haughton &amp; Co. of him, to whose deep sympathy and
+ceaseless effort the populations of our brick-yards and canals
+owe so much, will be read with interest by
+all.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Graphic</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Readers of Mr. Smith&rsquo;s letters in numerous
+papers, and of his descriptive articles in the <i>Illustrated
+London News</i>, <i>Graphic</i>, and other journals and
+magazines, will be glad to possess this little work, which tells
+the story of his career in a brief but interesting manner.&nbsp;
+The book is elegantly printed on good paper, and is embellished
+with an excellent portrait and with an engraving of Mr. Smith
+among the Gipsy children.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Capital and
+Labour</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is &lsquo;a chapter&rsquo; in philanthropy, yet it
+contains three times as much in the way of practical philanthropy
+as would suffice to make any man a benefactor to his
+generation.&nbsp; His devoted, self-denying, persistent, and
+successful endeavours on behalf of the brick-yard children, the
+canal population, and more recently the Gipsy
+&lsquo;arabs,&rsquo; of our country and time, are concisely and
+vividly set forth in this neat volume.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The
+Christian</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The name of George Smith, and his noble work amongst
+the canal-boat folk and the Gipsies, have become familiar and
+welcome to multitudes in Great Britain.&nbsp; This volume is an
+excellent sketch of Mr. Smith; it contains a capital likeness,
+and should be read by all who desire to possess increasing zeal
+in rescuing the perishing.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian Age</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A smartly written biography of a man who may be justly
+termed the Children&rsquo;s Friend.&nbsp; It is well got up, and
+contains an excellent portrait of the great social
+reformer.&nbsp; It is well that this fascinating sketch should be
+given to the world.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Literary World</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In this book we are presented with a sketch of the life
+and labours&mdash;labours which have been attended with a large
+measure of success&mdash;of one of the most devoted of living
+philanthropists.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Scotsman</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A fine biography, which every one should read in order
+to understand the noble character of a man who must be pronounced
+a great benefactor.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Free Press</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 298--><a
+name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+298</span><i>Price</i> 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, <i>cloth
+boards</i>, <i>with Illustrations</i>.</p>
+<h3>OUR CANAL POPULATION:<br />
+<span class="smcap">a cry from the boat cabins</span>, <span
+class="smcap">with remedy</span>.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">New Edition, with Supplement.<br />
+By GEORGE SMITH, F.S.A., Coalville, Leicester.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A little book called &lsquo;Our Canal
+Population,&rsquo; lately published and written by Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, furnishes the most incredible details of
+what is going on on our silent highways.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Morning
+Advertiser</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The notorious state of &lsquo;Our Canal
+Population,&rsquo; the women and children who live on barges, and
+in whose condition Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, has awakened
+public interest, is described as &lsquo;revolting and
+intolerable.&rsquo;&nbsp; If only a part of the statements made
+were true it would be enough to make the ears of them that hear
+it tingle for pity and shame.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Daily News</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Although the statements made by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, in &lsquo;Our Canal Population,&rsquo; were doubtless,
+in some instances, open to the charge of exaggeration, in the
+main they were largely correct.&nbsp; Mr. Smith has earned the
+thanks of the community in this philanthropic object, as he
+previously earned our thanks for his efforts to ameliorate the
+condition of children in the
+brick-yards.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Standard</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Canal Boats.&mdash;On the 1st inst. came into operation
+an Act (the 40 and 41 Vic., c. 60) which is calculated to do much
+good.&nbsp; Hitherto &lsquo;Our Canal Population&rsquo; were left
+pretty much to themselves.&nbsp; They were considered outside the
+pale of local and educational authorities.&nbsp; They were
+permitted to live in their boats as they pleased, and to bring up
+their children without any interference from school
+authorities.&nbsp; Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts
+on behalf of the children employed in brick-fields were attended
+with such beneficial results, turned his attention to &lsquo;Our
+Canal Population,&rsquo; and the credit likely to be won by the
+passing of the Act of last Session will be mainly
+his.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Times</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, who has done so much
+for the well-being of &lsquo;Our Canal Population,&rsquo; is now
+busied in attempts to ameliorate the condition of juvenile
+Gipsies.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Daily Telegraph</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This gentleman represents by name, at least, a very
+large family, but he has won for himself considerable distinction
+among the &lsquo;Smiths&rsquo; for his unparalleled efforts to
+ameliorate the wretched condition of &lsquo;Our Canal
+Population&rsquo; on the English canals, the women and children
+working in the brick-yards, and the Gipsy
+children.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian Herald</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 299--><a
+name="page299"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+299</span><i>Price</i> 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, <i>cloth
+boards</i>, <i>with Portrait of Author and other
+Illustrations</i>.</p>
+<h3>THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN FROM THE BRICK-YARDS OF ENGLAND, AND
+HOW THE CRY HAS BEEN HEARD,</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">With Observations on the
+Carrying-out of the Act.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville,
+Leicester.<br />
+<span class="smcap">sixth edition</span>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We heartily commend to our readers&rsquo; notice a new
+edition of a work which is full of thrilling interest to those
+who sympathise with childhood, whose hearts bleed at the story of
+its wrongs and leap for joy at any humane or beneficial measures
+on its behalf.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Sunday School Chronicle</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This book, now in its sixth edition, has many capital
+illustrations, and is a monument to the patient self-denial and
+unwearying zeal brought to bear in favour of the poor children by
+the author.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Weekly Times</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;His cry for the protection for the helpless little ones
+is one that must assuredly command
+attention.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Daily Chronicle</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This book is the record of a splendid service nobly
+done.&nbsp; The author is likewise the hero of it.&nbsp; The
+value of the book is enhanced by the careful and tasteful manner
+in which Messrs. Haughton have fulfilled their share of the
+undertaking.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Derby Reporter</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is a title of an interesting work.&nbsp; The whole
+forms a most interesting record of a noble-hearted work.&nbsp; We
+hope the book will meet, as it deserves, with an increasingly
+large circulation.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Derbyshire Advertiser</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The Cry of the Children&rsquo; and &lsquo;Our
+Canal Population&rsquo; are unique in many ways.&nbsp; They have
+brought prominently before public attention two unsuspected blots
+upon our civilisation.&nbsp; We wish any word of our&rsquo;s
+could give still wider publicity to his self-denying
+labours.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Live Stock Journal</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Smith writes with vehement energy, which he puts
+into everything he does.&nbsp; Some will perhaps think that his
+language is occasionally too little measured, but then it is
+probable that a man of more delicacy of feeling and expression
+would have never undertaken, and we think it is certain that he
+would never have carried through, the work which Mr. George Smith
+has accomplished.&nbsp; That work is of no small
+value.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Staffordshire Sentinel</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A good deal of new matter is inserted in this edition,
+including an interesting account of the history and progress of
+the movement. . . . The volume is certainly worthy of a careful
+perusal.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Birmingham Gazette</i>.</p>
+<p><!-- page 300--><a name="page300"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+300</span>&ldquo;In it is written the author&rsquo;s account of
+his single-handed struggle for the emancipation of the poor
+children of the brick-yards&mdash;a struggle long and patiently
+sustained, and which at last, in 1872, met with its past merited
+reward in freeing 10,000 of these little ones from their dark
+slavery.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Graphic</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is a deeply interesting book, both from the facts
+which it sets forth and the cause it
+advocates.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian Age</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Every true philanthropist will read with deep interest
+Mr. Smith&rsquo;s account of the history and the passing of the
+Act, which marks one of the brightest victories yet won over
+prejudice and self-interest in the United
+Kingdom.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Derby Mercury</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This excellently got-up work will strike a cord of
+sympathy in the bosoms of all who are interested in the works of
+Christianity and philanthropy. . . .&nbsp; Should find a place
+upon every book-shelf because its contents are of thrilling
+interest. . . .&nbsp; The book is essentially a statement of
+facts, and no one can peruse its pages without feeling the
+impulse of the living spirit which breathes in this &lsquo;Cry of
+the Children.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Potteries Examiner</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. George Smith has, in his &lsquo;Cry of the Children
+from the Brick-yards of England,&rsquo; raised issues too
+serious, and advanced pleas too passionate, to be treated with
+indifference.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Daily Telegraph</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the present volume, which contains a number of
+excellent woodcuts, we have gathered up the full story of the
+evils which used to prevail, which in the hands of a person of
+less moral courage and perseverance than Mr. Smith would have
+failed.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Leicester Daily Post</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo</i>, 216
+<i>pages</i>.&nbsp; <i>Price</i>, <i>paper covers</i>,
+1<i>s.</i>; <i>post free</i>, 1<i>s.</i> 2<i>d.</i>&nbsp;
+<i>Cloth binding</i>, <i>with Portrait</i>, 2<i>s.</i>, <i>post
+free</i>.</p>
+<h3>Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;A carefully prepared story of the public life of Mr.
+Gladstone in the several spheres of politics and
+literature.&nbsp; It would be well if similar books to this were
+as sensibly compiled.&nbsp; It is a handy and useful little book,
+honestly worth its price.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian
+World</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Written with great fairness and impartiality, as well
+as with considerable literary ability.&nbsp; It furnishes the
+reader with a key to the study of that which is undoubtedly one
+of the greatest characters of modern times.&nbsp; We can hardly
+conceive of a more useful political publication at the present
+moment.&nbsp; It is clear, pains-taking, and dispassionate.&nbsp;
+We commend it to the favourable attention of
+all.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Leads Mercury</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Those who desire to know what Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s
+life has been, and what are the objects to which he has devoted
+himself, what have been the growth of his political mind and the
+tendency of his political conduct, will do well to get this
+book.&nbsp; It is neatly and simply written, and contains a great
+many facts which have a bearing even beyond the life of its
+subject.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Scotsman</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No one can read this book without advantage.&nbsp; The
+author has presented Mr. Gladstone in a manner easily
+recognisable by friends and foes alike.&nbsp; The volume forms an
+important chapter in Parliamentary history, extending over half a
+century.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Literary World</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 301--><a
+name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 301</span><i>Bound in
+cloth</i>, <i>with four Illustrations</i>, <i>price</i>
+1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>The Life of the Great African Traveller, Dr. <span
+class="smcap">Livingstone</span>.&nbsp; By <span class="smcap">J.
+M. McGilchrist</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The appearance of this little work is very seasonable,
+and to young readers especially it will be very
+acceptable.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>North British Daily Mail</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth binding</i>, <i>post
+free</i>, 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Methodism in 1879: Impressions of the Wesleyan <span
+class="smcap">Church and Its Ministers</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;A new contribution to an important chapter of church
+history, and promises to be of much
+interest.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The remarks in this work on the general relations of
+the Methodists to the tendencies of the age are full of
+instruction.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Dean Stanley</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have read this book with considerable interest and
+pleasure, feelings which any reader who approaches it from the
+Church of England point of view can scarcely fail to
+share.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Spectator</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bearing, as it does throughout, the impress of thought
+and calm judgment, as well as of an intimate knowledge of the
+varied aspects of the subject dealt with, it should be of
+universal interest.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Morning Post</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The author has rendered a splendid service to
+Methodism.&nbsp; Much that the writer tells us with respect to
+the various agencies of Methodism is extremely
+interesting.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Edinburgh Daily Review</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<h3>HAUGHTON&rsquo;S POPULAR ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES.</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">PRICE ONE PENNY EACH.</p>
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<h4>Life of Her Majesty the Queen.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;Written with great ability, and is full of
+interest.&nbsp; It contains a complete review of the principal
+events of Her Majesty&rsquo;s reign.&nbsp; This biography should
+be circulated by thousands among the masses of the
+people.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Review</i>.</p>
+<h4>Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;A grand biography of a grand man, and replete with
+sterling interest.&nbsp; It is as fascinating as a work of
+fiction.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Review</i>.</p>
+<h4><!-- page 302--><a name="page302"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 302</span>Life of H.R.H. the Prince of
+Wales.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;Very full, just, and interesting, and very brilliant is
+this account of the Prince of Wales.&nbsp; His visits to the
+United States and to India are well and fully
+described.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Review</i>.</p>
+<h4>Life of the Right, Hon. W. E. Gladstone.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;The penny &lsquo;Gladstone&rsquo; has a mass of facts
+in small bulk.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Liverpool Courier</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Contains the leading events of Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s
+life in a small compass.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Echo</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We can hardly conceive of a more useful political
+publication at the present moment.&nbsp; It is clear,
+pains-taking, and dispassionate.&nbsp; We commend it to the
+favourable attention of all.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Leeds
+Mercury</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An admirably drawn sketch.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Edinburgh
+Daily Review</i>.</p>
+<h4>Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;These penny biographies have a laudable spirit in
+common.&nbsp; They are free from party
+bias.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Liverpool Courier</i>.</p>
+<h4>Life of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.</h4>
+<p>&ldquo;Sets forth the principal events in the career of this
+remarkable man.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Review</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Recently Published</i>,
+<i>beautifully bound in cloth</i>, <i>bevelled boards</i>,
+<i>price</i> 5<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>From the Curate to the Convent.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This comely volume is intended to open the eyes of
+Englishmen to the Romanising influence of the High Church, and to
+the wiles of the Jesuits, who are using the Establishment to
+their own ends.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Rev. C. H. Spurgeon in</i>
+&ldquo;<i>Sword and Trowel</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In this work the natural, logical, and most mischievous
+results of the confessional in our Church, are portrayed with
+fidelity and power.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Standard</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The book is the product of a master-mind, and ought to
+be in every Protestant family as well as in the school or
+parochial library of every parish.&nbsp; We cannot speak of the
+work in too high terms.&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>The Gospel
+Magazine</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Now Ready</i>, <i>post free</i>,
+3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, <i>handsomely bound</i>, <i>new
+edition</i>, <i>with Frontispiece</i>.</p>
+<h3>Vestina&rsquo;s Martyrdom: A Story of the Catacombs.&nbsp; By
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Emma Raymond Pitman</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This Story of the Catacombs is readable and
+well-written.&nbsp; The historical portion does not occupy any
+undue position, and the moral is good and sound.&nbsp; The book
+is very suitable for Sunday-school
+libraries.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian World</i>.</p>
+<p><!-- page 303--><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+303</span>&ldquo;One of the best stories of the kind we ever
+read&mdash;the very best, we think, of this particular era.&nbsp;
+The volume abounds in deeply interesting matter, while the
+religious teaching is of the very simplest and
+purest.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Literary World</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The description of Vestina&rsquo;s martyrdom, or rather
+of her timely release from martyrdom, is simple and
+touching.&nbsp; The present story will revive many interesting
+associations.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is told in language of beauty and
+power.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Rock</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Many of the descriptions are far beyond the common
+range of tale-writing.&nbsp; The book is remarkably
+well-written.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Watchman</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Now ready</i>, <i>handsomely
+bound in gilt cloth</i>, <i>crown</i> 8<i>vo</i>, <i>with
+full-page Illustrations and Medallion on cover</i>, 4<i>s.</i>;
+<i>or</i>, <i>with gilt edges</i>, <i>extra gilt cloth</i>,
+<i>for presentation</i>, 5<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>Profit and Loss: A Tale of Modern Life, for<br />
+<span class="smcap">Young People</span>.&nbsp; By Mrs. <span
+class="smcap">Emma Raymond Pitman</span>, Authoress of
+&ldquo;Vestina&rsquo;s Martyrdom,&rdquo; &ldquo;Margaret
+Mervyn&rsquo;s Cross,&rdquo; &ldquo;Olive Chauncey&rsquo;s
+Trust,&rdquo; &amp;c., &amp;c.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This is evidently a tale in favour of Sunday-schools,
+but written with a freshness, a vivacity, and truthfulness, which
+must render it eminently calculated for usefulness, and must
+touch every heart.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Literary World</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The story is interesting and well
+told.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Evangelical Magazine</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The incidents are by no means of a commonplace
+character, and the heroine will certainly win the reader&rsquo;s
+admiration, so that the book is likely to prove attractive and
+useful.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Rock</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The book is sure to have many
+readers.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Methodist Recorder</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Beautifully bound</i>,
+<i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i>, <i>post free</i>.</p>
+<h3>Sheen from my Thought-Waves.&nbsp; By Rev. <span
+class="smcap">W. Osborne Lilley</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The author walks on solid ground, and looks at men and
+things with the eye of a close observer and a thoughtful
+man.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>U. M. F. Church Magazine</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We think the author has done well to collect and
+re-issue these papers.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian Age</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nearly three hundred paragraphs, varying in length from
+a couple of lines to two or three pages, afford as many striking
+thoughts.&nbsp; The points are pithy and taking.&nbsp; Our advice
+is, &lsquo;Buy the book and make free use of
+it.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Lay Preacher</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Just Published</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>Price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, <i>in cloth</i>, <i>bevelled
+boards</i>.</p>
+<h3>Comforting Words for the Weary, and Words<br />
+<span class="smcap">of Counsel and Warning</span>, with Original
+Hymns.&nbsp; By F. M. M.&nbsp; With an Introduction, by the Rev.
+<span class="smcap">Hugh Macmillan, D.D.</span></h3>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 304--><a
+name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+304</span><i>Price</i>, <i>cloth boards</i>, 2<i>s.</i>
+6<i>d.</i>; <i>handsome binding</i>, 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>,
+<i>post free</i>.</p>
+<h3>Leisure Hours with London Divines.&nbsp; Second Edition.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The features of the London Divines in all denominations
+have been caught by an observant eye and reproduced by a faithful
+hand.&nbsp; We cordially commend the book to those who desire to
+learn what the intellectual ecclesiastical life of London really
+means.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Standard</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Theological portraits of very considerable
+value.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Leeds Mercury</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a brilliancy about this book which only a
+scholar could impart.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Literary World</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Written from an elevated standpoint.&nbsp; In his
+eminently careful essays the author has furnished material for
+study such as might be vainly looked for in a more pretentious
+book.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Morning Post</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only a man naturally liberal-minded, and brought into
+frequent contact with intellects of the most diverse order, could
+have written such a work.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Edinburgh Daily
+Review</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A series of studies of eminent preachers in which the
+author deals with the nature and causes of the influence they
+exercise, and the distinctive principles which they
+advocate.&nbsp; This work has been performed appreciatively and
+intelligently.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Scotsman</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<h3>Hanani: A <span class="smcap">Memoir of William Smith</span>,
+Father of <span class="smcap">George Smith</span>, of
+Coalville.&nbsp; A Local Preacher.&nbsp; By the Rev. Dr. <span
+class="smcap">Grosart</span>, St. George&rsquo;s, Blackburn,
+Lancashire.&nbsp; Best Edition, Crown 8vo, toned paper, cloth,
+with Portrait, price 1s. 6d.; small Edition, cloth, with
+Portrait, price 1s.; cloth, flush, without Portrait, 8d.; paper
+cover, 6d.</h3>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Elegantly bound and
+illustrated</i>, <i>gilt edges</i>, <i>price</i> 3<i>s.</i>
+<i>6d.</i></p>
+<h3>From out the Deeps: <span class="smcap">A Tale of Cornish
+Life</span>.<br />
+By an Old Cornish Boy.&nbsp; With Introduction by Rev. <span
+class="smcap">S. W. Christophers</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;A vein of deep religious feeling runs throughout it,
+or, rather, religion pervades its every page.&nbsp; The volume is
+tastefully &lsquo;got up,&rsquo; and its matter
+excellent.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Christian Miscellany</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is an admirable story, which we heartily commend
+for presents, school prizes, &amp;c.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The
+Christian</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The lessons taught by Mr. Christophers are excellent;
+his spirit is always admirable. . . .&nbsp; Our readers had
+better get the book.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Spurgeon</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 305--><a
+name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+305</span><i>Illustrated and beautifully bound</i>, <i>gilt
+edges</i>, <i>price</i> 5<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>The Poets of Methodism.&nbsp; By the Rev. <span
+class="smcap">S. W. Christophers</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This is a charming book.&nbsp; Its exquisite getting-up
+is not inappropriate to its contents.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>City Road
+Magazine</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is a thoroughly good book.&nbsp; It is filled with
+life-like sketches of the men who are amongst the most endeared
+to the Methodist people.&nbsp; It would be difficult to name any
+more acceptable gift-book than this work, for which we heartily
+thank Mr. Christophers.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Rev. Mark Guy
+Pearse</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Bound in cloth</i>, <i>price</i>
+5<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>The Voyage of Life: <span class="smcap">Homeward
+Bound</span>.&nbsp; By a <span class="smcap">Sea
+Captain</span>.</h3>
+<p>This is intended as a companion-book for the
+&ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress,&rdquo; and therefore something
+new for the reading world.&nbsp; Its originality will make it
+interesting to all classes of readers.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>In very large type</i>,
+<i>price</i> 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>An Illustrated Edition of Precious Truths.<br />
+By <span class="smcap">S. M. Haughton</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;We wish that a copy of this &lsquo;<span
+class="smcap">precious</span>&rsquo; book could be placed in the
+hands of every one who is able to read, as it contains the very
+marrow of the &lsquo;<span class="smcap">Glorious
+Gospel</span>.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>boards</i>,
+<i>illustrated</i>, <i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Annals of the Poor.&nbsp; By <span class="smcap">Legh
+Richmond</span>.</h3>
+<p>These short and simple annals have been translated into more
+than 50 languages and blessed to hundreds of souls.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>bevelled
+boards</i>, <i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>Remarkable Conversions.&nbsp; By the Rev. <span
+class="smcap">James Fleming</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;In each of these chapters a number of remarkable cases
+of conversion is given.&nbsp; Some of them do indeed afford
+extraordinary proof of the long-suffering and infinite mercy of
+our God.&nbsp; We are here shown a number of examples which
+should stimulate our hope and zeal to the utmost.&nbsp; Well may
+the author call his book &lsquo;Remarkable Conversions,&rsquo;
+and well may every reader have greater faith than ever in the
+Divine Word, &lsquo;He is able to save to the
+uttermost.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Living Waters</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 306--><a
+name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+306</span><i>Elegantly bound</i>, <i>cloth</i>, <i>boards</i>,
+<i>with Portrait</i>, <i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i>; <i>limp cloth</i>,
+1<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>The Autobiography of Foolish Dick (<span
+class="smcap">Richard Hampton</span>) <span class="smcap">the
+Cornish Pilgrim Preacher</span>; with Introduction and Notes by
+Rev. <span class="smcap">S. W. Christophers</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;We hope this deeply interesting book will obtain a wide
+circulation.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Christian Age</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This singular book is quite a little curiosity in its
+way.&nbsp; The whole of the little volume combines instruction
+with interest in a very high degree, so that we can heartily
+commend it.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Spurgeon</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A man of one talent, he put it out to usury, and it
+multiplied under the mighty hand of God, so that during his long
+itinerant ministry, multitudes were led to the Saviour. . .
+.&nbsp; Those who would be fishers of men will find their souls
+kindled by the weird narrative of this strange, yet saintly
+man.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Christian</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>boards</i>,
+<i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>God&rsquo;s way of Electing Souls; or, <span
+class="smcap">Glad Tidings for Every One</span>.</h3>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>bevelled
+boards</i>, <i>with four full-page Illustrations</i>,
+<i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>The Glory-Land.&nbsp; By <span class="smcap">J. P.
+Hutchinson</span>, Author of &ldquo;Footmarks of Jesus,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;The Singer in the Skies,&rdquo; &amp;c.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This is in every sense a beautiful volume.&nbsp; To the
+spiritually-minded and the careworn, and, indeed, to the earnest
+inquirer, we commend it as a precious
+help.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Watchman</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will cheer many a mourner, and stimulate their
+aspirations after things unseen and eternal.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The
+Christian</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>boards</i>,
+<i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Seeking after Peace.&nbsp; A book for Inquirers after True
+Religion.&nbsp; By M. M.</h3>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>boards</i>,
+<i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Pioneer Experiences in the Holy Life.&nbsp; With Expository
+Chapters.&nbsp; Edited by <span class="smcap">T. Bowman
+Stephenson</span>, B.A., Hon. Director of the Children&rsquo;s
+Home.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Pioneer Experiences&rsquo; consist of personal
+testimonies by eminent Christians of Europe and America,
+respecting the attainment of &lsquo;The Higher Christian
+Life.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 307--><a
+name="page307"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+307</span><i>Handsomely bound</i>, <i>with Illustrations</i>,
+<i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>Brave Seth.&nbsp; By <span class="smcap">Sarah
+Doudney</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;We know of no better book than this to place in the
+hands of our young people to inculcate the importance of
+truthfulness, courage, and reliance upon God.&nbsp; The incidents
+are thrilling, the lessons are unexceptionable, and the language
+and style are beautiful.&nbsp; It reminds us, in its pathos and
+deeply interesting character, of &lsquo;Jessica&rsquo;s First
+Prayer.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Living Waters</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>bevelled
+boards</i>, <i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>Misunderstood Texts.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">By Dr.
+Mahan</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;All who wish to have clear views of the doctrine taught
+by those who believe in <i>entire consecration</i> should peruse
+this able, decided, and unanswerable
+volume.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Living Waters</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is an able book, and the teaching it embodies is
+that of the Wesleys, Fletcher, Clarke, Benson, Watson, and many
+others. . . .&nbsp; We recommend young ministers to read the
+book.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Watchman</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Handsomely bound</i>, <i>gilt
+edges</i>, <i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>The Children&rsquo;s Treasury Text Book, interleaved with
+Writing-paper for Collecting the Autographs of Friends and
+Acquaintances.&nbsp; It contains a Text of Scripture for Every
+Day in the Year, with an appropriate Verse of Poetry.</h3>
+<p>The Rev. <span class="smcap">C. Dukes</span> says of the
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Children&rsquo;s Treasury Text
+Book</span>:&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I admire it very much, and were
+it left to my option, every young person in my circle and beyond
+it should have a copy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A. L. O. E. writes:&mdash;&ldquo;Accept my thanks for your
+truly beautiful and valuable book.&nbsp; It appears to be a
+&lsquo;Treasury&rsquo; indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>elegant
+binding</i>, <i>Illustrated</i>, <i>price</i> 1<i>s.</i>
+6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>By the Still Waters.&nbsp; Meditations and Hymns on the 23rd
+Psalm.&nbsp; By the Rev. <span class="smcap">S. W.
+Christophers</span> and <span class="smcap">B. Gough</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The prose meditations of this excellent volume have all
+the sweetness and grace of poetry; and the poems contain the true
+spirit of devotional piety, with great power of poetic
+expression.&nbsp; Every reader of this precious book must be
+greatly refreshed and blessed.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<h3><!-- page 308--><a name="page308"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 308</span>Bunyan&rsquo;s Pilgrim&rsquo;s
+Progress, 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>&nbsp; Printed on toned paper,
+illustrated, beautifully bound, red edges, 400 pages.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This is undoubtedly the cheapest edition of this
+marvellous book ever published.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Uniform with the above</i>,
+<i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Bunyan&rsquo;s Holy War.&nbsp; 348 pages, with frontispiece,
+printed on toned paper, red edges.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;Every one should read this most instructive
+volume.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If the &lsquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress&rsquo; did not
+exist, the &lsquo;Holy War&rsquo; would be the best allegory that
+ever was written.&rdquo;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lord
+Macaulay</span>.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Uniform with the above</i>,
+<i>price</i>, 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p>
+<h3>Foxe&rsquo;s Book of Martyrs.&nbsp; 352 pages, well
+illustrated, printed on toned paper, red edges.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The arguments in this book are such as the plainest man
+can understand, and the facts should be constantly kept in
+remembrance by every Protestant.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Cloth</i>, <i>elegantly
+bound</i>, <i>with</i> 150 <i>striking Illustrations</i>,
+<i>price</i> 2<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>Calisthenics, Drilling, and Deportment Simplified.&nbsp; By
+<span class="smcap">Duncan Cunningham</span>.</h3>
+<p>This book is highly recommended by eminent medical
+gentlemen.&nbsp; It is intended more especially for female
+teachers and parents, who are desirous that children under their
+care should possess a strong mind in a healthy body.</p>
+<p>The engravings are beautifully executed, the explanations
+extremely simple, and the words and music specially adapted to
+instruct and attract the young.</p>
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Crown</i> 8<i>vo</i>,
+<i>cloth</i>, <i>gilt edges</i>, 3<i>s.</i></p>
+<h3>From Egypt to Canaan; <span class="smcap">or</span>, <span
+class="smcap">From Bondage to Rest</span>.&nbsp; <span
+class="smcap">By T. J. Hughes</span>.</h3>
+<p>&ldquo;This delightful book really drops pearls of thought
+from almost every page.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Christian&rsquo;s
+Pathway of Power</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There are some books on which a special blessing rests,
+even beyond their apparent excellence, because they have been
+steeped in prayer, and we think that this is one of them.&nbsp;
+We heartily commend it to the numerous young converts who are now
+being gathered into the Church of Christ.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The
+Christian</i>.</p>
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">haughton &amp;
+co.</span>, <span class="smcap">10</span>, <span
+class="smcap">paternoster row</span>, <span
+class="smcap">london</span>.</p>
+<h2>Footnotes:</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8"
+class="footnote">[8]</a>&nbsp; Since writing the foregoing
+concerning Mahmood or Mahmud, I came across the enclosed, taken
+from an article in the <i>Daily News</i>, January 11, 1880, which
+confirms my statements as regards one of the main causes why the
+Gipsies or Indians left their native
+country:&mdash;&ldquo;Ghuznee was the capital of Mahmud of
+Ghuznee, or Mahmud the Destroyer, as he is known in Eastern
+story, the first of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, and the
+only one who had his home in Afghanistan, though he was himself
+of Turki or Mongol nationality.&nbsp; Seventeen times did he
+issue forth from his native mountains, spreading fire and sword
+over the plains of Hindustan, westward as far as the Ganges
+Valley, and southward to the shore of Gujerat.&nbsp; Seventeen
+times did he return to Ghuznee laden with the spoil of Rajput
+kings and the shrines of Hindu pilgrimage.&nbsp; In one of these
+expeditions his goal was the far-famed temple of Somnauth or
+Somnauth Patan in Gujerat.&nbsp; Resistance was vain, and equally
+useless were the tears of the Brahmins, who besought him to take
+their treasures, but at least spare their idol.&nbsp; With his
+own hand, and with the mace which is the counterpart of Excalibar
+in Oriental legend, he smote the face of the idol, and a torrent
+of precious stones gushed out.&nbsp; When Keane&rsquo;s army took
+Ghuznee in 1839, this mace was still to be seen hanging up over
+the sarcophagus of Mahmud, and the tomb was then entered through
+folding gates, which tradition asserted to be those of the Temple
+of Somnauth.&nbsp; Lord Ellenborough gave instructions to General
+Nott to bring back with him to India both the mace and the
+gates.&nbsp; The latter, as is well-known, now lie mouldering in
+the lumber-room of the fort at Agra, for their authenticity is
+absolutely indefensible; but the mace could nowhere be found by
+the British plunderer.&nbsp; Mahmud reigned from 997 to 1030
+<span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, and in his days Ghuznee was
+probably the first city in Asia.&nbsp; The extensive ruins of his
+city stretch northwards along the Cabul road for more than two
+miles from the present town; but all that now remains standing
+are two lofty pillars or minarets, 400 yards apart, one bearing
+the name of Mahmud, the other that of his son Masaud.&nbsp;
+Beyond these ruins again is the Roza or Garden, which surrounds
+the mausoleum of Mahmud.&nbsp; The building itself is a poor
+structure, and can hardly date back for eight centuries.&nbsp;
+The great conqueror is said to rest beneath a marble slab, which
+bears an inscription in Cufic characters, thus interpreted by
+Major (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson: &lsquo;May there be forgiveness
+of God upon him, who is the great lord, the noble Nizam-ud-din
+(Ruler of the Faith) Abul Kasim Mahmud, the son of
+Sabaktagin!&nbsp; May God have mercy upon him!&rsquo;&nbsp; The
+Ghuznevide dynasty founded by Mahmud lasted for more than a
+century after his death, though with greatly restricted
+dominions.&nbsp; Finally, it was extinguished in 1152 by one of
+those awful acts of atrocity which are fortunately recorded only
+in the East.&nbsp; Allah-ud-din, Prince of Ghore, a town in the
+north-western hills of Afghanistan, marched upon Ghuznee to
+avenge the death of two of his brothers.&nbsp; The king was slain
+in battle, and the city given up to be sacked.&nbsp; The common
+orders of the people were all massacred upon the spot; the nobles
+were taken to Ghore, and there put to death, and their blood used
+to cement the rising walls of the capital.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote176"></a><a href="#citation176"
+class="footnote">[176]</a>&nbsp; The &ldquo;Czardas&rdquo; is a
+solitary public-house, an institution which plays a considerable
+part in all romantic poems or romantic novels whose scene is laid
+in Hungary, as a fitting haunt for brigands, horse-thieves,
+Gipsies, Jews, political refugees, strolling players, vagabond
+poets, and other melodramatic personages.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote218a"></a><a href="#citation218a"
+class="footnote">[218a]</a>&nbsp; A Black Govel.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote218b"></a><a href="#citation218b"
+class="footnote">[218b]</a>&nbsp; Going a tinkering.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote218c"></a><a href="#citation218c"
+class="footnote">[218c]</a>&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll show you about,
+brother; I&rsquo;m selling skewers.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote219"></a><a href="#citation219"
+class="footnote">[219]</a>&nbsp; The fact of Ryley having at his
+death a caravan, pony, carpets, curtains, blankets, mirrors,
+china, crockery, metal pots and dishes, &amp;c., seems hardly, in
+my mind, to be in accord with his doing no work for years,
+smoking under railroad arches and loitering about
+beershops.&nbsp; I expect, if the truth were known, the whole of
+his furniture and stock-in-trade could have been placed upon a
+wheelbarrow.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
+***** This file should be named 28548-h.htm or 28548-h.zip******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/5/4/28548
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+</pre></body>
+</html>
diff --git a/28548-h/images/coverb.jpg b/28548-h/images/coverb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15efc31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/coverb.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/covers.jpg b/28548-h/images/covers.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f842c08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/covers.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/fpb.jpg b/28548-h/images/fpb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..252a613
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/fpb.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/fps.jpg b/28548-h/images/fps.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ade8d8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/fps.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p0b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p0b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3ca18e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p0b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p0s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p0s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb45525
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p0s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p108b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p108b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a982aa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p108b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p108s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p108s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ded964
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p108s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p118b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p118b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09dd100
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p118b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p118s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p118s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ab54a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p118s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p132b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p132b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b260a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p132b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p132s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p132s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e782fac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p132s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p170b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p170b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15225de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p170b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p170s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p170s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17ed10b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p170s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p174b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p174b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4625e35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p174b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p174s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p174s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9bd4da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p174s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p192b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p192b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..165264e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p192b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p192s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p192s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3181011
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p192s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p222b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p222b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ceb76a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p222b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p222s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p222s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cc3d05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p222s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p228b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p228b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0af2aed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p228b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p228s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p228s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ced99d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p228s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p236b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p236b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb6daf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p236b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p236s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p236s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38fcb1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p236s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p248b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p248b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e6b9f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p248b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p248s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p248s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e31ce2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p248s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p272b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p272b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e13a460
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p272b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p272s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p272s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee5520c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p272s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p277b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p277b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad7c671
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p277b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p277s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p277s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5727c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p277s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p281b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p281b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2d9b5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p281b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p281s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p281s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df3dfab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p281s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p42b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p42b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..961b115
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p42b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p42s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p42s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87dcaf9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p42s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p48b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p48b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..349de4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p48b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p48s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p48s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a13728
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p48s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p66b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p66b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46f7988
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p66b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p66s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p66s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0c3c1f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p66s.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p96b.jpg b/28548-h/images/p96b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1964704
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p96b.jpg
diff --git a/28548-h/images/p96s.jpg b/28548-h/images/p96s.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..147bed6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548-h/images/p96s.jpg
diff --git a/28548.txt b/28548.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a10928
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10931 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gipsy Life, by George Smith
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Gipsy Life
+       being an account of our Gipsies and their children
+
+
+Author: George Smith
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 9, 2009  [eBook #28548]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1880 Haughton and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+            [Picture: Frontispiece: Among the Gipsy children]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               GIPSY LIFE:
+
+
+                             BEING AN ACCOUNT
+
+                                    OF
+
+                     OUR GIPSIES AND THEIR CHILDREN.
+
+                                   WITH
+                    SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT.
+
+                                    BY
+                       GEORGE SMITH, OF COALVILLE.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 LONDON:
+                   HAUGHTON & CO., 10, PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         [_All Rights Reserved_.]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  1880.
+
+I give my warmest thanks to W. H. OVEREND, Esq., for the block forming
+the Frontispiece, which he has kindly presented to me on the condition
+that the picture occupies the position it does in this book; and also to
+the proprietor of the _Illustrated London News_ for the blocks to help
+forward my work, the pictures of which appeared in his journal in
+November and December of last year and January in the present year, as
+found herein on pages 42, 48, 66, 76, 96, 108, 118, 122, 174, 192, 236,
+283.
+
+I must at the same time express my heart-felt thanks to the manager and
+proprietors of the _Graphic_ for the blocks forming the illustrations on
+pages 1, 132, 170, 222, 228, 248, 272, 277, and which appeared in their
+journal on March 13th in the present year, and which they have kindly
+presented to me to help forward my object, connected with which sketches,
+at the kind request of the Editor, I wrote the article.
+
+W. H. OVEREND, Esq., was the artist for the sketches in the _Illustrated
+London News_, and HERBERT JOHNSON, Esq., was the artist for the sketches
+in the _Graphic_.
+
+I also tender my warmest thanks to the Press generally for the help
+rendered to me during the crusade so far, without which I should have
+done but little.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
+THE PEERS AND MEMBERS
+OF THE
+HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT.
+
+
+I have taken the liberty of humbly dedicating this work to you, the
+object of which is not to tickle the critical ears of ethnologists and
+philologists, but to touch the hearts of my countrymen on behalf of the
+poor Gipsy women and children and other roadside Arabs flitting about in
+our midst, in such a way as to command attention to these neglected,
+dark, marshy spots of human life, whose seedlings have been running wild
+among us during the last three centuries, spreading their poisonous
+influence abroad, not only detrimental to the growth of Christianity and
+the spread of civilisation, but to the present and eternal welfare of the
+children; and, what I ask for is, that the hand of the Schoolmaster may
+be extended towards the children; and that the vans and other temporary
+and movable abodes in which they live may be brought under the eye and
+influence of the Sanitary Inspector.
+
+                                                  Very respectfully yours,
+                                                             GEORGE SMITH,
+                                                           _Of Coalville_.
+
+_April_ 30_th_, 1880.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+Part I.
+
+                         RAMBLES IN GIPSYDOM.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+Origin of the Gipsies and their Names                                1
+Article in _The Daily News_                                          8
+The Travels of the Gipsies                                           9
+Acts of Parliament relating to the Gipsies                          16
+Article in _The Edinburgh Review_                                   23
+   ,, _The Saturday Review_                                         25
+Professor Bott on the Gipsies                                       29
+The Changars of India                                               32
+The Doms of India                                                   33
+The Sanseeas of India                                               35
+The Nuts of India                                                   36
+Grellmann on the Gipsies                                            39
+Gipsies of Notting Hill                                             40
+Rev. Charles Wesley                                                 42
+The Number of Gipsies                                               44
+
+Part II.
+
+                     COMMENCEMENT OF THE CRUSADE.
+
+Work begun                                                          48
+Letter to _The Standard_ and _Daily Chronicle_                      51
+Leading Article in _The Standard_                                   53
+Correspondence in _The Standard_                                    59
+Mr. Leland's Letter, &c., &c.                                       60
+My Reply                                                            66
+_Leicester Free Press_                                              69
+Article in _The Derby Daily Telegraph_                              70
+   ,, _The Figaro_                                                  73
+Letter in _The Daily News_                                          75
+Mr. Gorrie's Letter                                                 78
+My Reply                                                            79
+Leading Article in _The Standard_                                   82
+_May's Aldershot Advertiser_                                        87
+Article in _Hand and Heart_                                         90
+Article in _The Illustrated London News_                            91
+Leading Article in _The Daily News_                                 92
+Social Science Congress Paper                                       95
+Article in _Birmingham Daily Mail_                                 102
+   ,, _The Weekly Dispatch_                                        106
+   ,, _The Weekly Times_                                           109
+   ,, _The Croydon Chronicle_                                      117
+   ,, _Primitive Methodist_                                        119
+   ,, _Illustrated London News_                                    121
+   ,, _The Quiver_                                                 126
+Letter in _Daily News_ and _Chronicle_                             127
+Article in _Christian World_                                       129
+   ,, _Sunday School Chronicle_                                    132
+   ,, _Unitarian Herald_                                           134
+   ,, _Weekly Times_                                               135
+
+Part III.
+
+       THE TREATMENT THE GIPSIES HAVE RECEIVED IN THIS COUNTRY.
+
+The Social History of our Country                                  142
+Acts of Parliament concerning the Gipsies                          145
+Treatment of the Gipsies in Scotland, Spain, and Denmark           150
+Efforts put forth to improve their Condition                       155
+His Majesty George III. and the Dying Gipsy                        161
+Mr. Crabb at Southampton in 1827                                   164
+Fiction and the Gipsies                                            166
+Hubert Petalengro's Gipsy Trip to Norway                           169
+Esmeralda's Song                                                   174
+George Borrow's Travels in Spain                                   177
+Romance and Poetry about the Gipsies                               183
+Dean Stanley's Prize Poem                                          190
+
+Part IV.
+
+                 GIPSY LIFE IN A VARIETY OF ASPECTS.
+
+Persecution, Missionary Efforts, and Romance                       192
+The Gipsy Contrast and _Punch_                                     193
+Gipsy Slang                                                        195
+Rees and Borrow's Description of the Gipsies                       199
+Leland among the Russian Gipsies                                   201
+Burning a Russian Fortune-teller                                   203
+A Welsh Gipsy's Letter                                             208
+Ryley Bosvil and his Poetry: a Sad Example                         213
+My Visit to Canning Town Gipsies                                   220
+Article in _The Weekly Times_                                      222
+My Son's Visit to Barking Road                                     227
+Mrs. Simpson, a Christian Gipsy                                    228
+
+Part V.
+
+     THE SAD CONDITION OF THE GIPSIES, WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR
+                             IMPROVEMENT.
+
+Gipsy Beauty and Songsters                                         237
+Gipsy Poetry                                                       239
+Smart and Crofton                                                  239
+A Little Gipsy Girl's Letter                                       242
+Scotch Gipsies                                                     243
+Gipsy Trickery                                                     244
+My Visit to the Gipsies at Kensal Green                            248
+Fortune-telling and other Sins                                     249
+Wretched Condition of the Gipsies                                  254
+Hungarian Gipsies                                                  259
+Visit to Cherry Island                                             260
+The Cleanliness and Food of the Gipsies                            262
+A Gipsy Woman's Opinion upon Religion                              264
+Gipsy Faithfulness and Fidelity                                    264
+A Visit to Hackney Marshes                                         266
+Sickness among the Gipsies                                         270
+A Gipsy Woman's Funeral                                            271
+Gipsies and the Workhouse                                          274
+Education of the Gipsy Children Sixty Years ago                    274
+Mission Work among the Gipsies                                     275
+Gipsy Children upon Turnham Green and Wandsworth Common            276
+Sad Condition of the Gipsy Children                                277
+The Hardships of the Gipsy Women                                   281
+Efforts put forth in Hungary and other Countries                   282
+Things made by the Gipsies                                         284
+Pity for the Gipsies                                               285
+What the State has done for the Thugs                              286
+The Remedy                                                         287
+My Reasons for Government Interference                             289
+
+
+
+Illustrations.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+Frontispiece.  Among the Gipsy Children.
+
+A Gipsy Beauty                                                       1
+A Gentleman Gipsy's Tent and his dog "Grab"                         42
+A Gipsy's Home for Man and Wife and Six Children                    48
+Gipsies Camping among the Heath                                     66
+Gipsy Quarters, Mary Place                                          76
+A Farmer's Pig that does not like a Gipsy's Tent                    96
+Gipsies' Winter Quarters, Latimer Road                             108
+A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven                  118
+Children, and in which "Deliverance" was born
+A Gipsy Knife Grinder's Home                                       122
+A Gipsy Girl Washing Clothes                                       132
+A Respectable Gipsy and his Family "on the Road"                   170
+A Bachelor Gipsy's Bed-room                                        174
+A Gipsy's Van, near Notting Hill                                   192
+A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her Pipe                          222
+Inside a Christian Gipsy's Van--Mrs. Simpson's                     228
+Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller's Van                                236
+Gipsy Fortune tellers Cooking their Evening Meal                   248
+Outside a Christian Gipsy's Van                                    272
+Four Little Gipsies sitting for the Artist                         277
+A Top Bed-room in a Gipsy's Van                                    281
+
+
+
+         [Picture: A Gipsy beauty who can neither read nor write]
+
+
+
+
+Part I.--Rambles in Gipsydom.
+
+
+The origin of the Gipsies, as to who they are; when they became regarded
+as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel, ragamuffin vagabonds; the
+primary object they had in view in setting out upon their shuffling,
+skulking, sneaking, dark pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the
+point of the sword, or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing
+dark deeds of plunder, cruelty, and murder, or anxious to seek a haven of
+rest; the route by which they travelled, whether over hill and dale, by
+the side of the river and valley, skirting the edge of forest and dell,
+delighting in the jungle, or pitching their tent in the desert, following
+the shores of the ocean, or topping the mountains; whether they were
+Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Ishmaelites, Roumanians, Peruvians, Turks,
+Hungarians, Spaniards, or Bohemians; the end of their destination; their
+religious views--if any--their habits and modes of life have been during
+the last three or four centuries wrapped, surrounded, and encircled in
+mystery, according to some writers who have been studying the Gipsy
+character.  They have been a theme upon which a "bookworm" could gloat, a
+chest of secret drawers into which the curious delight to pry, a
+difficult problem in Euclid for the mathematician to solve; and an
+unreadable book for the author.  A conglomeration of languages for the
+scholar, a puzzle for the historian, and a subject for the novelist.
+These are points which it is not the object of this book to attempt to
+clear up and settle; all it aims at, as in the case of my "Cry of the
+Children from the Brick-yards of England," and "Our Canal Population,"
+is, to tell "A Dark Chapter in the Annals of the Poor," little wanderers,
+houseless, homeless, and friendless in our midst.  At the same time it
+will be necessary to take a glimpse at some of the leading features of
+the historical part of their lives in order to get, to some extent, a
+knowledge of the "little ones" whose pitiable case I have ventured to
+take in hand.
+
+Paint the words "mystery" and "secrecy" upon any man's house, and you at
+once make him a riddle for the cunning, envious, and crafty to try to
+solve; and this has been the case with the Gipsies for generations, and
+the consequence has been, they have trotted out kings, queens, princes,
+bishops, nobles, ladies and gentlemen of all grades, wise men, fools, and
+fanatics, to fill their coffers, while they have been standing by
+laughing in their sleeves at the foolishness of the foolish.
+
+In Spain they were banished by repeated edicts under the severest
+penalties.  In Italy they were forbidden to remain more than two nights
+in the same place.  In Germany they were shot down like wild beasts.  In
+England during the reign of Elizabeth, it was felony, without the
+"benefit of the clergy," to be seen in their company.  The State of
+Orleans decreed that they should be put to death with fire and
+sword--still they kept coming.
+
+In the last century, however, a change has come over several of the
+European Governments.  Maria Theresa in 1768, and Charles III. of Spain
+in 1783, took measures for the education of these poor outcasts in the
+habits of a civilised life with very encouraging results.  The experiment
+is now being tried in Russia with signal success.  The emancipation of
+the Wallachian Gipsies is a fact accomplished, and the best results are
+being achieved.
+
+The Gipsies have various names assigned to them in different countries.
+The name of Bohemians was given to them by the French, probably on
+account of their coming to France from Bohemia.  Some derive the word
+Bohemians from the old French word "Boem," signifying a sorcerer.  The
+Germans gave them the name of "Ziegeuner," or wanderers.  The Portuguese
+named them "Siganos."  The Dutch called them "Heiden," or heathens.  The
+Danes and Swedes, "Tartars."  In Italy they are called "Zingari."  In
+Turkey and the Levant, "Tschingenes."  In Spain they are called
+"Gitanos."  In Hungary and Transylvania, where they are very numerous,
+they are called "Pharaoh Nepek," or "Pharaoh's People."  The notion of
+their being Egyptian is entirely erroneous--their appearance, manners,
+and language being totally different from those of either the Copts or
+Fellahs; there are many Gipsies now in Egypt, but they are looked upon as
+strangers.
+
+Notwithstanding that edicts have been hurled against them, persecuted and
+hunted like vermin during the Middle Ages, still they kept coming.  Later
+on, laws more merciful than in former times have taken a more humane view
+of them and been contented by classing them as "vagrants and
+scoundrels"--still they came.  Magistrates, ministers, doctors, and
+lawyers have spit their spite at them--still they came; frowning looks,
+sour faces, buttoned-up pockets, poverty and starvation staring them in
+the face--still they came.  Doors slammed in their faces, dogs set upon
+their heels, and ignorant babblers hooting at them--still they came; and
+the worst of it is they are reducing our own "riff-raff" to their level.
+The novelist has written about them; the preacher has preached against
+them; the drunkards have garbled them over in their mouths, and yelped
+out "Gipsy," and stuttered "scamp" in disgust; the swearer has sworn at
+them, and our "gutter-scum gentlemen" have told them to "stand off."
+These "Jack-o'-th'-Lantern," "Will-o'-th'-Wisp," "Boo-peep," "Moonshine
+Vagrants," "Ditchbank Sculks," "Hedgerow Rodneys," of whom there are not
+a few, are black spots upon our horizon, and are ever and anon flitting
+before our eyes.  A motley crowd of half-naked savages, carrion eaters,
+dressed in rags, tatters, and shreds, usually called men, women, and
+children, some running, walking, loitering, traipsing, shouting, gaping,
+and staring; the women with children on their backs, and in their arms;
+old men and women tottering along "leaning upon their staffs;" hordes of
+children following in the rear; hulking men with lurcher dogs at their
+heels, sauntering along in idleness, spotting out their prey; donkeys
+loaded with sacks, mules with tents and sticks, and their vans and
+waggons carrying ill-gotten gain and plunder; and the question arises in
+the mind of those who take an interest in this singularly unfortunate
+race of beings: From whence came they?  How have they travelled?  By what
+routes did they travel?  What is their condition, past and present?  How
+are they to be dealt with in any efforts put forth to improve their
+condition?  These are questions I shall in my feeble way endeavour to
+solve; at any rate, the two latter questions; the first questions can be
+dealt better with by abler hands than mine.
+
+I would say, in the first place, that it is my decided conviction that
+the Gipsies were neither more nor less, before they set out upon their
+pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste,
+good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan--not ashamed to beg, with
+some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical
+tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances,
+without any true religious motives or influences.  It may be worth while
+to notice that I have come to the conclusion that they were originally
+from India by observing them entirely in the light given to me years ago
+of the different characters of human beings both in Asia, Europe, and
+Africa.  Their habits, manners, and customs, to me, is a sufficient test,
+without calling in the aid of the philologist to decide the point of
+their originality.  I may here remark that in order to get at the real
+condition of the Gipsies as they are at the present day in this country,
+and not to have my mind warped or biassed in any way, I purposely kept
+myself in ignorance upon the subject as to what various authors have said
+either for or against them until I had made my inquiries and the movement
+had been afloat for several months.  The first work touching the Gipsy
+question I ever handled was presented to me by one of the authors--Mr.
+Crofton--at the close of my Social Science Congress paper read at
+Manchester last October, entitled "The Dialect of the English Gipsies,"
+which work, without any disrespect to the authors--and I know they will
+overlook this want of respect--remained uncut for nearly two months.
+With further reference to their Indian origin, the following is an
+extract from "Hoyland's Historical Survey," in which the author
+says:--"The Gipsies have no writing peculiar to themselves in which to
+give a specimen of the construction of their dialect.  Music is the only
+science in which the Gipsies participate in any considerable degree; they
+likewise compose, but it is after the manner of the Eastern people,
+extempore."  Grellmann asserts that the Hindustan language has the
+greatest affinity with that of the Gipsies.  He also infers from the
+following consideration that Gipsies are of the lowest class of Indians,
+namely, Parias, or, as they are called in Hindustan, Suders, and goes on
+to say that the whole great nation of Indians is known to be divided into
+four ranks, or stocks, which are called by a Portuguese name, Castes,
+each of which has its own particular sub-division.  Of these castes, the
+Brahmins is the first; the second contains the Tschechterias, or Setreas;
+the third consists of the Beis, or Wazziers; the fourth is the caste of
+the above-mentioned Suders, who, upon the peninsula of Malabar, where
+their condition is the same as in Hindustan, are called Parias and
+Pariers.  The first were appointed by Brahma to seek after knowledge, to
+give instruction, and to take care of religion.  The second were to serve
+in war.  The third were, as the Brahmins, to cultivate science, but
+particularly to attend to the breeding of cattle.  The caste of the
+Suders was to be subservient to the Brahmins, the Tschechterias, and the
+Beis.  These Suders, he goes on to say, are held in disdain, and they are
+considered infamous and unclean from their occupation, and they are
+abhorred because they eat flesh; the three other castes living entirely
+on vegetables.  Baldeus says the Parias or Suders are a filthy people and
+wicked crew.  It is related in the "Danish Mission Intelligencer," nobody
+can deny that the Parias are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians;
+they are thievish, and have wicked dispositions.  Neuhof assures us, "the
+Parias are full of every kind of dishonesty; they do not consider lying
+and cheating to be sinful."  The Gipsy's solicitude to conceal his
+language is also a striking Indian trait.  Professor Pallas says of the
+Indians round Astracan, custom has rendered them to the greatest degree
+suspicious about their language.  Salmon says that the nearest relations
+cohabit with each other; and as to education, their children grow up in
+the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or instruction.  The
+missionary journal before quoted says with respect to matrimony among the
+Suders or Gipsies, "they act like beasts, and their children are brought
+up without restraint or information."  "The Suders are fond of horses, so
+are the Gipsies."  Grellmann goes on to say "that the Gipsies hunt after
+cattle which have died of distempers in order to feed on them, and when
+they can procure more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day's
+consumption, they dry it in the sun.  Such is the constant custom with
+the Suders in India."  "That the Gipsies and natives of Hindustan
+resemble each other in complexion and shape is undeniable.  And what is
+asserted of the young Gipsy girls rambling about with their fathers, who
+are musicians, dancing with lascivious and indecent gesture to divert any
+person who is willing to give them a small gratuity for so acting, is
+likewise perfectly Indian."  Sonneratt confirms this in the account he
+gives of the dancing girls of Surat.  Fortune-telling is practised all
+over the East, but the peculiar kind professed by the Gipsies, viz.,
+chiromancy, constantly referring to whether the parties shall be rich or
+poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, &c., is nowhere met with but in
+India.  Sonneratt says:--"The Indian smith carries his tools, his shop,
+and his forge about with him, and works in any place where he can find
+employment.  He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus
+is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file.  This is very much
+like Gipsy tinkers," &c.  It is usual for Parias, or Suders, in India to
+have their huts outside the villages of other castes.  This is one of the
+leading features of the Gipsies of this country.  A visit to the
+outskirts of London, where the Gipsies encamp, will satisfy any one upon
+this point, viz., that our Gipsies are Indians.  In isolated cases a
+strong religious feeling has manifested itself in certain persons of the
+Bunyan type of character and countenance--a strong frame, with large,
+square, massive forehead, such as Bunyan possessed; for it should be
+noted that John Bunyan was a Gipsy tinker, with not an improbable mixture
+of the blood of an Englishman in his veins, and, as a rule, persons of
+this mixture become powerful for good or evil.  A case in point, viz.,
+Mrs. Simpson and her family, has come under my own observation lately,
+which forcibly illustrates my meaning, both as regards the evil Mrs.
+Simpson did in the former part of her life, and for the last twenty years
+in her efforts to do good among persons of her class, and also among
+others, as she has travelled about the country.  The exodus of the
+Gipsies from India may be set down, first, to famine, of which India, as
+we all know, suffers so much periodically; second, to the insatiable love
+of gold and plunder bound up in the nature of the Gipsies--the West, from
+an Indian point of view, is always looked upon as a land of gold, flowing
+with milk and honey; third, the hatred the Gipsies have for wars, and as
+in the years of 1408 and 1409, and many years previous to these dates,
+India experienced some terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of
+thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster
+Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by
+Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith,
+it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances the Gipsies
+would leave the country to escape the consequences following those
+calamities, over-populated as it was, numbering close upon 200,000,000 of
+human beings. {8}  I am inclined to think that it would be hunger and
+starvation upon their heels that would be the propelling power to send
+them forward in quest of food.  From Attock, Peshawur, Cabul, and Herat,
+they would tramp through Persia by Teheran, and enter the Euphrates
+Valley at Bagdad.  From Calcutta, Madras, Seringapatam, Bangalore, Goa,
+Poonah, Hydrabad, Aurungabad, Nagpoor, Jabbulpoor, Benares, Allahabad,
+Surat, Simla, Delhi, Lahore, they would wander along to the mouth of the
+river Indus, and commence their journey at Hydrabad, and travelling by
+the shores of the Indian Ocean, stragglers coming in from Bunpore,
+Gombaroon, the commencement of the Persian Gulf, when they would travel
+by Bushino to Bassora.  At this place they would begin to scatter
+themselves over some parts of Arabia, making their headquarters near
+Molah, Mecca, and other parts of the country, crossing over Suez, and
+getting into Egypt in large numbers.  Others would take the Euphrates
+Valley route, which, by the way, is the route of the proposed railway to
+India.  Tribes branching off at Kurnah, some to Bagdad, following the
+course of the river Tigris to Mosul and Diarbeker, and others would go to
+Jerusalem, Damuscus, and Antioch, till they arrived at Allepo and
+Alexandretta.  Here may be considered the starting-point from which they
+spread over Asiatic Turkey in large numbers, till they arrived before
+Constantinople at the commencement of the fourteenth century.
+
+Straggling Gipsies no doubt found their way westward prior to the wars of
+Timur Beg, and in this view I am supported by the fact that two of our
+own countrymen--Fitz-Simeon and Hugh the Illuminator, holy friars--on
+their pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1322, called at Crete, and there
+found some Gipsies--I am inclined to think only a few sent out as a kind
+of advance-guard or feeler, adopting the plan they have done subsequently
+in peopling Europe and England during the fifteenth and sixteenth
+centuries.
+
+Brand, in his observations in "Popular Antiquities," is of opinion also
+that the Gipsies fled from Hindustan when Timur Beg ravaged India with a
+view of making Mohammedans of the heathens, and it is calculated that
+during his deeds of blood he butchered 500,000 Indians.  Some writers
+suppose that the Gipsies, in order to escape the sword of this human
+monster, came into Europe through Egypt, and on this account were called
+English Gipsies.
+
+In a paper read by Colonel Herriot before the Royal Asiatic Society, he
+says that the Gipsies, or Indians--called by some Suders, by others Naths
+or Benia, the first signifying rogue, the second dancer or tumbler--are
+to be met in large numbers in that part of Hindustan which is watered by
+the Ganges, as well as the Malwa, Gujerat, and the Deccan.
+
+The religious crusades to the Holy Land commenced in the year 1095 and
+lasted to 1270.  It was during the latter part of the time of the
+Crusades, and prior to the commencement of the wars by Timur Beg, that
+the Gipsies flocked by hundreds of thousands to Asiatic Turkey.  While
+the rich merchants and princes were trying to outvie each other in their
+costly equipages, grandeur, and display of gold in their pilgrimage to
+the Holy Land, and the tremendous death-struggles between Christianity,
+Idolatry, and Mohammedism, the Gipsies were busily engaged in singing
+songs and plundering, and in this work they were encouraged by the
+Persians as they passed through their territory.  The Persians have
+always been friendly to these wandering, loafing Indians, for we find
+that during the wars of India by Timur Beg, and other monsters previous,
+they were harbouring 20,000 of these poor low-caste and outcast Indians;
+and, in fact, the same thing may be said of the other countries they
+passed through on their way westward, for we do not read of their being
+persecuted in these countries to anything like the extent they have been
+in Europe.  This, no doubt, arises from the affinity there is between the
+Indian, Persian, and Gipsy races, and the dislike the Europeans have
+towards idlers, loafers, liars, and thieves; and especially is this so in
+England.  Gipsy life may find favour in the East, but in the West the
+system cannot thrive.  A real Englishman hates the man who will not work,
+scorns the man who would tell him a lie, and would give the thief who
+puts his hands into his pocket the cat-o'-nine-tails most unmercifully.
+The persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has
+been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves.  John Bull dislikes
+keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations.  He readily protects
+all those who tread upon English soil, but in return for this kindness he
+expects them, like bees, to be all workers.  Drones, ragamuffins, and
+rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of the hive.  If 20,000
+Englishmen were to tramp all over India, Turkey, Persia, Hungary, Spain,
+America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Germany, or France, in
+bands of from, say two to fifty men, women, and children, in a most
+wretched; miserable condition, doing little else but fiddling upon the
+national conscience and sympathies, blood-sucking the hardworking
+population, and frittering their time away in idleness, pilfering, and
+filth, I expect, and justly so, the inhabitants would begin to "kick,"
+and the place would no doubt get rather warm for Mr. John Bull and his
+motley flock.  If the Gipsies, and others of the same class in this
+country, will begin to "buckle-to," and set themselves out for real hard
+work, instead of cadging from door to door, they will find,
+notwithstanding they are called Gipsies, John Bull extending to them the
+hand of brotherhood and sympathy, and the days of persecution passed.
+
+One thing is remarkable concerning the Gipsies--we never hear of their
+being actually engaged in warfare.  They left India for Asiatic Turkey
+before the great and terrible wars broke out during the fourteenth
+century, and before the great religious wars concerning the Mohammedan
+faith in Turkey, during the fourteenth century, they fled to Western
+Europe.  Thus it will be seen that they "would sooner run a mile than
+fight a minute."  The idea of cold steel in open day frightens them out
+of their wits.  Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in
+which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on
+the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till
+after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey.
+This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some
+honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark,
+deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity.  For a number of years
+prior to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. in 1453 the
+Gipsies had commenced to wend their way to various parts of Europe.  The
+200,000 Gipsies who had emigrated to Wallachia and Moldavia, their
+favourite spot and stronghold, saw what was brewing, and had begun to
+divide themselves into small bands.  A band of 300 of these wanderers,
+calling themselves Secani, appeared in 1417 at Luneburg, and in 1418 at
+Basil and Bern in Switzerland.  Some were seen at Augsberg on November 1,
+1418.  Near to Paris there were to be seen numbers of Gipsies in 1424,
+1426, and 1427; but it is not likely they remained long in Paris.  Later
+on we find them at Arnheim in 1429, and at Metz in 1430, Erfurt in 1432,
+and in Bavaria in 1433.  The reason they appeared at these places at
+those particular times, was, no doubt, owing to the internal troubles of
+France; for it was during 1429 that Joan of Arc raised the siege of
+Orleans.  The Gipsies appearing in small bands in various parts of the
+Continent at this particular time were, no doubt, as Mr. Groom says in
+his article in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," sent forward by the main
+body of Gipsies left behind in Asiatic and European Turkey, to spy out
+the land whither they were anxious to bend their ways; for it was in the
+year 1438, fifteen years before the terrible struggle by the Mohammedans
+for Constantinople, that the great exodus of Gipsies from Wallachia,
+Roumania, and Moldavia, for the golden cities of the West commenced.
+From the period of 1427 to 1514, a space of about eighty-seven
+years--except spies--they were content to remain on the Continent without
+visiting our shores; probably from two causes--first, their dislike to
+crossing the water; second, the unsettled state of our own country during
+this period.  For it should be remembered that the Wars of the Roses
+commenced in 1455, Richard III. was killed at the Battle of Bosworth
+Field, and in 1513 the Battle of Flodden took place in Scotland, in which
+the Scots were defeated.  The first appearance of the Gipsies in large
+numbers in Great Britain was in Scotland in 1514, the year after the
+Battle of Flodden.  Another remarkable coincidence connected with their
+appearance in this country came out during my inquiries; but whether
+there is any foundation for it further than it is an idea floating in my
+brain I have not yet been able to ascertain, as nothing is mentioned of
+it in any of the writings I have perused.  It seems reasonable to suppose
+that the Gipsies, would retain and hand down some of their pleasant, as
+well as some of the bitter, recollections of India, which, no doubt,
+would at this time be mentioned to persons high in position--it should be
+noted that the Gipsies at this time were favourably received at certain
+head-quarters amongst merchants and princes--for we find that within
+fourteen years after the landing of the Indians upon our shores attempts
+were made to reach India by the North-east and North-west passages, which
+proved a disastrous affair.  Then, again, in 1579 Sir F. Drake's
+expedition set out for India.  In 1589 the Levant Company made a land
+expedition, and in all probability followed the track by which the
+Gipsies travelled from India to the Holy Land in the fourteenth century,
+by the Euphrates valley and Persian Gulf.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1417, in the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic
+coast and at the mouth of the Elbe, there appeared before the gates of
+Luneburg, and later on at Hamburg, Lubeck, Wirmar, Rostock, and
+Stralsuna, a herd of swarthy and strange specimens of humanity, uncouth
+in form, hideous in complexion, and their whole exterior shadowed forth
+the lowest depths of poverty and degradation.  A cloak made of the
+fragments of oriental finery was generally used to disguise the filth and
+tattered garments of their slight remaining apparel.  The women and young
+children travelled in rude carts drawn by asses or mules; the men trudged
+alongside, casting fierce and suspicious glances on those they met,
+thief-like, from underneath their low, projecting foreheads and eyebrows;
+the elder children, unkempt and half-clad, swarmed in every direction,
+calling with shrill cries and monkey-like faces and grimaces to the
+passers-by to their feats of jugglery, craft, and deception.  Forsaking
+the Baltic provinces the dusky band then sought a more friendly refuge in
+central Germany--and it was quite time they had begun to make a move, for
+their deeds of darkness had oozed out, and a number of them paid the
+penalty upon the gallows, and the rest scampered off to Meissen, Leipsic,
+and Herse.  At these places they were not long in letting the inhabitants
+know, by their depredations, witchcraft, devilry, and other abominations,
+the class of people they had in their midst, and the result was their
+speedy banishment from Germany; and in 1418, after wandering about for a
+few months only, they turned their steps towards Switzerland, reaching
+Zurich on August 1st, and encamped during six days before the town,
+exciting much sympathy by their pious tale and sorrowful appearance.  In
+Switzerland the inhabitants were more gullible, and the soft parts of
+their nature were easily getatable, and the consequence was the Gipsies
+made a good thing of it for the space of four years.  Soon after leaving
+Zurich, according to Dr. Mikliosch, the wanderers divided their forces.
+One detachment crossed the Botzberg and created quite a panic amongst the
+peaceable inhabitants of Sisteron, who, fearing and imagining all sorts
+of evils from these satanic-looking people, fed them with a hundred
+loaves, and induced them, for the good of their health, to make
+themselves miserably less.  We next hear of them in Italy, in 1422.
+After leaving Asiatic Turkey, and in their wanderings through Russia and
+Germany, the Asiatic, sanctimonious, religious halo, borrowed from their
+idolatrous form and notions of the worship of God in the East, had
+suffered much from exposure to the civilising and Christianising
+influences of the West; and the result was their leaders decided to make
+a pilgrimage to Rome to regain, under the cloak of religion, some of the
+self-imagined lost prestige; and in this they were, at any rate, for a
+time, successful.  On the 11th day of July, 1422, a leader of the
+Gipsies, named Duke Andrew, arrived at Bologna, with men, women and
+children, fully one hundred persons, carrying with them, as they alleged,
+a decree signed by the King of Hungary, permitting them, owing to their
+return to the Christian faith--stating at the same time that 4,000 had
+been re-baptised--to rob without penalty or hindrance wherever they
+travelled during seven years.  Here these long-faced, pious hypocrites
+were in clover, as a reward for their professed re-embracing
+Christianity.  After the expiration of this term they told the
+open-mouthed inhabitants, as a kind of sweetener, that they were to
+present themselves to the Pope, and then return to India--aye, with the
+spoils of their lying campaign, gained by robbing and plundering all they
+came in contact with.  The result of their deceitful, lying expedition to
+Rome was all they could wish, and they received a fresh passport from .
+the Pope, asking for alms from his faithful flock on behalf of these
+wretches, who have been figuring before western nations of the
+world--sometimes as kings, counts, martyrs, prophets, witches, thieves,
+liars, and murderers; sometimes laying their misfortunes at the door of
+the King of Egypt, the Sultan of Turkey, religious persecution in India,
+the King of Hungary, and a thousand other Gorgios since them.  Sometimes
+they would appear as renegade Christians, converted heathens, Roman
+Catholics, in fact, they have been everything to everybody; and, so long
+as the "grist was coming to the mill," it did not matter how or by whom
+it came.
+
+By an ordinance of the State of Orleans in the year 1560 it was enjoined
+that all those impostors and vagabonds who go tramping about under the
+name of Bohemians and Egyptians should quit the kingdom, on penalty of
+the galleys.  Upon this they dispersed into lesser companies, and spread
+themselves over Europe.  They were expelled from Spain in 1591.  The
+first time we hear of them in England in the public records was in the
+year 1530, when they were described by the statute 22 Hen. VIII., cap.
+10, as "an outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians.  Using no
+craft nor seat of merchandise, who have come into this realm and gone
+from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company, and used great
+subtile, crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand, that
+they by palmistry could tell men's and women's fortunes, and so many
+times by craft and subtilty have deceived the people of their money, and
+also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.  Wherefore they
+are directed to avoid the realm, and not to return under pain of
+imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods and chattels; and upon their
+trials for any felony which they may have committed they shall not be
+entitled to a jury _de medietate linguae_."  As if the above enactment
+was not sufficiently strong to prevent these wretched people multiplying
+in our midst and carrying on their abominable practices, it was
+afterwards enacted by statutes 1 and 2 Ph., and in c. 4 and 5 Eliz., cap.
+20, "that if any such person shall be imported into this kingdom, the
+importer shall forfeit 40 pounds.  And if the Egyptians themselves remain
+one month in this kingdom, or if any person being fourteen years old
+(whether natural-born subject or stranger), which hath been seen or found
+in the fellowship of such Egyptians, or which hath disguised him or
+herself like them, shall remain in the same one month, or if several
+times it is felony, without the benefit of the clergy."
+
+Sir Matthew Hale informs us that at the Suffolk Assizes no less than
+thirteen Gipsies were executed upon these statutes a few years before the
+Restoration.  But to the honour of our national humanity--which at the
+time of these executions could only have been in name and not in reality,
+for those were the days of bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and like sports,
+the practice of which in those dark ages was thought to be the highest
+pitch of culture and refinement--no more instances of this kind were
+thrown into the balance, for the public conscience had become somewhat
+awakened; the days of enlightenment had begun to dawn, for by statute 23,
+George III., cap. 51, it was enacted that the Act of Eliz., cap. 20, is
+repealed; and the statute 17 George II., cap. 5, regards them under the
+denomination of "rogues and vagabonds;" and such is the title given to
+them at the present day by the law of the land--"Rogues and Vagabonds."
+
+Borrow, in page 10 of his "Bible in Spain," says: "Shortly after their
+first arrival in England, which is upwards of three centuries since, a
+dreadful persecution was raised against them, the aim of which was their
+utter extermination--the being a Gipsy was esteemed a crime worthy of
+death, and the gibbets of England groaned and creaked beneath the weight
+of Gipsy carcases, and the miserable survivors were literally obliged to
+creep into the earth in order to preserve their lives.  But these days
+passed by; their persecutors became weary of persecuting them; they
+showed their heads from the caves where they had hidden themselves; they
+ventured forth increased in numbers, and each tribe or family choosing a
+particular circuit, they fairly divided the land amongst them.
+
+"In England the male Gipsies are all dealers in horses [this is not
+exactly the case with the Gipsies of the present day], and sometimes
+employ their time in mending the tin and copper utensils of the
+peasantry; the females tell fortunes.  They generally pitch their tents
+in the vicinity of a village or small town, by the roadside, under the
+shelter of the hedges and trees.  The climate of England is well known to
+be favourable to beauty, and in no part of the world is the appearance of
+the Gipsies so prepossessing as in that country.  Their complexion is
+dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features
+regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small.
+
+"The crimes of which these people were originally accused were various,
+but the principal were theft, sorcery, and causing disease among the
+cattle; and there is every reason for supposing that in none of these
+points they were altogether guiltless.
+
+"With respect to sorcery, a thing in itself impossible, not only the
+English Gipsies, but the whole race, have ever professed it; therefore,
+whatever misery they may have suffered on that account they may be
+considered as having called it down upon their own heads.
+
+"Dabbling in sorcery is in some degree the province of the female Gipsy.
+She affects to tell the future, and to prepare philters by means of which
+love can be awakened in any individual towards any particular object; and
+such is the credulity of the human race, even in the more enlightened
+countries, that the profits arising from their practices are great.  The
+following is a case in point:--Two females, neighbours and friends, were
+tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands.  It
+appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had
+conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work
+charms to captivate his affection.  Whatever little effect the charm
+might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the
+person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with
+both.  The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking
+means to break off this connection, were respectively poisoned by their
+wives.  Till the moment of conviction these wretched females betrayed
+neither emotion nor fear; but then their consternation was indescribable,
+when they afterwards confessed that the Gipsy who had visited them in
+prison had promised to shield them from conviction by means of her art.
+
+"Poisoning cattle is exercised by them in two ways: by one, they merely
+cause disease in the animals, with the view of receiving money for curing
+them upon offering their services.  The poison is generally administered
+by powders cast at night into the mangers of the animals.  This way is
+only practised upon the larger cattle, such as horses and cows.  By the
+other, which they practise chiefly on swine, speedy death is almost
+invariably produced, the drug administered being of a highly intoxicating
+nature, and affecting the brain.  Then they apply at the house or farm
+where the disaster has occurred for the carcase of the animal, which is
+generally given them without suspicion, and then they feast on the flesh,
+which is not injured by the poison, it only affecting the head."
+
+In looking at the subject from a plain, practical, common-sense point of
+view--divested of "opinions," "surmises," "technicalities,"
+"similarities," certain ethnological false shadows and philological
+mystifications, the little glow-worm in the hedge-bottom on a dark night,
+which our great minds have been running after for generations, and
+"natural consequences," "objects sought," and "certain results"--we shall
+find that the same thing has happened to the Gipsies, or Indians,
+centuries ago, that has happened to all nations at one time or other.
+There can be no doubt but that terrible internal struggles took place,
+and hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants were butchered in cold
+blood, in India, during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
+centuries; there can be no question, also, that the 200,000,000
+inhabitants, in this over-populated country, would suffer, in various
+forms, the direst consequences of war, famine, and bloodshed; and, it is
+more than probable, that hundreds of thousands of the idle, low-caste
+Indians, too lazy to work, too cowardly to fight in open day, with no
+honourable ambition or true religious instincts in their nature, other
+than to aspire to the position similar to bands of Nihilists, Communists,
+Socialists, or Fenians of the present day, would emigrate to Wallachia,
+Roumania, or Moldavia, which countries, at that day, were looked upon as
+England is at the present time.  The Gipsies, many centuries ago, as now,
+did not believe in yokes being placed round their necks.  The fact of
+200,000 of these emigrants, about whom, after all, there is not much
+mystery, emigrating to Wallachia in such large numbers, proves to my mind
+that there was a greater power behind them and before them than is
+usually supposed to be the case, and than that attending wandering
+minstrels, impelling them forward.  Mohammedism, soldiers, and death
+would not be looked upon by the Gipsies as pleasant companions.  By
+fleeing for their lives they escaped death, and Wallachia was to the
+Gipsies, for some time, what America has been to the Fenians--an ark of
+safety and the land of Nod.  Many of the Gipsies themselves imagine that
+they are the descendants of Ishmael, from the simple fact that it was
+decreed by God, they say, that his descendants should wander about in
+tents, and they were to be against everybody, and everybody against them.
+This erroneous impression wants removing, or the Gipsies will never rise
+in position.
+
+In no country in the world is there so much caste feeling, devilish
+jealousy, and diabolical revenge manifested as in India.  These are true
+types and traits of Indian character, especially of the lower orders and
+those who have lost caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians,
+Hungarians, and Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the
+Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts of
+India.  Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have been trying to
+do for some time, outside their mystery boxes, with their thin, flimsy
+veil of romance and superstitious turn of their faces, will soon discover
+their Indian character.  Of course their intermixture with Circassians
+and other nations, in the course of their travels from India, during five
+or six centuries, till the time they arrived at our doors, has brought,
+and is still bringing, to the surface the blighted flowers of humanity,
+whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the soil of Arabia,
+Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, Hungary,
+Norway, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland,
+and Wales, as the muddy stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for
+ages through various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this
+little dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a
+horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been fed and augmented by
+the dregs of English society from Sunday-schools and the hearthstones of
+pious parents.  The different nationalities to be seen among the Gipsies,
+in their camps and tents, may be looked upon as so many bastard
+off-shoots from the main trunk of the trees that have been met with in
+their wanderings.
+
+In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation, is the old
+Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter rabble as in our
+own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical
+Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams.  Then, again,
+their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among
+others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and
+other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers as being the
+ancestors of the Gipsies.  Their tramping over the hills and plains of
+India, and exposure to all the changes of the climate, has no doubt
+fitted them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various
+parts of the world.  To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part
+of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the
+burning sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents.  The treatment
+of the women and children by the men corresponds exactly with the
+treatment the women and children are receiving at the hands of the
+low-caste Indians.  The Arabian women, the Turkish women, and Egyptian
+women, may be said to be queens when set up in comparison with the poor
+Gipsy woman in this country.  In Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and some other
+Eastern nations, the women are kept in the background; but among the
+low-caste Indians and Gipsies the women are brought to the front divested
+of the modesty of those nations who claim to be the primogenitors of the
+Gipsy tribes and races.  Among the lower orders of Indians, from whom the
+Gipsies are the outcome, most extraordinary types of characters and
+countenances are to be seen.  Any one visiting the Gipsy wigwams of the
+present day will soon discover the relationship.
+
+In early life, as among the Indians, some of the girls are pretty and
+interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, idle and
+loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl soon becomes the coarse, vulgar
+woman, with the last trace of virtue blown to the winds.  If any one with
+but little keen sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy's tent when
+the man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the low-caste
+Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his bench--all squatting
+upon the ground--he will not be long in coming to the conclusion that
+they are all pretty much of the same family.
+
+Ethnologists and philologists may find certain words used by the Gipsies
+to correspond with the Indian language, and this adds another proof to
+those I have already adduced; but, to my mind, this, after the lapse of
+so many centuries, considering all the changes that have taken place
+since the Gipsies emigrated, is not the most convincing argument, any
+more than our forms of letters, the outcome of hieroglyphics, prove that
+we were once Egyptians.  No doubt, there are a certain few words used by
+all nations which, if their roots and derivations were thoroughly looked
+into, a similarity would be found in them.  As America, Australia, New
+Zealand, and Africa have been fields for emigrants from China and Europe
+during the last century, so, in like manner, Europe was the field for
+certain low-caste poor emigrants from India during the two preceding
+centuries, with this difference--the emigrants from India to Europe were
+idlers, loafers who sought to make their fortunes among the Europeans by
+practising, without work, the most subtle arts of double-dealing, lying,
+deception, thieving, and dishonesty, and the fate that attends
+individuals following out such a course as this has attended the Gipsies
+in all their wanderings; the consequence has been, the Gipsy emigrants,
+after their first introduction to the various countries, have, by their
+actions, disgusted those whom they wished to cheat and rob, hence the
+treatment they have received.  This cannot be said of the emigrant from
+England to America and our own or other colonies.  An English emigrant,
+on account of his open conduct, straightforward character, and industry,
+has been always respected.  In any country an English emigrant enters,
+owing to his industrious habits, an improvement takes place.  In the
+country where an Indian emigrant of the Gipsy tribe enters the tendency
+is the reverse of this, so far as their influence is concerned--downward
+to the ground and to the dogs they go.  In these two cases the difference
+between civilisation and Christianity and heathenism comes out to a
+marked degree.
+
+In a leading article in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1878, upon the
+origin and wanderings of the Gipsies, the following appears:--"We next
+encounter them in Corfu, probably before 1346, since there is good reason
+to believe them to be indicated under the name of _homines vageniti_ in a
+document emanating from the Empress Catharine of Valois, who died in that
+year; certainly, about 1370, when they were settled upon a fief
+recognised as the _feudum Acinganorum_ by the Venetians, who, in 1386,
+succeeded to the right of the House of Valois in the island.  This fief
+continued to subsist under the lordship of the Barons de Abitabulo and of
+the House of Prosalendi down to the abolition of feudalism in Corfu in
+the beginning of the present century.  There remain to be noted two
+important pieces of evidence relating to this period.  The first is
+contained in a charter of Miracco I., Waiwode of Wallachia, dated 1387,
+renewing a grant of forty 'tents' of Gipsies, made by his uncle,
+Ladislaus, to the monastery of St. Anthony of Vodici.  Ladislaus began to
+reign in 1398.  The second consists in the confirmation accorded in 1398
+by the Venetian governor of Nanplion of the privileges extended by his
+predecessors to the Acingani dwelling in that district.  Thus we find
+Gipsies wandering through Crete in 1322, settled in Corfu from 1346,
+enslaved in Wallachia about 1370, protected in the Peloponnesus before
+1398.  Nor is there is any reason to believe that their arrival in those
+countries was a recent one."
+
+Niebuhr, in his travels through Arabia, met with hordes of these
+strolling Gipsies in the warm district of Yemen, and M. Sauer in like
+manner found them established in the frozen regions of Siberia.  His
+account of them, published in 1802, shows the Gipsy to be the same in
+Northern Russia as with us in England.  He describes them as follows:--"I
+was surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the
+Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several roving
+companies of these people had strolled into the city of Tobolsk."  The
+governor thought of establishing a colony of them, but they were too
+cunning for the simple Siberian peasant.  He placed them on a footing
+with the peasants, and allotted a portion of land for cultivation with a
+view of making them useful members of society.  They rejected houses even
+in this severe climate, and preferred open tents or sheds.  In Hungary
+and Transylvania they dwell in tents during the summer, and for their
+winter quarters make holes ten or twelve feet deep in the earth.  The
+women, one writer says, "deal in old clothes, prostitution, wanton
+dances, and fortune-telling, and are indolent beggars and thieves.  They
+have few disorders except the measles and small-pox, and weaknesses in
+their eyes caused by the smoke.  Their physic is saffron put into their
+soup, with bleeding."  In Hungary, as with other nations, they have no
+sense of religion, though with their usual cunning and hypocrisy they
+profess the established faith of every country in which they live.
+
+The following is an article taken from the _Saturday Review_, December
+13th, 1879:--"It has been repeated until the remark has become accepted
+as a sort of truism that the Gipsies are a mysterious race, and that
+nothing is known of their origin.  And a few years ago this was true; but
+within those years so much has been discovered that at present there is
+really no more mystery attached to the beginning of those nomads than is
+peculiar to many other peoples.  What these discoveries or grounds of
+belief are we shall proceed to give briefly, our limits not permitting
+the detailed citation of authorities.  First, then, there appears to be
+every reason for believing with Captain Richard Burton that the Jats of
+North-Western India furnished so large a proportion of the emigrants or
+exiles who, from the tenth century, went out of India westward, that
+there is very little risk in assuming it as an hypothesis, at least, that
+they formed the _Hauptstamm_ of the Gipsies of Europe.  What other
+elements entered into these, with whom we are all familiar, will be
+considered presently.  These Gipsies came from India, where caste is
+established and callings are hereditary even among out-castes.  It is not
+assuming too much to suppose that, as they evinced a marked aptitude for
+certain pursuits and an inveterate attachment to certain habits, their
+ancestors had in these respects resembled them for ages.  These pursuits
+and habits were, that:--They were tinkers, smiths, and farriers.  They
+dealt in horses, and were naturally familiar with them.  They were
+without religion.  They were unscrupulous thieves.  Their women were
+fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy.  They ate without scruple
+animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig,
+which, when it has thus been 'butchered by God,' is still regarded even
+by the most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy.  They flayed
+animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar
+detested callings that in several European countries they long
+monopolised them.  They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles
+of wood.  They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers,
+acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that there is hardly
+a travelling company of such performers, or a theatre in Europe or
+America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany
+blood.  Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it
+longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals.  They speak an Aryan
+tongue, which agrees in the main with that of the Jats, but which
+contains words gathered from other Indian sources.  Admitting these as
+the peculiar pursuits of the race, the next step should be to consider
+what are the principal nomadic tribes of Gipsies in India and Persia, and
+how far their occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe.  That
+the Jats probably supplied the main stock has been admitted.  This was a
+bold race of North-Western India which at one time had such power as to
+obtain important victories over the caliphs.  They were broken and
+dispersed in the eleventh century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them
+wandering to the West.  They were without religion, 'of the horse,
+horsey,' and notorious thieves.  In this they agree with the European
+Gipsy.  But they are not habitual eaters of _mullo balor_, or 'dead
+pork;' they do not devour everything like dogs.  We cannot ascertain that
+the Jat is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket-maker, a
+rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a pedlar.  We do not know whether they are
+peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to
+old age, as do pure-blood English Gipsies.  All of these things are,
+however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers,
+or Gipsies, in India.  From this we conclude--hypothetically--that the
+Jat warriors were supplemented by other tribes.
+
+"Next to the word Rom itself, the most interesting in Romany is Zingan,
+or Tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the
+people of every country, except England, to indicate the Gipsy.  An
+incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has been wasted in pursuing
+this philological _ignis-fatuus_.  That there are leather-working and
+saddle-working Gipsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair
+basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar Gipsies of
+Jat affinity in the Punjab.  Wonderful it is that in this war of words no
+philologist has paid any attention to what the Gipsies themselves say
+about it.  What they do say is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in
+the form of a legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient.
+It is given as follows in 'The People of Turkey,' by a Consul's Daughter
+and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, London, 1878:--
+
+    "'Although the Gipsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy
+    and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to
+    be founded upon a strange legend current in the country.  This legend
+    says that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and
+    arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a
+    wheel was attached.'  From the context of this imperfectly told
+    story, it would appear as if the Gipsies could not travel further
+    until this wheel should revolve:--'Nobody appeared to be able to turn
+    it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit
+    presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the
+    chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only
+    when he had married his sister Guin.  The chief accepted the advice,
+    the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident
+    became that of the combined names of the brother and sister,
+    Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of Turkey at the present
+    day.'  The legend goes on to state that, in consequence of this
+    unnatural marriage, the Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a
+    Mohammedan saint to wander for ever on the face of the earth.  The
+    real meaning of the myth--for myth it is--is very apparent.  Chen is
+    a Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while
+    Guin is almost universally rendered _Gan_ or _Kan_.  _Kan_ is given
+    by George Borrow as meaning sun, and we have ourselves heard English
+    Gipsies call it _kan_, although _kam_ is usually assumed to be right.
+    Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun.  And it may be remarked in this
+    connection that the Roumanian Gipsies have a wild legend stating that
+    the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister,
+    was condemned as the sun to wander for ever in pursuit of her turned
+    into the moon.  A similar legend exists in Greenland and the island
+    of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish.  It was very natural
+    that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always
+    apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life
+    with that of these luminaries.  It may be objected by those to whom
+    the term 'solar myth' is as a red rag that this story, to prove
+    anything, must first be proved itself.  This will probably not be far
+    to seek.  If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it
+    may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the
+    possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan.  It is quite as
+    plausible as Dr. Mikliosch's derivation from the Acingani--[Greek
+    text]--'an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia
+    and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.'  The
+    mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story came from
+    India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name.  And if
+    the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan, or Zin-gan, in the
+    East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name
+    from the Gorgios in Europe."
+
+Professor Bott, in his "Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien," speaks of the
+Gipsies or _Lury_ as follows:--"In the great Persian epic, the
+'Shah-Nameh'--in 'Book of Kings,' Firdusi--relates an historical
+tradition to the following effect.  About the year 420 A.D., Behram Gur,
+a wise and beneficent ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, finding that his
+poorer subjects languished for lack of recreation, bethought himself of
+some means by which to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of
+a laborious life.  For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King
+of Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a strict
+bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and
+transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could by
+their arts help to lighten the burden of existence, and lend a charm to
+the monotony of toil.  The result was the importation of twelve thousand
+minstrels, male and female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as
+well as an ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living
+independently, they might provide his people with gratuitous amusement.
+But at the end of one year they were found to have neglected agricultural
+operations, to have wasted their seed corn, and to be thus destitute of
+all means of subsistence.  Then Behram Gur, being angry, commanded them
+to take their asses and instruments, and roam through the country,
+earning a livelihood by their songs.  The poet concludes as
+follows:--'The Lury, agreeably to this mandate, now wander about the
+world in search of employment, associating with dogs and wolves, and
+thieving on the road, by day and by night.'"  These words were penned
+nearly nine centuries ago, and correctly describe the condition of one of
+the wandering tribes of Persia at the present day, and they have been
+identified by some travellers as members of the Gipsy family.
+
+Dr. Von Bott goes on to say this:--"The tradition of the importation of
+the Lury from India is related by no less than five Persian or Arab
+writers: first, about the year 940 by Hamza, an Arab historian, born at
+Ispahan; next, as we have seen, by Firdusi; in the year 1126 by the
+author of the 'Modjmel-al-Yevaryk;' in the fifteenth century by Mirkhoud,
+the historian of the Sassanides.  The transplanted musicians are called
+by Hamza _Zuth_, and in some manuscripts of Mirkhoud's history the same
+name occurs, written, according to the Indian orthography, _Djatt_.
+These words are undistinguishable when pronounced, and, in fact, may be
+looked upon as phonetically equivalent, the Arabic _z_ being the
+legitimate representative of the Indian _dj_.  Now Zuth or Zatt, as it is
+indifferently written, is one of the designations of the Syrian Gipsies,
+and Djatt is the tribal appellative of the ancient Indian race still
+widely diffused throughout the Punjab and Beloochistan.  Thus we find
+that the modern Lury, who may, without fear of error, be classed as
+Persian Gipsies, derive a traditional origin from certain Indian
+minstrels called by an Arab author of the tenth century _Zuth_, and by a
+Persian historian of the fifteenth, _Djatt_, a name claimed, on the one
+hand by the Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the
+other by a people dwelling in the valley of the Indus."  The Djatts were
+averse to religious speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances;
+the Hindu was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions
+of caste.  From a remote period there were Djatt settlements along the
+shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the route by which the
+Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I have before intimated, rather
+than endure the life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan
+task-masters.  Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no
+disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran through
+their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a hedge-sparrow in
+spring-time would bring into action, and cause them to bound like wild
+asses to the lanes, commons, and moors.  They have always refused to
+submit to the Mohammedan faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither
+Brahma nor Budda, and have never adopted any national religion whatever.
+The church of the Gipsies, according to a popular saying in Hungary, "was
+built of bacon, and long ago eaten by the dogs."  Captain Richard F.
+Burton wrote in 1849, in his work called the "Sindh, and the Races that
+Inhabit the Valley of the Indus:"--"It seems probable, from the
+appearance and other peculiarities of the race, that the Djatts are
+connected by consanguinity with that singular race, the Gipsies."  Some
+writers have endeavoured to prove that the Gipsies were formerly
+Egyptians; but, from several causes, they have never been able to show
+conclusively that such was the case.  The wandering Gipsies in Egypt, at
+the present day, are not looked upon by the Egyptians as in any way
+related to them.  Then, again, others have tried to prove that the
+Gipsies are the descendants of Hagar; but this argument falls to the
+ground simply because the connecting links have not been found.  The two
+main reasons alleged by Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this
+theory are, first, that the Ishmaelites are wanderers; second, that they
+are smiths, or workers in iron and brass.  The Mohammedans claim Ishmael
+as their father, and certainly they would be in a better position to
+judge upon this point eleven centuries ago then we possibly can be at
+this late date.  And so, in like manner, where it is alleged that the
+Gipsies sprang from, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and Hungary.
+
+The following are specimens of Indian characters, taken from "The People
+of India," prepared under the authority of the Indian Government, and
+edited by Dr. Forbes Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S.  In
+speaking of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable
+character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of the large
+class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to Hinduism and
+unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a miserable condition of
+life as outcasts from the more civilised communities.  Changars are, in
+general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation.
+They object to continuous labour.  The women make baskets, beg, pilfer,
+or sift and grind corn.  They have no settled places of residence, and
+live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages.
+They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but
+they make offerings at Mohammedan shrines.  They have private ceremonies,
+separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the
+aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most
+ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant
+demons and malicious sprites.  They marry exclusively among themselves,
+and polygamy is common.  In appearance, both men and women are
+repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular
+being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type.  The Changars are one
+of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper
+provinces.  They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by others, never
+changing, never improving, never advancing in the social rank, scale, or
+utility--outcast and foul parasites from the earliest ages, and they so
+remain.  The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits,
+indulging freely in intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured
+hemp leaves, to a great extent.  Their food can hardly be particularised,
+and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there
+are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at
+marriages and other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which
+usually end in foul orgies.  In the clothes and person the Changars are
+decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the
+tribes can hardly be exceeded.
+
+The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the far
+Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appear as the
+Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan.  In "The People of India," we
+are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a
+marked difference from those who surround them (in Behar).  The Hindus
+admit their claim to antiquity.  Their designation in the Shastras is
+Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater.  They are wanderers, they make baskets and
+mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings
+on it.  They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling
+all dead bodies.  They eat all animals which have died a natural death,
+and are particularly fond of pork of this description.  "Notwithstanding
+profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and
+it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white."
+The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers.
+Travellers speak of them as "Gipsies."  A specimen which we have of their
+language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an
+error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be
+called pure Romany.  Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his
+wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana.
+_D_ in Hindustani is found as _r_ in English Gipsy speech--_e.g._, _doi_,
+a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as _roi_.  Now in common Romany we
+have, even in London:--
+
+Rom            A Gipsy.
+Romni          A Gipsy wife.
+Romnipen       Gipsydom.
+
+Of this word _rom_ we shall more to say.  It may be observed that there
+are in the Indian _Dom_ certain distinctly-marked and degrading features,
+characteristic of the European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the
+habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the
+caliphs.  Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making
+baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness, does not agree with
+anything we can learn of the Jats.  Yet the European Gipsies are all
+this, and at the same time 'horsey' like the Jats.  Is it not extremely
+probable that during the "out-wandering" the Dom communicated his name
+and habits to his fellow-emigrants?
+
+The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other
+European Gipsies appears to link them with the Luri of Persia.  These are
+distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves,
+fortune-tellers, and minstrels.  The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that
+about the year 420 A.D., Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram
+Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels,
+male and female, called _Luri_.  Though lands were allotted to them, with
+corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds.
+Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:--
+
+"They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of Europe."  ["Travels in
+Beloochistan and Scinde," p. 153.]  "They speak a dialect peculiar to
+themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping
+and pilfering.  Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and
+music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and
+monkeys that are broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks.  In
+each company there are always two or three members who profess . . .
+modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into every
+society."  This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and
+monkeys, identifies them with the Ricinari, or bear-leading Gipsies of
+Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania.  A party of these lately
+came to England.  We have seen these Syrian Ricinari in Egypt.  They are
+unquestionably Gipsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied
+the early migration of Jats and Doms.
+
+The following is the description of another low-caste, wandering tribe of
+Indians, taken from "The People of India," called "Sanseeas," vagrants of
+no particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi.  The
+editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been vagrants from
+the earliest periods of Indian history.  They may have accompanied Aryan
+immigrants or invaders, or they may have risen out of aboriginal tribes;
+but whatever their origin, they have not altered in any respect, and
+continue to prey upon its population as they have ever done, and will
+continue to do as long as they are in existence, unless they are forcibly
+restrained by our Government and converted, as the Thugs have been, into
+useful members of society.
+
+They are essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship,
+ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or
+profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime,
+and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they
+please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever
+preying upon the people.  When they are not engaged in acts of crime,
+they are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the most
+abject poverty.  The women and children have the true whine of the
+professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged bazaars, receiving
+charity and stealing what they can.  They sell mock baubles in some
+instances, but only as a cloak to other enterprises, and as a pretence of
+an honest calling.  The men are clever at assuming disguises; and being
+often intelligent and even polite in their demeanour, can become
+religious devotees, travelling merchants, or whatever they need to
+further their ends.  They are perfectly unscrupulous and very daring in
+their proceedings.  The Sanseeas are not only Thugs and Dacoits, but
+kidnappers of children, and in particular of female children, who are
+readily sold even at very tender ages to be brought up as household
+slaves, or to be educated by professional classes for the purpose of
+prostitution.  These crimes are the peculiar offence of the women members
+of the tribe.  Generally a few families in company wander over the whole
+of Northern India, but are also found in the Deccan, sometimes by
+themselves, sometimes in association with Khimjurs, or a class of
+Dacoits, called Mooltanes.  It is, perhaps, a difficult question for
+Government to deal with, but it is not impossible, as the Thugs have been
+employed in useful and profitable arts, and thus reclaimed from pursuits
+in which they have never known in regard to others the same instincts of
+humanity which exist among ourselves.  Sanseeas have as many wives and
+concubines as they can support.  Some of the women are good-looking, but
+with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of suspicion in
+their features which is repulsive.  They are, as a class, in a condition
+of miserable poverty, living from hand to mouth, idle, disreputable,
+restless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even
+habitations.  They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a
+dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or _argot_ terms of
+their own that is unintelligible to other classes.  In "The People of
+India" mention is made of another class of wandering Indians, called
+Nuts, or Naths, who correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like
+these, have no settled home.  They are constant thieves.  The men are
+clever as acrobats.  The women attend their performances, and sing or
+play on native drums or tambourines.  The Nuts do not mix with or
+intermarry with other tribes.  They live for the most part in tents made
+of black blanket stuff, and move from village to village through all
+parts of the country.  They are as a marked race, and generally
+distrusted wherever they go.
+
+They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers,
+blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents.  They eat everything, except
+garlic.  There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by
+travellers as "Gipsies."  They are travelling merchants or pedlars.
+Among all of these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in
+England.  This slang extends even into Persia.  Each tribe has its own,
+but the general name for it is _Rom_.
+
+It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in Northern and
+Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded even by the Nats and
+Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly Gipsy.  "We have
+met," says one writer, "in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of
+Calcutta.  This man had in his youth lived with these wanderers, and
+been, in fact, one of them.  He had also, as is common with intelligent
+Mohammedans, written his autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of
+the Indian Gipsy language.  This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his
+English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so 'because she
+was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not understand.'
+With the assistance of an eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly
+familiar with both Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully
+examined.  He declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, 'like
+English Gipsies here.'  'People in India called them Trablus or Syrians,
+a misapplied word, derived from a town in Syria, which in turn bears the
+Arabic name for Tripoli.  But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus,
+and not Syrian Gipsies.  They had a peculiar language, and called both
+this tongue and themselves _Rom_.  In it bread was called Manro.'  Manro
+is all over Europe the Gipsy word for _bread_.  In English Romany it is
+softened into _maro_ or _morro_.  Captain Burton has since informed us
+that _manro_ is the Afghan word for bread; but this our ex-Gipsy did not
+know.  He merely said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect
+except that of the Rom, and that Rom was the general slang of the road,
+derived, as he supposed, from the Trablus."
+
+These are, then, the very Gipsies of Gipsies in India.  They are thieves,
+fortune-tellers, and vagrants.  But whether they have or had any
+connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish.  Their
+language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be
+borne in mind that the word Rom, like Dom, is one of wide dissemination,
+Dom being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race.  And the very great majority
+of even English Gipsy words are Hindu, with an admixture of Persian, and
+not belonging to a slang of any kind.  As in India, _churi_ is a knife,
+_nak_, the nose, _balia_, hairs, and so on, with others which would be
+among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents.  And yet these
+very Gipsies are _Rom_, and the wife is a _Romni_, and they use words
+which are not Hindu in common with European Gipsies.  It is therefore not
+improbable that in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as
+they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least
+of the real stock.  It is to be desired that some resident in India would
+investigate the Trablus.
+
+Grellmann in his German treatise on Gipsies, says:--"They are lively,
+uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently
+inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith
+and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding
+benefits with the most insidious malice.  Fear makes them slavishly
+compliant when under subjection, but having nothing to apprehend, like
+other timorous people, they are cruel.  Desire of revenge often causes
+them to take the most desperate resolutions.  To such a degree of
+violence is their fury sometimes excited, that a mother has been known in
+the excess of passion to take her small infant by the feet, and therewith
+strike the object of her anger.  They are so addicted to drinking as to
+sacrifice what is most necessary to them that they may feast their
+palates with ardent spirits.  Nothing can exceed the unrestrained
+depravity of manners existing among them.  Unchecked by any idea of shame
+they give way to every libidinous desire.  The mother endeavours by the
+most scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to
+sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer
+of others.  Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist
+by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the
+seven days in the week.  This indolence increases their propensity to
+stealing and cheating.  They seek to avail themselves of every
+opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires.  Their universal bad
+character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge,
+malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning,
+though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of
+no use in society.  The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let
+it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle,
+there these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest numbers."
+
+So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent
+their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes
+within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact
+sufficient to cope with them.  A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies
+must have his hands out of his pockets, "all his buttons on," "his head
+screwed upon the right place," and no fool, or he will be swamped before
+he leaves the place.  This I experienced myself a week or two since.
+During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, the
+_Illustrated London News_, had a number of faithful sketches showing
+Gipsy life round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I
+have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &c., encouraged by the
+untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a clergyman, not overdone with
+too much wisdom and common sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N---
+Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the neighbour hood
+of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ
+Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the
+work of education among the Gipsy children--it is certain that this
+farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a
+friend wrote to me, stating that the next time I went to the
+neighbourhood of N--- Hill I "must look out for a warm reception," to
+which I replied, that "the sooner I had it the better, and I would go for
+it in a day or two;" accordingly I went, believing in the old Book,
+"Resist the devil and he will flee from thee."  Upon my first approach
+towards them, I was met with sour looks, scowls, and not over polite
+language, but with a little pleasantry, chatting, and a few little
+things, such as Christmas cards, oranges to give to the children, the sun
+began to beam upon their countenances, and all passed off with smiles,
+good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a man who had the
+colour and expression upon his face of his satanic majesty from the
+regions below.  It took me all my time to smile and say kind things while
+he was pacing up and down opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his
+eye like fire, step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge.  He was
+speaking out in no unmistakable language, "I should like to see you hung
+like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should, and I mean it
+from my heart."  When I asked him to point out anything I had said or
+done that was not correct, he was in a fix, and all he could say was,
+that "I would be likely to stop his game."  Every now and then he would
+thrust his hands into his pockets, as if feeling for his clasp-knife, and
+then again, occasionally, he would give a shrug of the shoulders, as if
+he felt not at all satisfied.  I felt in my pocket, and opened my small
+penknife.  I thought it might do a little service in case he should
+"close in upon me."  Just to feel his pulse, and set his heart a beating,
+I told him, good-humouredly, that "I was not afraid of half-a-dozen
+better men than he was if they would come one at a time, but did not
+think I could tackle them all at once."  This caused him to open his eyes
+wider than I had seen them before, as if in wonder and amazement at the
+kind of fellow he had come in contact with.  I told him I was afraid that
+he would find me a queer kind of customer.  Gipsies as a rule are
+cowards, and this feature I could see in his actions and countenance.
+However, after talking matters over for some time we parted friends,
+feeling thankful that the storm had abated.
+
+The Gipsies plan of attacking a house, town, city, or country for the
+sake of pillage, plunder, and gain remains the same to-day as it did
+eight centuries ago.  They do not generally resort to open violence as
+the brigands of Spain, Turkey and other parts of the East.  They follow
+out an organised system, at least, they go to work upon different lines.
+In the first place, they send a kind of advance-guard to find out where
+the loot and soft hearts lay and the weaknesses of those who hold them,
+and when this has been done they bring all the arts their evil
+disposition can devise to bear upon the weak points till they are
+successful.  When Mahmood was returning with his victorious army from the
+war in the eleventh century with the spoils and plunder of war upon their
+backs, and while the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured
+away with the Gipsy girls' "witching eyes," the old Gipsies, numbering
+some hundreds, who where camping in the neighbourhood, bolted off with
+their war prizes; this so enraged Mahmood, after finding out that he had
+been sold by a lot of low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army
+after them and slew the whole band of these wandering Indians.
+
+[Picture: A gentleman gipsy's tent, and his dog, "Grab," Hackney Marshes]
+
+Sometimes they will put on a hypocritical air of religious sanctity; at
+other times they will dress their prettiest girls in Oriental finery and
+gaudy colours on purpose to catch the unwary; at other times they will
+try to lay hold of the sympathic by sending out their old women and
+tottering men dressed in rags; and at other times they will endeavour to
+lay hold of the benevolent by sending out women heavily laden with
+babies, and in this way they have Gipsyised and are still Gipsyising our
+own country from the time they landed in Scotland in the year 1514, until
+they besieged London now more than two centuries ago, planting their
+encampments in the most degraded parts on the outskirts of our great
+city; and this holds good of them even to this day.  They are never to be
+seen living in the throng of a town or in the thick of a fight.  In
+sketching the plan of campaigning for the day, the girls with pretty
+"everlasting flowers" go in one direction, the women with babies tackle
+the tradesmen and householders by selling skewers, clothes-pegs, and
+other useful things, but in reality to beg, and the old women with the
+assistance of the servant girls face the brass knockers through the back
+kitchen.  The men are all this time either loitering about the tents or
+skulking down the lanes spotting out their game for the night, with their
+lurcher dogs at their heels.  Thus the Gipsy lives and thus the Gipsy
+dies, and is buried like a dog; his tent destroyed, and his soul flown to
+another world to await the reckoning day.  He can truthfully say as he
+leaves his tenement of clay behind, "No man careth for my soul."  Charles
+Wesley, no doubt, in his day, had seen vast numbers of these wandering
+English heathens in various parts of the country as he travelled about on
+his missionary tour, and it is not at all improbable but that they were
+in his mind when those soul-inspiring, elevating, and tear-fetching lines
+were penned by him in 1748, and first published by subscription in his
+"Hymns and Sacred Poems," 2 vols., 1749, the profits of which enabled him
+to get a wife and set up housekeeping on his own account at Bristol.
+They are words that have healed thousands of broken hearts, fixed the
+hopes of the downcast on heaven, and sent the sorrowful on his way
+rejoicing; and they are words that will live as long as there is a
+Methodist family upon earth to lisp its song of triumph.
+
+   "Come on, my partners in distress,
+   My comrades through the wilderness,
+      Who still your bodies feel;
+   A while forget your griefs and fears,
+   And look beyond this vale of tears,
+      To that celestial hill.
+
+   "Beyond the bounds of time and space,
+   Look forward to that heavenly place,
+      The saints' secure abode;
+   On faith's strong eagle-pinions rise,
+   And force your passage to the skies,
+      And scale the mount of God.
+
+   "Who suffer with our Master here,
+   We shall before His face appear,
+      And by His side sit down;
+   To patient faith the prize is sure;
+   And all that to the end endure
+      The cross, shall wear the crown."
+
+It is impossible to give anything like a correct number of Gipsies that
+are outside Europe.  Many travellers have attempted to form some idea of
+the number, and have come to the conclusion that there were not less than
+3,000 families in Persia in 1856, and in 1871 there were not less than
+67,000 Gipsies in Armenia and Asiatic Turkey.  In Egypt of one tribe only
+there are 16,000.  With regard to the number of Gipsies there are in
+America no one has been able to compute; but by this time the number must
+be considerable, for stragglers have been wending their way there from
+England, Europe, and other parts of the world for some time.
+
+Mikliosch, in 1878, stated that there are not less than 700,000 in
+Europe.  Turkey, previous to the war with Russia, 104,750, Bosnia and
+Herzegovina in 1874 contained 9,537.  Servia in 1874 had 24,691; in 1873
+Montenegro had 500, and in Roumania there are at the present time from
+200,000 to 300,000.  According to various official estimates in Austria
+there are about 10,000, and in 1846 Bohemia contained 13,500, and Hungary
+159,000.  In Transylvania in 1850 there were 78,923, and in Hungary
+proper there were in 1864, 36,842.  In Spain there are 40,000; in France
+from 3,000 to 6,000; in Germany and Italy, 34,000; Scandinavia, 1,500; in
+Russia they numbered in 1834, 48,247, exclusive of Polish Gipsies.  Ten
+years later they numbered 1,427,539, and in 1877 the number is given as
+11,654.  It seems somewhat strange that the number of Gipsies should be
+in 1844, 1,427,539, and thirty-five years later the number should have
+been reduced to 11,654.  Presuming these figures to be correct, the
+question arises, What has become of the 1,415,885 during the last
+thirty-five years?
+
+As regards the number of Gipsies in England, Hoyland in his day, 1816,
+calculated that there were between 15,000 and 18,000, and goes on to say
+this:--"It has come to the knowledge of the writer what foundation there
+has been for the report commonly circulated that a member of Parliament
+had stated in the House of Commons, when speaking on some question
+relating to Ireland, that there were not less than 36,000 Gipsies in
+Great Britain.
+
+"To make up such an aggregate the numerous hordes must have been included
+who traverse most of the nation with carts and asses for the sale of
+earthenware, and live out of doors great part of the year, after the
+manner of the Gipsies.  These potters, as they are commonly called,
+acknowledge that Gipsies have intermingled with them, and their habits
+are very similar.  They take their children along with them on travel,
+and, like the Gipsies, regret that they are without education."  Mr.
+Hoyland says that he endeavoured to obtain the number of pot-hawking
+families of this description who visited the earthenware manufactories at
+Tunstall, Burslem, Longport, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Fenton, Longton, and
+other places in Staffordshire, but without success.
+
+Borrow, in his time, 1843, put the number as upwards of 10,000.  The last
+census shows that there were under 4,000; but then it should be borne in
+mind that the Gipsies decidedly objected to their numbers being taken.
+Their reason for taking this step and putting obstacles in the way of the
+census-takers has never been stated, except that they looked upon it with
+a superstitious regard and dislike, the same as they look upon
+photographers, painters, and artists, as kind of _Bengaw_, for whom Gipsy
+models will sit for _soonakei_, _Roopeno_, or even a _posh-hovi_.  They
+told me that during the day the census was taken they made it a point to
+always be upon the move, and skulking about in the dark.  The census
+returns for the number of canal-boatmen gives under 12,000.  The Duke of
+Richmond stated in the House of Lords, August 8, 1877, that there were
+between 29,000 and 80,000 canal boatmen.  The number I published in the
+daily papers in 1873, viz., 100,000 men, women, and children is being
+verified as the Canal Boats Act is being put into operation.
+
+At a pretty good rough estimate I reckon there are at least from 15,000
+to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom.  Apart from London, if I may
+take ten of the Midland counties as a fair average, there are close upon
+3,000 Gipsy families living in tents and vans in the by-lanes, and
+attending fairs, shows, &c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and
+four children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched abodes
+called domiciles, this would show us 18,000; and judging from my own
+inquiries and observation, and also from the reliable statements of
+others who have mixed among them, there are not less than 2,000 on the
+outskirts of London in various nooks, corners, and patches of open
+spaces.  Thus it will be seen, according to this statement, we shall have
+1,000 Gipsies for every 1,750,000 of the inhabitants in our great London;
+and this proportion will be fully borne out throughout the rest of the
+country; so taking either the Midland counties or London as an average,
+we arrive at pretty much the same number--_i.e._, 15,000 to 20,000 in our
+midst, and moving about from place to place.  Upon Leicester Race Course,
+at the last races, I counted upwards of ninety tents, vans, and shows;
+connected with each there would be an average of man, woman, and three
+children.  A considerable number of Gipsies would also be at Nottingham,
+for the Goose Fair was on about the same time.  One gentleman tells me
+that he has seen as many as 5,000 Gipsies collected together at one time
+in the North of England.
+
+Of this 20,000, 19,500 cannot read a sentence and write a letter.  The
+highest state of their education is to make crosses, signs, and symbols,
+and to ask people to tell them the names of the streets, and read the
+mile-posts for them.  The full value of money they know perfectly well.
+Out of this 20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering
+about the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the
+alphabet.  The others mostly will tell you that they have "finished their
+education," and when questioned on the point and asked to put three
+letters together, you put them into a corner, and they are as dumb as
+mutes.  Of the whole number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds
+might be attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of
+education in this way.  Then, again, we have some 1,500 to 2,000 families
+of our own countrymen travelling about the country with their families
+selling hardware and other goods, from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham,
+Leeds, Leicester, the Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing
+towns, from London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children
+running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told me, the
+little education they receive in the winter.
+
+Caravans will be moving about in our midst with "fat babies," "wax-work
+models," "wonders of the age," "the greatest giant in the world," "a
+living skeleton," "the smallest man alive," "menageries," "wild beast
+shows," "rifle galleries," and like things connected with these caravans;
+there will be families of children, none of whom, or at any rate but very
+few of them, are receiving an education and attending any school, and
+living together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van.  In
+addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of school age "on
+the road" tramping with their parents, who sleep in common
+lodging-houses, and who might be brought under educational supervision on
+the plan I shall suggest later on in this book.  Altogether, with the
+Gipsies, we have a population of over 30,000 outside our educational and
+sanitary laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with
+our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.
+
+   "I was a bruised reed
+   Pluck'd from the common corn,
+   Play'd on, rude-handled, worn,
+   And flung aside, aside."
+
+                                            DR. GROSART, "Sunday at Home."
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+Commencement of the Gipsy Crusade.
+
+
+ [Picture: A Gipsy's home for man, wife,  and six children, Hackney Wick]
+
+When as a lad I trudged along in the brick-yards, now more than forty
+years ago, I remember most vividly that the popular song of the
+_employes_ of that day was
+
+   "When lads and lasses in their best
+      Were dress'd from top to toe,
+   In the days we went a-gipsying
+      A long time ago;
+   In the days we went a-gipsying,
+      A long time ago."
+
+Every "brick-yard lad" and "brick-yard wench" who would not join in
+singing these lines was always looked upon as a "stupid donkey," and the
+consequence was that upon all occasions, when excitement was needed as a
+whip, they were "struck up;" especially would it be the case when the
+limbs of the little brick and clay carrier began to totter and were
+"fagging up."  When the task-master perceived the "gang" had begun to
+"slinker" he would shout out at the top of his voice, "Now, lads and
+wenches, strike up with the:
+
+    "'In the days we went a-gipsying, a long time ago.'"
+
+And as a result more work was ground out of the little English slave.
+Those words made such an impression upon me at the time that I used to
+wonder what "gipsying" meant.  Somehow or other I imagined that it was
+connected with fortune-telling, thieving and stealing in one form or
+other, especially as the lads used to sing it with "gusto" when they had
+been robbing the potato field to have "a potato fuddle," while they were
+"oven tenting" in the night time.  Roasted potatoes and cold turnips were
+always looked upon as a treat for the "brickies."  I have often vowed and
+said many times that I would, if spared, try to find out what "gipsying"
+really was.  It was a puzzle I was always anxious to solve.  Many times I
+have been like the horse that shies at them as they camp in the ditch
+bank, half frightened out of my wits, and felt anxious to know either
+more or less of them.  From the days when carrying clay and loading
+canal-boats was my toil and "gipsying" my song, scarcely a week has
+passed without the words
+
+   "When lads and lasses in their best
+      Were dress'd from top to toe,
+   In the days we went a-gipsying
+      A long time ago,"
+
+ringing in my ears, and at times when busily engaged upon other things,
+"In the days we went a-gipsying" would be running through my mind.  In
+meditation and solitude; by night and by day; at the top of the hill, and
+down deep in the dale; in the throng and battle of life; at the deathbed
+scene; through evil report and good report these words, "In the days we
+went a-gipsying," were ever and anon at my tongue's end.  The other part
+of the song I quickly forgot, but these words have stuck to me ever
+since.  On purpose to try to find out what fortune-telling was, when in
+my teens I used to walk after working hours from Tunstall to Fenton, a
+distance of six miles, to see "old Elijah Cotton," a well-known character
+in the Potteries, who got his living by it, to ask him all sorts of
+questions.  Sometimes he would look at my hands, at other times he would
+put my hand into his, and hold it while he was reading out of the Bible,
+and burning something like brimstone-looking powder--the forefinger of
+the other hand had to rest upon a particular passage or verse; at other
+times he would give me some of this yellow-looking stuff in a small paper
+to wear against my left breast, and some I had to burn exactly as the
+clock struck twelve at night, under the strictest secrecy.  The stories
+this fortune-teller used to relate to me as to his wonderful power over
+the spirits of the other world were very amusing, aye, and over "the men
+and women of this generation."  He was frequently telling me that he had
+"fetched men from Manchester in the dead of the night flying through the
+air in the course of an hour;" and this kind of rubbish he used to relate
+to those who paid him their shillings and half-crowns to have their
+fortunes told.  My visits lasted for a little time till he told me that
+he could do nothing more, as I was "not one of his sort."  Like Thomas
+called Didymus, "hard of belief."  Except an occasional glance at the
+Gipsies as I have passed them on the road-side, the subject has been
+allowed to rest until the commencement of last year, when I mentioned the
+matter to my friends, who, in reply, said I should find it a difficult
+task; this had the effect of causing a little hesitation to come over my
+sensibilities, and in this way, between hesitation and doubt, matters
+went on till one day in July last year, when the voice of Providence and
+the wretched condition of the Gipsy children seemed to speak to me in
+language that I thought it would be perilous to disregard.  On my return
+home one evening I found a lot of Gipsies in the streets; it struck me
+very forcibly that the time for action had now arrived, and with this
+view in mind I asked Moses Holland--for that was his name, and he was the
+leader of the gang--to call into my house for some knives which required
+grinding, and while his mate was grinding the knives, for which I had to
+pay two shillings, I was getting all the information I could out of him
+about the Gipsy children--this with some additional information given to
+me by Mr. Clayton and several other Gipsies at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
+together with a Gipsy woman's tale to my wife, mentioned in my "Cry of
+the Children from the Brick-yards of England," brought forth my first
+letter upon the condition of the poor Gipsy children as it appeared in
+the _Standard_, _Daily Chronicle_, and nearly every other daily paper on
+August 14th of last year:--"Some years since my attention was drawn to
+the condition of these poor neglected children, of whom there are many
+families eking out an existence in the Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and
+Staffordshire lanes.  Two years since a pitiful appeal was made in one of
+our local papers asking me to take up the cause of the poor Gipsy
+children; but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one
+with time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue.  Sir, a few
+weeks since our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of
+the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to
+please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time
+if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant's
+life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children,
+dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells--if living
+under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, can be
+called living in tents--on the roadside in the midst of grass, sticks,
+stones, and mud; and they would have done well also if they had put out
+their hand to rescue from idleness, ignorance, and heathenism our
+roadside arabs, _i.e._, the children living in vans, and who attend
+fairs, wakes, &c.  Recently I came across some of these wandering tribes,
+and the following facts gleaned from them will show that missionaries and
+schoolmasters have not done much for them.  Moses Holland, who has been a
+Gipsy nearly all his life, says he knows about two hundred and fifty
+families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties and thinks that a
+similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom.  He
+has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles.
+He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent.  He has
+seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many of
+them able to read or write.  His child of six months old--with his wife
+ill at the same time in the tent--sickened, died, and was 'laid out' by
+him, and it was also buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the
+roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last January.  When the poor thing died he
+had not sixpence in his pocket.  In shaking hands with him as we parted
+his face beamed with gladness, and he said that I was the first who had
+held out the hand to him during the last twenty years.  At another time
+later on I came across Bazena Clayton, who said that she had had sixteen
+children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a
+roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of one of these tents;
+and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.  This poor woman knows about three hundred families of
+Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself,
+so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the
+present time.  She said she could not read herself, and thinks that not
+one Gipsy in twenty can.  She has travelled all her life.  Her mother,
+named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother of fifteen
+children, all of whom were born in a tent.  A Gipsy lives, but one can
+scarcely tell how; they generally locate for a time near hen-roosts,
+potato-camps, turnip-fields, and game-preserves.  They sell a few
+clothes-lines and clothes-pegs, but they seldom use such things
+themselves.  Washing would destroy their beauty.  Telling fortunes to
+servant girls and old maids is a source of income to some of them.  They
+sleep, but in many instances lie crouched together, like so many dogs,
+regardless of either sex or age.  They have blood, bone, muscle, and
+brains, which are applied in many instances to wrong purposes.  To have
+between three and four thousand men and women, and fifteen thousand
+children classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all
+over the country, in ignorance and evil training, that carries peril with
+it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim on the grounds
+of justice and equity, that if these poor children, living in vans and
+tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places,
+they shall be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of
+1877, so that the children may be brought under the Compulsory Clauses of
+the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other
+children."
+
+The foregoing letter, as it appeared in the _Standard_, brought forth the
+following leading article upon the subject the following day, August
+15th, in which the writer says:--"We yesterday published a letter from
+Mr. George Smith, whose efforts to ameliorate and humanise the floating
+and transitory population of our canals and navigable rivers have already
+borne good fruit, in which he calls attention to the deserted and almost
+hopeless lot of English Gipsy children.  Moses Holland--the Hollands are
+a Gipsy family almost as old as the Lees or the Stanleys, and a Holland
+always holds high rank among the 'Romany' folk--assures Mr. Smith that in
+ten of the Midland counties he knows some two hundred and fifty families
+of Gipsies, and that none of their children can read or write.  Bazena
+Clayton, an old lady of caste, almost equal to that of a Lee or a
+Holland, confirms the story.  She has lived in tents all her life.  She
+was born in a tent, married from a tent, has brought up a family of
+sixteen children, more or less, under the same friendly shelter, and
+expects to breathe her last in a tent.  That she can neither read nor
+write goes without saying; although doubtless she knows well enough how
+to 'kair her patteran,' or to make that strange cross in the dust which a
+true Gipsy alway leaves behind him at his last place of sojourn, as a
+mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track.  'Patteran,' it
+may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own
+'path;' and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy
+dialect will show their secret _argot_ to be, as Mr. Leland calls it, 'a
+curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point
+of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient
+language.'  No Sanscrit or even Greek scholar can fail to be struck by
+the fact that, in the Gipsy tongue, a road is a 'drum,' to see is to
+'dicker,' to get or take to 'lell,' and to go to 'jall;' or, after
+instances so pregnant, to agree with Professor von Kogalnitschan that 'it
+is interesting to be able to study a Hindu dialect in the heart of
+Europe.'  Mr. Smith, however, being a philanthropist rather than a
+philologist, takes another view of the question.  His anxiety is to see
+the Gipsies--and especially the Gipsy children--reclaimed.  'A Gipsy,' he
+reminds us, 'lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate
+for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and
+game-preserves.  They sell a few clothes-lines and clothes-pegs; but they
+seldom use such things themselves.  Washing would destroy their beauty
+. . . To have between three and four thousand men and women, and eight or
+ten thousand children, classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds,
+roaming all over the country in ignorance and evil training, is not a
+pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim that if these poor
+children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed
+to live in these places, they shall be registered in a manner analogous
+to the Canal Boats Act, so that the children may be brought under the
+Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised.'
+
+"Mr. Smith, it is to be feared, hardly appreciates the insuperable
+difficulty of the task he proposes.  The true Gipsy is absolutely
+irreclaimable.  He was a wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of the
+earth before the foundations of Mycenae were laid or the plough drawn to
+mark out the walls of Rome; and such as he was four thousand years ago or
+more, such he still remains, speaking the same tongue, leading the same
+life, cherishing the same habits, entertaining the same wholesome or
+unwholesome hatred of all civilisation, and now, as then, utterly devoid
+of even the simplest rudiments of religious belief.  His whole attitude
+of mind is negative.  To him all who are not Gipsies, like himself, are
+'Gorgios,' and to the true Gipsy a 'Gorgio' is as hateful as is a 'cowan'
+to a Freemason.  It would be interesting to speculate whether, when the
+Romany folk first began their wanderings, the 'Gorgios' were not--as the
+name would seem to indicate--the farmers or permanent population of the
+earth; and whether the nomad Gipsy may not still hate the 'Gorgio' as
+much as Cain hated Abel, Ishmael Isaac, and Esau Jacob.  Certain in any
+case it is that the Gipsy, however civilised he may appear, remains, as
+Mr. Leland describes him, 'a character so entirely strange, so utterly at
+variance with our ordinary conceptions of humanity, that it is no
+exaggeration whatever to declare that it would be a very difficult task
+for the best writer to convey to the most intelligent reader any idea of
+such a nature.'  The true Gipsy is, to begin with, as devoid of
+superstition as of religion.  He has no belief in another world, no fear
+of a future state, nor hope for it, no supernatural object of either
+worship or dread--nothing beyond a few old stories, some Pagan, some
+Christian, which he has picked up from time to time, and to which he
+holds--much as a child holds to its fairy tales--uncritically and
+indifferently.  Ethical distinctions are as unknown to him as to a kitten
+or a magpie.  He is kindly by nature, and always anxious to please those
+who treat him well, and to win their affection.  But the distinction
+between affection and esteem is one which he cannot fathom; and the
+precise shade of _meum_ and _tuum_ is as absolutely unintelligible to him
+as was the Hegelian antithesis between _nichts_ and _seyn_ to the late
+Mr. John Stuart Mill.  To make the true Gipsy we have only to add to this
+an absolute contempt for all that constitutes civilisation.  The Gipsy
+feels a house, or indeed anything at all approaching to the idea of a
+permanent dwelling, to amount to a positive restraint upon his liberty.
+He can live on hedgehog and acorns--though he may prefer a fowl and
+potatoes not strictly his own.  Wherever a hedge gives shelter he will
+roll himself up and sleep.  And it is possibly because he has no property
+of his own that he is so slow to recognise the rights of property in
+others.  But above all, his tongue--the weird, corrupt, barbarous
+Sanscrit 'patter' or 'jib,' known only to himself and to those of his
+blood--is the keynote of his strange life.  In spite of every effort that
+has been made to fathom it, the Gipsy dialect is still unintelligible to
+'Gorgios'--a few experts such as Mr. Borrow alone excepted.  But wherever
+the true Gipsy goes he carries his tongue with him, and a Romany from
+Hungary, ignorant of English as a Chippeway or an Esquimaux, will
+'patter' fluently with a Lee, a Stanley, a Locke, or a Holland, from the
+English Midlands, and make his 'rukkerben' at once easily understood.
+Nor is this all, for there are certain strange old Gipsy customs which
+still constitute a freemasonry.  The marriage rites of Gipsies are a
+definite and very significant ritual.  Their funeral ceremonies are
+equally remarkable.  Not being allowed to burn their dead, they still
+burn the dead man's clothes and all his small property, while they mourn
+for him by abstaining--often for years--from something of which he was
+fond, and by taking the strictest care never to even mention his name.
+
+"What are we to do with children in whom these strange habits and
+beliefs, or rather wants of belief, are as much part of their nature as
+is their physical organisation?  Darwin has told us how, after
+generations had passed, the puppy with a taint of the wolf's blood in it
+would never come straight to its master's feet, but always approach him
+in a semicircle.  Not Kuhleborhn nor Undine herself is less susceptible
+of alien culture than the pure-blooded Gipsy.  We can domesticate the
+goose, we can tame the goldfinch and the linnet; but we shall never
+reclaim the guinea-fowl, or accustom the swallow to a cage.  Teach the
+Gipsy to read, or even to write; he remains a Gipsy still.  His love of
+wandering is as keen as is the instinct of a migratory bird for its
+annual passage; and exactly as the prisoned cuckoo of the first year will
+beat itself to death against its bars when September draws near, so the
+Gipsy, even when most prosperous, will never so far forsake the
+traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place.  His mind is
+not as ours.  A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will
+learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or
+the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously
+dispose of the stones in a cherry tart.  But the lesson sits lightly on
+him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever.  Already, indeed,
+our Gipsies are leaving us.  They are not dying out, it is true.  They
+are making their way to the Far West, where land is not yet enclosed,
+where game is not property, where life is free, and where there is always
+and everywhere room to 'hatch the tan' or put up the tent.  Romany will,
+in all human probability, be spoken on the other side of the Atlantic
+years after the last traces of it have vanished from amongst ourselves.
+We begin even now to miss the picturesque aspects of Gipsy life--the
+tent, the strange dress, the nomadic habits.  English Gipsies are no
+longer pure and simple vagrants.  They are tinkers, or scissor-grinders,
+or basket-makers, or travel from fair to fair with knock-'em-downs, or
+rifle galleries, or itinerant shows.  Often they have some ostensible
+place of residence.  But they preserve their inner life as carefully as
+the Jews in Spain, under the searching persecution of the Inquisition,
+preserved their faith for generation upon generation; and even now it is
+a belief that when, for the sake of some small kindness or gratuity, a
+Gipsy woman has allowed her child to be baptised, she summons her
+friends, and attempts to undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting
+the infant to some weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the
+original import of which is in all probability a profound mystery to her.
+There is a quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a prosperous horse-dealer,
+who, becoming wealthy, came up to town, and, amongst other sights, was
+shown a goldsmith's window.  His sole remark was that the man must be a
+big thief indeed to have so many spoons and watches all at once.  The
+expression of opinion was as naive and artless as that of Blucher, when
+observing that London was a magnificent city 'for to sack.'  Mr. Smith's
+benevolent intentions speak for themselves.  But if he hopes to make the
+Gipsy ever other than a Gipsy, to transform the Romany into a Gorgio, of
+to alter habits of life and mind which have remained unchanged for
+centuries, he must be singularly sanguine, and must be somewhat too
+disposed to overlook the marvellously persistent influences of race and
+tongue."
+
+Rather than the cause of the children should suffer by presenting garbled
+or one-sided statements, I purpose quoting the letters and articles upon
+the subject as they have appeared.  To do otherwise would not be fair to
+the authors or just to the cause I have in hand.  The flattering
+allusions and compliments relating to my humble self I am not worthy of,
+and I beg of those who take an interest in the cause of the little ones,
+and deem this book worthy of their notice, to pass over them as though
+such compliments were not there.  The following are some of the letters
+that have appeared in the _Standard_ in reply to mine of the 14th
+instant.  "B. B." writes on August 16th:--"Would you allow an Irish Gipsy
+to express his views touching George Smith's letter of this date in your
+paper?  Without in the least desiring to warp his efforts to improve any
+of his fellow-creatures, it seems to me that the poor Gipsy calls for
+much less sympathy, as regards his moral and social life, than more
+favoured classes of the community.  Living under the body of an old cart,
+'within the sound of church bells,' in the midst of grass, sticks, and
+stones, by no means argues moral degradation; and if your correspondent
+looks up our criminal statistics he will not find one Gipsy registered
+for every five hundred criminals who have not only been within hearing of
+the church bells but also listening to the preacher's voice.  It should
+be remembered that the poor Gipsy fulfils a work which is a very great
+convenience to dwellers in out-of-the-way places--brushes, baskets, tubs,
+clothes-stops, and a host of small commodities, in themselves apparently
+insignificant, but which enable this tribe to eke out a living which
+compares very favourably with the hundreds of thousands in our large
+cities who set the laws of the land as well as the laws of decency at
+defiance.  As to education--well, let them get it, if possible; but it
+will be found they possess, as a rule, sufficient intelligence to
+discharge the duties of farm-labourers; and already they are beginning to
+supply a felt want to the agriculturist whose educated assistant leaves
+him to go abroad."
+
+"An Old Woman" writes as follows:--"In the article on Gipsies in the
+_Standard_ of to-day I was struck with the truth of this; remark--'He is
+kindly by nature, and always anxious to please those who treat him well,
+and to win their affections.'  I can give you one instance of this in my
+own family, although it happened long, long ago.  The Boswell tribe of
+Gipsies used to encamp once a year near the village in which my
+grandfather (my mother's father), who was a miller and farmer, lived; and
+there grew up a very kindly feeling between the head of the tribe and my
+grandfather and his family.  Some of the Gipsies would often call at my
+grandfather's house, where they were always received kindly, and oftener
+still, on business or otherwise, at the mill, to see 'Pe-tee,' as they
+called my grandfather, whose Christian name was Peter.  Once upon a time
+my grandfather owed a considerable sum of money, and, alas! could not pay
+it; and his wife and children were much distressed.  I believe they
+feared he would be arrested.  Everything is known in a village; and the
+news of what was feared reached the Gipsies.  The idea of their friend
+Pe-tee being in such trouble was not borne quietly; the chief and one or
+two more appeared at the farm-house, asking to see my grandmother.  They
+told her they had come to pay my grandfather's debt; 'he should never be
+distressed for the money,' they said, 'as long as they had any.'  I
+believe some arrangement had been made about the debt, but nevertheless
+my grandmother felt just as grateful for the kindness.  The head of the
+tribe wore guineas instead of buttons to his coat, and when his daughter
+was married her dowry was measured in guineas, in a pint measure.  I
+suppose, as in the old ballad of 'The Beggar of Bethnal Green,' the
+suitor would give measure for measure.  The villagers all turned out to
+gaze each year when they heard the 'Boswell gang' were coming down the
+one long street; the women of the tribe, fine, bold, handsome-looking
+women, in 'black beaver bonnets, with black feathers and red cloaks,'
+sometimes quarrelled, and my mother, then a girl, saw the procession
+several times stop in the middle of the village, and two women (sometimes
+more) would fall out of the ranks, hand their bonnets to friends, strip
+off cloak and gown, and fight in their 'shift' sleeves, using their fists
+like men.  The men of the tribe took no notice, stood quietly about till
+the fight was over, and then the whole bevy passed on to their
+camping-ground.  My grandfather never passed the tents without calling in
+to see his friends, and it would have been an offence indeed if he had
+not partaken of some refreshment.  Two or three times my mother
+accompanied him, and whenever and wherever they met her they were always
+very kind and respectful to 'Pe-tee's little girl.'  In after years, when
+visiting her native village, she often inquired if it was known what had
+become of the tribe; at last she heard from some one it was thought they
+had settled in Canada: at any rate they had passed away for ever from
+that part of England."
+
+Mr. Leland wrote as follows in the _Standard_, August 19:--"As you have
+kindly cited my work on the English Gipsies in your article on them, and
+as many of your readers are giving their opinions on this curious race,
+perhaps you will permit me to make a few remarks on the subject.  Mr.
+Smith is one of those honest philanthropists whom it is the duty of every
+one to honour, and I for one, honour him most sincerely for his kind
+wishes to the Romany; but, with all my respect, I do not think he
+understands the travellers, or that they require much aid from the
+'Gorgios,' being quite capable of looking out for themselves.  A _tacho
+Rom_, or real Gipsy, who cannot in an emergency find his ten, or even
+twenty, pounds is a very exceptional character.  As I have, even within a
+few days, been in company, and on very familiar footing with a great
+number of Romanys of different families of the dark blood who spoke the
+'jib' with unusual accuracy, I write under a fresh impression.  The Gipsy
+is almost invariably strong and active, a good rough rider and
+pedestrian, and knowing how to use his fists.  He leads a very hard life,
+and is proud of his stamina and his pluck.  Of late years he _kairs_, or
+'houses,' more than of old, particularly during the winter, but his life
+at best requires great strength and endurance, and this must, of course,
+be supported by a generous diet.  In fact, he lives well, much better
+than the agricultural labourer.  Let me explain how this is generally
+done.  The Gipsy year may be said to begin with the races.  Thither the
+dark children of Chun-Gwin, whether pure blood, _posh an' posh_
+(half-and-half), or _churedis_, with hardly a drop of the _kalo-ratt_,
+flock with their cocoa-nuts and the balls, which have of late taken the
+place of the _koshter_, or sticks.  With them go the sorceresses, old and
+young, who pick up money by occasional _dukkerin_, or fortune-telling.
+Other small callings they also have, not by any means generally
+dishonest.  Wherever there is an open pic-nic on the Thames, or a country
+fair, or a regatta at this season, there are Romanys.  Sometimes they
+appear looking like petty farmers, with a bad, or even a good, horse or
+two for sale.  While summer lasts this is the life of the poorer sort.
+
+"This merry time over, they go to the _Livinengro tem_, or
+hop-land--_i.e._, Kent.  Here they work hard, not neglecting the
+beer-pot, which goes about gaily.  In this life they have great
+advantages over the tramps and London poor.  Hopping over, they go,
+almost _en masse_, or within a few days, to London to buy French and
+German baskets, which they get in Houndsditch.  Of late years they send
+more for the baskets to be delivered at certain stations.  Some of them
+make baskets themselves very well, but, as a rule, they prefer to buy
+them.  While the weather is good they live by selling baskets, brooms,
+clothes-lines, and other small wares.  Most families have their regular
+'beats' or rounds, and confine themselves to certain districts.  In
+winter the men begin to _chiv the kosh_, or cut wood--_i.e._, they make
+butchers' skewers and clothes-pegs.  Even this is not unprofitable, as a
+family, what between manufacturing and selling them, can earn from twelve
+to eighteen shillings a week.  With this and begging, and occasional jobs
+of honest hard work which they pick up here and there, they contrive to
+feed well, find themselves in beer, and pay, as they now often must, for
+permission to camp in fields.  Altogether they work hard and retire
+early.
+
+"Considering the lives they lead, Gipsies are not dishonest.  If a Gipsy
+is camped anywhere, and a hen is missing for miles around, the theft is
+always at once attributed to him.  The result is that, being sharply
+looked after by everybody, and especially by the police, they cannot act
+like their ancestors.  Their crimes are not generally of a heinous
+nature.  _Chiving a gry_, or stealing a horse, is, I admit, looked upon
+by them with Yorkshire leniency, nor do they regard stealing wood for
+fuel as a great sin.  In this matter they are subject to great
+temptation.  When the nights are cold--
+
+    "Could anything be more alluring
+    Than an old hedge?
+
+"As for Gipsy lying, it is so peculiar that it would be hard to explain.
+The American who appreciates the phrase 'to sit down and swap lies' would
+not be taken in by a Romany _chal_, nor would an old salt who can spin
+yarns.  They enjoy hugely being lied unto, as do all Arabs or Hindus.
+Like many naughty children, they like successful efforts of the
+imagination.  The old _dyes_, or mothers, are 'awful beggars,' as much by
+habit as anything; but they will give as freely as they will take, and
+their guest will always experience Oriental hospitality.  They are very
+fond of all gentlemen and ladies who take a real interest in them, who
+understand them, and like them.  To such people they are even more honest
+than they are to one another.  But it must be a real _aficion_, not a
+merely amateur affectation of kindness.  Owing to their entire ignorance
+of ordinary house and home life, they are like children in many respects,
+though so shrewd in others.  Among the Welsh Gipsies, who are the most
+unsophisticated and the most purely Romany, I have met with touching
+instances of gratitude and honesty.  The child-like ingenuity which some
+of them manifested in contriving little gratifications for myself and for
+Professor E. H. Palmer, who had been very kind to them, were as naive as
+amiable.  I have observed that some Gipsies of the more rustic sort loved
+to listen to stories, but, like children, they preferred those which they
+had heard several times and learned to like.  They knew where the laugh
+ought to come in.  The Gipsy is both bad and good, but neither his faults
+nor his virtues are exactly what they are supposed to be.  He is
+certainly something of a scamp--and, _nomen est omen_, there is a tribe
+of Scamps among them--but he is not a bad scamp, and he is certainly a
+most amusing and eccentric one.
+
+"There is not the least use in trying to ameliorate the condition of the
+Gipsy while he remains a traveller.  He will tell you piteous stories,
+but he will take care of himself.  As Ferdusi sings:
+
+    "'Say what you will and do what you can,
+    No washing e'er whitens the black Zingan.'
+
+"The only kindness he requires is a little charity and forgiveness when
+he steals wood or wires a hare.  All wrong doubtless; but something
+should be allowed to one whose ancestors were called 'dead-meat eaters'
+in the Shastras.  Should the reader wish to reform a Gipsy, let him
+explain to the Romany that the days for roaming in England are rapidly
+passing away.  Tell him that for his children's sake he had better rent a
+cheap cottage; that his wife can just as well peddle with her basket from
+a house as from a waggon, and that he can keep a horse and trap and go to
+the races or hopping 'genteely.'  Point out to him those who have done
+the same, and stimulate his ambition and pride.  As for suffering as a
+traveller he does not know it.  I once asked a Gipsy girl who was sitting
+as a model if she liked the _drom_ (road) best, or living in a house.
+With sparkling eyes and clapping her hands she exclaimed, 'oh, the road!
+the road!'"
+
+Mr. Beerbohm writes under date August 19th:--"In reading yesterday's
+article on the customs and idiosyncrasies of Gipsies I was struck by the
+similarity they present to many peculiarities I have observed among the
+Patagonian Indians.  To those curious in such matters it may be of
+interest to know that the custom of burning all the goods and chattels of
+a deceased member of the tribe prevails among the Patagonians as among
+the Gipsies; and the identity of custom is still further carried out,
+inasmuch as with the former, as with the latter, the name of the deceased
+is never uttered, and all allusion to him is strictly avoided.  So much
+so, that in those cases when the deceased has borne some cognomen taken
+from familiar objects, such as 'Knife,' 'Wool,' 'Flint,' &c., the word is
+no longer used by the tribe, some other sound being substituted instead.
+This is one of the reasons why the Tshuelche language is constantly
+fluctuating, but few of the words expressing a proper meaning, as
+chronicled by Fitzroy and Darwin (1832), being now in use."
+
+The Rev. Mr. Hewett writes to the _Standard_, under date August 19th, to
+say that he baptised two Gipsy children in 1871.  One might ask, in the
+language of one of the "Old Book," "What are these among so many?"  The
+following letter from Mr. Harrison upon the subject appeared on August
+20th:--"I have just returned from the head-quarters of the Scotch
+Gipsies--Yetholm (Kirk), a small village nestling at the foot of the
+Cheviots in Roxburghshire.  Here I saw the abode of the Queen, a neat
+little cottage, with well-trimmed garden in front.  Inside all was a
+perfect pattern of neatness, and the old lady herself was as clean 'as a
+new pin.'  As I passed the cottage a carriage and pair drove up, and the
+occupants, four ladies, alighted and entered the cottage.  I was
+afterwards told that they were much pleased with their visit, and that,
+in remembrance of it, each of the four promised to send a new frock to
+the Queen's grandchild.  The Queen's son ('the Prince,' as he is called)
+I saw at St. James's Fair, where he was swaggering about in a drunken
+state, offering to fight any man.  I believe he was subsequently locked
+up.  In the month of August there are few Gipsies resident in Yetholm:
+they are generally on their travels selling crockeryware (the country
+people call the Gipsies 'muggers,' from the fact that they sell mugs),
+baskets made of rushes, and horn spoons, both of which they manufacture
+themselves.  I have a distinct recollection of Will Faa, the then King of
+the Gipsies.  He was 95 when I knew him, and was lithe and strong.  He
+had a keen hawk eye, which was not dimmed at that extreme age.  He was
+considered both a good shot and a famous fisher.  There was hardly a
+trout hole in the Bowmont Water but he knew, and his company used to be
+eagerly sought by the fly-fishers who came from the South.  My opinion of
+the Gipsies--and I have seen much of them during the last forty years--is
+that they are a lazy, dissolute set of men and women, preferring to beg,
+or steal, or poach, to work, and that, although many efforts have been
+made (more especially by the late Rev. Mr. Baird, of Yetholm), to settle
+them, they are irreclaimable.  There are but two policemen in Yetholm and
+Kirk Yetholm, but sometimes the assistance of some of the townsfolk is
+required to bring about order in that portion of the village in which the
+Gipsies reside.  I may say that the townsfolk do not fraternise with the
+Gipsies, who are regarded with the greatest suspicion by the former.  Ask
+a townsman of Yetholm what he thinks of the Gipsies, and he will tell you
+they are simply vagabonds and impostors, who lounge about, and smoke, and
+drink, and fight.  In fact, they are the very scum of the human race;
+and, what is more singular, they seem quite satisfied to remain as they
+are, repudiating every attempt at reformation."
+
+"F. G. S." writes:--"One of your correspondents suggests that the silence
+of the Gipsies concerning their dead is carried so far as to consign them
+to nameless graves.  In my churchyard there is a headstone, 'to the
+memory of Mistress Paul Stanley, wife of Mr. Paul Stanley, who died
+November, 1797,' the said Mistress Stanley having been the Queen of the
+Stanley tribe.  In my childhood I remember that annually some of the
+members of the tribe used to come and scatter flowers over the grave; and
+when my father had restored the stone, on its falling into decay, a
+deputation of the tribe thanked him for so doing.  I have reason to think
+they still visit the spot, to find, I am sorry to say, the stone so
+decayed now as to be past restoration, and I would much like to see
+another with the same inscription to mark the resting-place of the head
+of a leading tribe of these interesting people."
+
+          [Picture: Gipsies Camping among the Heath near London]
+
+To these letters I replied as under, on August 21st:--"The numerous
+correspondents who have taken upon themselves to reply to my letter that
+appeared in your issue of the 14th inst., and to show up Gipsy life in
+some of its brightest aspects, have, unwittingly, no doubt, thoroughly
+substantiated and backed up the cause of my young clients--_i.e._, the
+poor Gipsy children and our roadside arabs--so far as they have gone, as
+a reperusal of the letters will show the most casual observer of our
+hedge-bottom heathens of Christendom.  At the same time, I would say the
+tendency of some of the remarks of your correspondents has special
+reference to the adult Gipsies, roamers and ramblers, and, consequently,
+there is a fear that the attention of some of your readers may be drawn
+from the cause of the poor uneducated children, living in the midst of
+sticks, stones, ditches, mud, and game, and concentrated upon the 'guinea
+buttons,' 'black-haired Susans,' 'red cloaks,' 'scarlet hoods,' the
+cunning craft of the old men, the fortune-telling of the old women, the
+'sparkling eyes' and 'clapping of hands,' and 'twopenny hops' of the
+young women, who certainly can take care of themselves, just as other
+un-Christianised and uncivilised human beings can.  I do not profess--at
+any rate, not for the present--to take up the cause of the men and women
+ditch-dwelling Gipsies in this matter; I must leave that part of the work
+to fiction writers, clergymen, and policemen, abler hands than mine.  I
+may not be able, nor do I profess, to understand the singular number of
+the masculine gender of _dad_, _chavo_, _tikeno_, _moosh_, _gorjo_,
+_raklo_, _rakli_, _pal palla_; the feminine gender _dei_, _tikeno_,
+_chabi_, _joovel_, _gairo_, _rakle_, _raklia_, _pen penya_, or the plural
+of the masculine gender _dada_, _chavi_, and the feminine gender _deia_,
+_chavo_; but, being a matter of fact kind of man--out of the region of
+romance, fantastical notions, enrapturing imagery, nicely coloured
+imagination, clever lying and cleverer deception, beautiful green fields,
+clear running rivulets, the singing of the wood songster, bullfinch, and
+wren, in the midst of woodbine, sweetbriar, and roses--with an eye to
+observe, a heart to feel, and a hand ready to help, I am led to
+contemplate, aye, and to find out if possible, the remedy, though my
+friends say it is impossible--just because it is impossible it becomes
+possible, as in the canal movement--for the wretched condition of some
+eight to ten thousand little Gipsy children, whose home in the winter is
+camping half-naked in a hut, so called, in the midst of 'slush' and snow,
+on the borders of a picturesque ditch and roadside, winterly delights,
+Sunday and week day alike.  The tendency of human nature is to look on
+the bright side of things; and it is much more pleasant to go to the edge
+of a large swamp, lie down and bask in the summer's sun, making
+'button-holes' of daisies, buttercups, and the like, and return home and
+extol the fine scenery and praise the richness of the land, than to take
+the spade, in shirt-sleeves and heavy boots, and drain the poisonous
+water from the roots of vegetation.  Nevertheless, it has to be done, if
+the 'strong active limbs' and 'bright sparkling eyes' are to be turned to
+better account than they have been in the past.  It is not creditable to
+us as a Christian nation, in size compared with other nations not much
+larger than a garden, to have had for centuries these heathenish tribes
+in our midst.  It does not speak very much for the power of the Gospel,
+the zeal of the ministers of Christ's Church, and the activity of the
+schoolmaster, to have had these plague spots continually flitting before
+our eyes without anything being done to effect a cure.  It is true
+something has been done.  One clergyman, who has 'had opportunities of
+observing them,' if not brought in daily contact with them, tells us that
+some eight or nine years since he publicly baptised two Gipsy children.
+Another tells us that some time since he baptised many Gipsy children, as
+if baptism was the only thing required of the poor children for the
+duties and responsibilities of life and a future state.  Better a
+thousand times have told us how many poor roadside arabs and Gipsy
+children they have taken by the hand to educate and train them, so as to
+be able to earn an honest livelihood, instead of 'cadging' from door to
+door, and telling all sorts of silly stories and lies.  How many poor
+children's lives have been sacrificed at the hands of cruelty,
+starvation, and neglect, and buried under a clod without the shedding of
+a tear, it is fearful to contemplate.  The idlers, loafers, rodneys,
+mongrels, gorgios, and Gipsies are increasing, and will increase, in our
+midst, unless we put our hand upon the system, from the simple fact that
+by packing up with wife and children and 'taking to the road,' he thus
+escapes taxes, rent, and the School-board officer.  This they see, and a
+'few kind words' and 'gentle touches' will never cause them to see it in
+any other light.  The sooner we get the ideal, fanciful, and romantic
+side of a vagrant's and vagabond's life removed from our vision, and see
+things as they really are, the better it will be for us.  For the life of
+me I cannot see anything romantic in dirt, squalor, ignorance, and
+misery.  Ministers and missionaries have completely failed in the work,
+for the simple reason that they have never begun it in earnest;
+consequently, the schoolmaster and School-board officer must begin to do
+their part in reclaiming these wandering tribes, and this can only be
+done in the manner stated by me in my previous letter."
+
+In the _Leicester Free Press_ the following appeared on August
+16th:--"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is earning the title of the
+Children's Friend.  His 'Cry of the Brick-yard Children' rang through
+England, and issued in measures being adopted for their protection.  His
+description of the canal-boat children has also resulted in legislation
+for their relief.  Now I see Mr. Smith has put in a good word for Gipsy
+children.  It will surprise a good many who seldom see or hear of these
+Gipsies, except perhaps at the races, to find how numerous they are even
+in this county.  I do not think the number is at all exaggerated.  A few
+days ago while driving down a rural lane in the country I 'interviewed'
+one of these children, who had run some hundreds of yards ahead, in order
+to open a gate.  At first the young, dark-eyed, swarthy damsel declared
+she did not know how many brothers and sisters she had, but on being
+asked to mention their names she rattled them over, in quick succession,
+giving to each Christian name the surname of Smith--thus, Charley Smith,
+Emma Smith, Fanny Smith, Bill Smith, and the like, till she had
+enumerated either thirteen or fifteen juvenile Smiths, all of whom lived
+with their parents in a tent which was pitched not far from the side of
+the lane.  Of education the child had had none, but she said she went to
+church on a Sunday with her sister.  This is a sample of the kind of
+thing which prevails, and in his last generous movement Mr. Smith, of
+Coalville, will be acting a good part to numerous children who, although
+unable to claim relationship, rejoice in the same patronymic as himself."
+
+In the _Derby Daily Telegraph_, under date August 16th, the following
+leading article was published:--"When the social history of the present
+generation comes to be written a prominent place among the list of
+practical philanthropists will be assigned to George Smith, of Coalville.
+The man is a humanitarian to the manner born.  His character and labours
+serve to remind us of the broad line which separates the real apostle of
+benevolence from what may be termed the 'professional' sample.  George
+Smith goes about for the purpose of doing good, and--he does it.  He does
+not content himself with glibly talking of what needs to be done, and
+what ought to be done.  He prefers to act upon the spirit of Mr. Wackford
+Squeers' celebrated educational principle.  Having discovered a sphere of
+Christian duty he goes and 'works' it.  Few more splendid monuments of
+practical charity have been reared than the amelioration of the social
+state of our canal population--an achievement which has mainly been
+brought about by Mr. Smith's indomitable perseverance and self-denial.  A
+few years ago we were accustomed to speak of the dwellers in these
+floating hovels as beings who dragged out a degraded existence in a
+far-off land.  We were gloomily told that they could not be reached.
+Orators at fashionable missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as
+irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from
+impenetrable fastnesses.  Mr. George Smith may be credited with having
+broken down this discreditable state of things.  He brought us face to
+face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what
+result it is not necessary to say.  The sympathies of the public were
+effectually roused by the narratives which revealed to us the deplorable
+depths of human depravity into which vast numbers of English people had
+fallen.  The sufferings of the children in the gloomy, pestiferous cabins
+used for 'living' purposes especially excited the country's pity.  At
+this present moment the lot of these poor waifs is far from being
+inviting, but it is vastly different from what it was a short time back.
+It was only a few days ago that the Duke of Richmond, in reply to no less
+a personage than the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that express
+arrangements had been made by the Government to meet the educational
+requirements of the once helpless and neglected victims.
+
+"Mr. Smith has now embarked upon a fresh crusade against misery and
+ignorance.  He has turned his attention from the 'water Gipsies' to their
+brethren ashore.  He has already began to busy himself with the condition
+of 'our roadside arabs,' as he calls them.  We fear Mr. Smith in
+prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of
+disenchantment.  The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds
+by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to
+our vision.  He does not pretend to show us the romantic,
+fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the
+imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy species.  Those of our
+readers who have formed their notions of Gipsy life upon the strength of
+the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James
+and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes
+of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the
+dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon
+examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent.
+Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's history
+the picturesque and jovial rascality which novelist and poet have
+insisted in connecting with the Ishmaelites is stamped ruthlessly out of
+being by force of circumstances, it is barely possible to say.  Perhaps
+Gipsies, in common with other tribes of the romantic past, have gradually
+become denuded of their old attractiveness.  It is, we confess, rather
+difficult to believe that Bamfylde Moore Carew (wild, restless fellow
+though he was) would persistently have linked his lot with that of the
+poor, degraded, poverty-stricken wretches whom Mr. Smith has taken in
+hand.  Perchance it happens that our old heroes of song and story have,
+so far as England is concerned, deteriorated as a consequence of the
+money-making, business-like atmosphere that they are compelled to
+breathe, and that with more favoured climes they are to be seen in much
+of their primitive glory.  In Hungary, for instance, it is declared that
+Gipsy life is pretty much what it is represented to be in our own glowing
+pages of fiction.  The late Major Whyte-Melville, in a modern story
+declared to be founded on fact, introduces us to a company of these
+continental wanderers who, with their beautiful Queen, seem to invest the
+scenes from our old friend, 'The Bohemian Girl,' with something akin to
+probability.  But there is, of course, a limit to even Mr. Smith's
+labours.  Hungary is beyond his jurisdiction.  He does not pretend to
+carry his experience of the Gipsies further than the Midlands.
+Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and our neighbouring counties have offered him
+the examples he requires with his new campaign.  The lot of the roamers
+who eke out a living in the adjacent lanes and roadways is, he explains
+to us, as pitiful as anything of the sort well could be.  The tent of the
+Gipsy he finds to be as filthy and as repulsive as the cabin of the
+canal-boat.  Human beings of both sexes and of all ages are huddled
+together without regard to comfort.  As a necessary sequence the women
+and children are the chief sufferers in a social evil of this sort.  The
+men are able to rough it, but the weaker sex and their little charges are
+reduced to the lowest paths of misery.  Children are born, suffer from
+disease, and die in the canvas hovels; and are committed to the dust by
+the roadside.  One old woman told Mr. Smith 'that she had had sixteen
+children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a
+roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of one of these tents;
+and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch.'  The experience of this old crone is akin to that of
+most of her class.  She also tells Mr. Smith that she could not read
+herself, and she did not believe one in twenty could.  Morally, as well
+as from a sanitary point of view, Gipsy life, as it really exists, is a
+social plague-spot, and consequently a social danger.  Especially does
+this contention apply to the children, of whom Mr. Smith estimates that
+there are ten thousand roaming over the face of the country as vagrants
+and vagabonds.  It is to be hoped many months will not be allowed to
+elapse before this difficulty is seriously and successfully grappled
+with.  Mr. Smith's counsel as to the children is that 'living in vans and
+tents and under old carts, if they are to be allowed to live in these
+places they should be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats
+Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the compulsory
+clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as
+other children.'  The Duke of Richmond and his department may do much to
+facilitate Mr. Smith's crusade without temporising with the prejudices of
+red-tapeism."
+
+_Figaro_ writes August 27th:--"Our old friend having successfully tackled
+the brick-yard children, and the floating waifs and strays of our barge
+population, has now taken the little Gipsies in hand, with a view of
+bringing them under the supervision of the School Board system now
+general in this country.  He is a bold and energetic man, but we are
+bound to say we doubt a little whether he will be able to tame the
+offspring of the merry Zingara, and pass them all through the regulation
+educational standard.  Should he succeed, we shall be thenceforth
+surprised at nothing, but be quite prepared to hear that Mr. Smith has
+become chairman of a society for changing the spots of the leopard, or
+honorary director of an association for changing the Ethiopian's skin!"
+
+The following letter from the Rev. J. Finch, a rural dean, appeared in
+the _Standard_, August 30th:--"The following facts may not be without
+some interest to those who have read the letters which have recently
+appeared in the pages of the _Standard_ respecting Gipsies.  During the
+thirty years I have been rector of this parish, members of the Boswell
+family have been almost constantly resident here.  I buried the head of
+the family in 1874, who died at the age of 87.  He was a regular
+attendant at the parish church, and failed not to bow his head reverently
+when he entered within the House of God.  His burial was attended by
+several sons resident, as Gipsies, in the Midland counties, and a
+headstone marks the grave where his body rests.  I never saw, or heard,
+any harm of the man.  He was a quiet and inoffensive man, and worked
+industriously as a tinman within a short time of his death.  If he had
+rather a sharp eye for a little gift, that is a trait of character by no
+means confined to Gipsies.  One of his daughters was married here to a
+member of the Boswell tribe, and another, who rejoiced in the name of
+Britannia, I buried in her father's grave two years ago.  After his death
+she and her mother removed to an adjoining parish, where she was
+confirmed by Bishop Selwyn in 1876.  Regular as was the old man at
+church, I never could persuade his wife to come.  In 1859 I baptized,
+privately, an infant of the same tribe, whose parents were travelling
+through the parish, and whose mother was named Elvira.  Great was the
+admiration of my domestics at the sight of the beautiful lace which
+ornamented the robe in which the child was brought to my house.  Clearly
+there are Gipsies, and those of a well-known tribe, glad to receive the
+ministrations of the Church."
+
+I next turned my steps towards London, having heard that Gipsies were to
+be found in the outskirts of this Babylon.  I set off early one morning
+in quest of them from my lodgings, not knowing whither; but my earliest
+association came to my relief.  Knowing that Gipsies are generally to be
+found in the neighbourhood of brick-yards, I took the 'bus to Notting
+Hill, and after asking the policeman, for neither clergyman or other
+ministers could tell me where they were to be found, I wended my way to
+Wormwood Scrubs, and the following letter, which appeared in the _Daily
+News_, September 6th of last year, is the outcome of that "run out," and
+is as follows:--"It has been the custom for years--I might almost say
+centuries--when speaking of the Gipsies, to introduce in one form or
+other during the conversation either 'the King of the Gipsies,' 'the
+Queen,' or some other member of 'the Royal Family.'  It may surprise many
+of your readers who cling to the romantic side of a Gipsy's life, and
+shut their eyes to the fearful amount of ignorance, wretchedness, and
+misery there is amongst them, to say that this extraordinary being is
+nothing but a mythological jack-o'-th'-lantern, phantom of the brain,
+illusion, the creation of lying tongues practising the art of deception
+among some of the 'green horns' in the country lanes, or on the village
+greens.  It is true there are some 'horse-leeches' among the Gipsies who
+have got fat out of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the
+British public, who delight in calling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,'
+'Prince,' or 'Princess.'  It is true also that there are vast numbers of
+the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side
+grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them;
+and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country
+lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell
+them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' or some member of the 'royal
+family' is being married or visiting them; and nothing pleases the poor,
+ignorant Gipsies better than to get the bystanders, with mouths open, to
+believe their tales and lies.  I should think that there is scarcely a
+county in England but what a Gipsy king's or queen's wedding has not
+taken place there within the last twenty years.  There was one in
+Bedfordshire not long since; another at Epping Forest; and the last I
+heard of this wonderful airy being was that he had taken up his
+head-quarters at the Royal Hotel, Liverpool, and a carriage with eight
+wheels and six piebald horses had been presented to him as a wedding
+present from the Gipsies.  Gipsy 'kings,' 'queens,' and 'princes,' their
+marriages and deaths, are innumerable among the 'royal family.'  It is
+equally believing in moonshine and air-bubbles to believe that the
+Gipsies never speak of their dead.  There is a beautiful headstone put in
+a little churchyard about two and a half miles from Barnet in memory of
+the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members of the
+family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell
+Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty
+Gipsies as 'dazzlers,' to enable them more readily to practise the art of
+lying and deception upon their gullible listeners.  Then again, with
+reference to the Gipsies having a religion of their own.  There is not a
+word of truth in this imaginative notion prevalent in the minds or some
+who have been trying to study their habits.  Excepting the language of
+some of the old-fashioned real Gipsies, and a few other little
+peculiarities, any one studying the real hard facts of a Gipsy's life
+with reference to the amount of ignorance, and everything that is bad
+among them, will come to the conclusion that there is much among them to
+compare very unfavourably with the most neglected in our back streets and
+slums.  Of course, there are some good among them, as with other
+'ragamuffin' ramblers.  The following particulars, related to me by a
+well-known Gipsy woman in the neighbourhood of 'Wormwood Scrubs' and the
+'North Pole,' remarkable for her truthfulness, honesty, and uprightness,
+will tend to show that my previous statement as regards the amount of
+ignorance prevalent among the poor Gipsy children has not been
+over-stated.  She has had six brothers and one sister, all born in a
+tent, and only one of the eight could read a little.  She has had nine
+children born in a tent, four of whom are alive, and only one could read
+and write a little.  She has seventeen grandchildren, and only two of
+them can read and write a little, and thinks this a fair average of other
+Gipsy children.  She tells me that she got a most fat living for more
+than twenty years by telling lies and fortunes to servant-girls, old
+maids, and young men, mostly out of a book of which she could not read a
+sentence, or tell a letter.  She said she had heard that I had taken up
+the cause of the poor Gipsy children to get them educated, and, with
+hands uplifted and tears in her eyes, which left no doubt of her meaning,
+said, 'I do hope from the bottom of my heart that God will bless and
+prosper you in the work till a law is passed, and the poor Gipsy children
+are brought under the School Board, and their parents compelled to send
+them to school as other people are.  The poor Gipsy children are poor,
+ignorant things, I can assure you.'  She also said 'Does the Queen wish
+all our poor Gipsy children to be educated?'  I told her that the Queen
+took special interest in the children of the working-classes, and was
+always pleased to hear of their welfare.  Again, with tears trickling
+down her face, she said, 'I do thank the Lord for such a good Queen, and
+for such a noble-hearted woman.  I do bless her.  Do Thou, 'Lord, bless
+her!'  After some further conversation, and taking dinner with her in her
+humble way in the van, she said she hoped I would not be insulted if she
+offered me, as from a poor Gipsy woman, a shilling to help me in the work
+of getting a law passed to compel the Gipsies to send their children to
+school.  I took the shilling, and, after making her a present of a copy
+of the new edition of my 'Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of
+England,' which she wrapped in a beautiful white cloth, and after a shake
+of the hand, we parted, hoping to meet again on some future day."
+
+The foregoing letter brought forth the following letter from Mr. Daniel
+Gorrie, and appeared in the _Daily News_ under date September 13th, as
+under:--"Mr. George Smith, Coalville, Leicester, whose letter on the
+above subject appears in your impression to-day, succeeded so well in his
+efforts on behalf of the poor slave-children of the Midland brick-yards,
+that it is to be hoped he will attain equal success in drawing attention
+to the pitiful condition of the Gipsy children, who are allowed to grow
+up as ignorant as savages that never saw the face nor heard the voice of
+a Christian missionary.  In one of the late Thomas Aird's poems, entitled
+'A Summer Day,' there are some lines which, with your permission, I
+should like to quote, that are in perfect accord with Mr. Smith's wise
+and kindly suggestion.  The lines are these:--
+
+    "'In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
+    Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped;
+    And there they'll sleep the summer night away.
+    By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood
+    Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
+    Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire.
+    Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws
+    And meek provisions of this ancient State.
+    Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
+    To let so many of her sons grow up
+    In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
+    True, we are jealous, free, and hate constraint
+    And every cognisance, o'er private life;
+    Yet, not to name a higher principle,
+    'Twere but an institute of wise police
+    That every child, neglected of its own,
+    State claimed should be, State seized and taught and trained
+    To social duty and to Christian life.
+    Our liberties have limbs, manifold;
+    So let the national will, which makes restraint
+    Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
+    Power-arm the State to do the large design.'
+
+"The above lines, I may add, were written by the poet (in losing whom Mr.
+Thomas Carlyle lost one of his oldest and most valued friends) many, many
+years before the Education Acts now in force came into existence.  As
+many parents might not like the idea of Gipsy children attending the same
+Board schools as their own, would it not be possible to establish special
+schools in those parts of the Midland counties where Gipsies 'most do
+congregate'?"
+
+To which I replied as under, in the _Daily News_ bearing date September
+13th:--"In reply to Mr. Gorrie's letter which appears in your issue of
+this morning, I consider that it would be unwise and impracticable to
+build separate schools for either the brick-yard, canal-boat, Gipsy, or
+other children moving about the country, in tents, vans, &c., for their
+use solely; especially would it be so in the case of Gipsy children and
+roadside arabs.  What I have been and am still aiming at is the education
+of these children, not by isolating them from other
+working-classes--colliers, potters, ironworkers, factory hands,
+tradesmen, &c.--but by bringing them in daily contact with the children
+of these parents, and also under some of the influences of our little
+missionary civilisers who are brought up and receiving some of their
+education in drawing-rooms, and whose parents cannot afford to send them
+to boarding-schools, colleges, &c., and have to content themselves by
+having their children educated at either the national, British, or Board
+schools.  I confess that it is not pleasant to hear that our children
+have picked up vulgar words at school; and it requires patience, care,
+and watchfulness on the part of parents to counteract some of the
+downward tendencies resulting from an uneven mixing of children brought
+up and educated under such influences.  Better by far put up with these
+little ills than others we know not of, the outcome of ignorance.  On the
+other hand, it is pleasing to note how glad the parents of Gipsy,
+canal-boat, and brick-yard children are when their children pick up 'fine
+words' and become more 'gentlerified' by mixing with children higher up
+the social scale.  Bad habits, words, and actions are generally picked up
+between school times.  It would be well for us to rub down class feeling
+among children as much as possible as regards their education.  The
+children of brick-makers, canal-boatmen, and Gipsies are of us and with
+us, and must be taken hold of, educated, and elevated in things
+pertaining to their future welfare.  The 'turning up of the nose,' by
+those whose duty, education, and privilege should have taught them better
+things, at these poor children has had more to do in bringing about their
+pitiable and ignorant condition than can be imagined.  The Canal Boats
+Act, if wisely carried out, will before long bring about the education of
+the canal-boat children; and in order to bring the Gipsy children, show
+children, and other roadside arabs under the Education Acts, I am seeking
+to have all movable habitations, _i.e._, tents, vans, shows, &c., in
+which the families live who are earning a living by travelling from place
+to place, registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the
+parents compelled 'by hook or by crook' to send their children to school
+at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it national,
+British, or Board school.  The education of these children should be
+brought about at all risks and inconveniences, or we may expect a blacker
+page in the social history of this country opening to our view than we
+have seen for many a long day."
+
+The following leading article upon Gipsies and other tramps of a similar
+class appeared in the _Standard_, September 10th, 1879, and as it relates
+to the subject I have in hand I quote it in full:--"Not only in his
+'Uncommercial Traveller,' but in many other scattered passages of his
+works, Dickens, who for many years lived in Kent, has described the
+intolerable nuisance inflicted by tramps upon residents in the home
+counties, and has sketched the natural history of the sturdy vagabond who
+infests our roads and highways from early spring to late autumn, with a
+minuteness and power of detail worthy of a Burton.  The subject of
+vagabondage is not, however, confined in its interest to the Metropolis
+and its adjacent parts.  In the United States the habitual beggar has
+become as serious a nuisance, and, indeed, source of positive danger, as
+he was once amongst ourselves; and in the State of Pennsylvania more
+especially it has been found necessary to pass what may be described as
+an Habitual Vagrants Act for his suppression.  That the terms of this
+enactment should be excessively severe is hardly matter of astonishment,
+when we bear in mind the fate of little Charley Ross.  Early in the year
+1874 a couple of men who were travelling up and down the country in a
+waggon stole from the home of his parents in Germantown, Pennsylvania, a
+boy of some seven years named Charley Ross.  They then sent letters
+demanding a large sum of money for his restoration.  The ransom
+increased, until no less than twenty thousand dollars was insisted upon.
+While the parents, on the one hand, were attempting to raise the money,
+and while the police were endeavouring to arrest the kidnappers, all
+negotiations fell through.  The two men believed to have been concerned
+in the abduction were shot down in the act of committing a burglary on
+Rhode Island, and from that day to this the fate of Charley Ross has
+remained a mystery.  Under these circumstances, public opinion has
+naturally run high, and it has been provided that any habitual tramp
+making his way from place to place, without earning an honest livelihood,
+shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve
+months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission, who carry
+fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure either persons or
+property, shall be put to work in the common penitentiary for a period of
+three years.  Pennsylvania in this is but reverting to the old law of
+England in the Tudor days.  In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were
+whipped at the cart's tail, without distinction of either sex or age.
+The whipping-post, together with the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament
+of every parish green, and it was not until the year 1791 that the
+whipping of women was expressly forbidden by statute.  There were other
+enactments even more severe.  By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and
+marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines, wandering about
+the realm, were held _ipso facto_ guilty of felony, and hundreds of such
+offenders were publicly executed.  Another act of the same kind was
+directed against Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen
+who had been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if
+he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale's 'Pleas of the Crown' we
+learn that at one Suffolk Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were
+executed on the strength of this barbarous act, and without any other
+reason or cause whatever.
+
+"The ancient severity of our Statute Book has long since been modified,
+and the worst that can now befall 'idle persons and vagabonds, such as
+wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and
+ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come ne
+whither they go,' is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions
+of the Vagrant Act.  Under this comprehensive statute are swept together
+as into one common net a vast variety of petty offenders, of whom some
+are deemed 'idle and disorderly persons,' other 'rogues and vagabonds,'
+and others again 'incorrigible rogues.'  Under one or other of these
+heads are unlicensed hawkers or pedlars; persons wandering abroad to beg
+or causing any child to beg; persons lodging in any outhouse or in the
+open air, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a
+good account of themselves; persons playing or betting in the public
+street; and notorious thieves loitering about with intent to commit a
+felony.  At the present period of the year the country in the
+neighbourhood not of the Metropolis alone, but of all large towns, is
+filled with offenders of this kind.  Indeed, the sturdy tramp renders the
+country to a very great extent unsafe for ladies who have ventured to go
+about without protection.  Ostensibly he is a vendor of combs, or
+bootlaces, or buttons, or is in quest of a hop-picking job, or is a
+discharged soldier or sailor, or a labourer out of employment.  But
+whatever may be his pretence, his mode of procedure is more or less the
+same.  If he can come upon a roadside cottage left in the charge of a
+woman, or possibly only of a young girl, he will demand food and money,
+and if the demand be not instantly complied with will never hesitate at
+violence.  Indeed, when we remember how many horrible outrages have
+within the last few years been committed by ruffians of this kind, it is
+quite easy to understand the severity necessary in less civilised times.
+Only recently the Spaniard Garcia murdered an entire family in Wales; and
+some few years ago, at Denham, near Uxbridge, a small household was
+butchered for the sake of a few shillings and such little plunder as the
+humble cottage afforded.  And although grave crimes of this kind are
+happily rare, and tend to become rarer, petty violence is far from
+uncommon.  Many ladies resident in the country can tell how they have
+been beset upon the highway by sturdy tramps of forbidding aspect, to
+whom, in despair, they have given alms to an amount which practically
+made the solicitation an act of brigandage.  The farmer's wife and the
+bailiff tell us how haystacks are converted into temporary
+lodging-houses, chickens stolen, and outbuildings plundered.  Only too
+often the rogues are in direct league with the worst offenders in London.
+Whitechapel supplies a large contingent of the Kentish hop-pickers, and
+the 'traveller' who is ostensibly in search of a haymaking or hopping job
+is, as often as not, spying out the land, and planning profitable
+burglaries to be carried out in winter with the aid of his colleagues.
+
+"There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is picturesque.  A
+romantic imagination pictures him as a sort of peripatetic philosopher,
+with more of Jacques in him than of Autolycus; living in constant
+communion with Nature; sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the
+scantiest fare; slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging
+to be allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as purposeless
+as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as destitute of all worldly
+ends and aims as are the very violets of the hedge-row.  AEsthetic
+enthusiasm of this kind is apt to be severely checked by the prosaic
+realities of actual existence.  The tramp, like the noble savage, is a
+relic of uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to dispense.
+There is no appreciation of the country about him; no love of Nature for
+its own sake.  In winter he becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he
+almost always proves himself turbulent and disorderly.  As soon as it
+becomes warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a
+thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from 'the Union'
+and takes to 'the roads.'  From town to town he begs or steals his way,
+safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest workhouse
+must always provide him with gratuitous board and lodging.  Work of any
+kind, although he vigorously pretends to be in 'want of a job,' is
+utterly abhorrent to him.  Home county farmers, led by that unerring
+instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the
+tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the _bona-fide_
+'harvester,' in quest of honest employment.  The tramp, indeed, is the
+sturdy idler of the roads--a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is
+the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers.  In almost every
+port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose
+pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who
+are, in reality, living from hand to mouth.  Captains know only too well
+that the true 'beach-comber' is always incompetent, often physically
+unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous.  When his other resources
+fail, he throws himself upon the nearest consul of the nation to which he
+may claim to belong, and a very considerable sum is yearly wasted in
+providing such ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert
+is the land of their birth.  Harbour-masters and port authorities
+generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind somewhat
+summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers are ill-advised if
+they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as
+little mercy as possible.  Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply
+regards as weakness.  He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions
+of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage.  As
+it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads.
+Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine
+Gipsies.  He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will
+always regard him with contempt, as a mere migratory gaol bird, who knows
+no tongue of the roads beyond the cant or 'kennick' of thieves--a
+Whitechapel _argot_, familiarity with which at once tells its own tale.
+Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient to keep the nuisance in
+check, if only it be resolutely administered.  The tramp, however, trades
+upon spurious sympathy.  There will always be weak-minded folk to pity
+the poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for
+sleeping under a haystack--forgetting that this interesting offender is,
+as a rule, no better than a common thief at large, who will steal
+whatever he can lay his hands on, and who makes our lanes and pleasant
+country byways unpleasant, if not actually dangerous."
+
+The foregoing article upon Gipsies and tramps brought from a
+correspondent in the _Standard_, under date September 12th, the following
+letter:--"I have just been reading the article in your paper on the
+subject of tramps.  If you could stand at my gate for one day, you would
+be astonished to see the number of tramps passing through our village,
+which is on the high road between two of the principal towns in South
+Yorkshire; and the same may be said of any place in England situated on
+the main road, or what was formerly the coach road.  We seldom meet
+tramps in town, except towards evening, when they come in for the casual
+ward.  They spend their day in the country, passing from one town to
+another, and to those who reside near the high road, as I do, they are an
+intolerable nuisance.  A tramp in a ten mile journey, which occupies him
+all day, will frequently make 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day, besides being
+supplied with food, and the more miserable and wretched he can make
+himself appear, the more sympathy he will get, and if he is lucky enough
+to meet a benevolent old lady out for her afternoon drive he will get 6d.
+or 1s. from her.  She will say 'Poor man,' and then go home thinking how
+she has helped 'that poor, wretched man' on his way.  Tramps are a class
+of people who never have worked, and who never will, except it be in
+prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they will
+continue to be, as you say in your article, 'A blot upon the country and
+an eyesore on our roads.'
+
+"I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a tramp is to threaten
+him with the police, and I am quite sure if every householder would make
+a rule never to relieve tramps with money, and only those who are
+crippled, with food, the number would soon be decreased.  If people have
+any old clothes or spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon
+find in their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity
+than the highway tramp.  I do not recommend anybody to find a tramp even
+temporary employment, unless they can stand over him and then see the man
+safe off the premises, and even then he may come again at night as a
+burglar; but I am sure work could be found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our
+corporations or on the highways, where, under proper supervision, these
+idle vagabonds would be made to earn an honest living.  You will find
+that nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character,
+and although they may say they 'want work,' they really do not mean it.
+Not long ago I caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from
+a little girl who was taking it to her father at his work.  'Poor man! he
+must have been very hungry,' I fancy I hear the benevolent old lady
+saying.  Of course, during the last year we have had many men 'on the
+road' who are really in search of work, but I always tell them that there
+is as much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a
+situation in view they should not go tramping from town to town.  Many of
+them have no characters to produce, and I expect when they find
+'tramping' is such a pleasant and easy mode of living they will join the
+ranks and become roadsters also."
+
+In _May's Aldershot Advertiser_, September 13th, 1879, the following is a
+leading article upon the condition of Gipsies:--"The incoming of
+September reminds us that in the hop districts this is the season of
+advent of those British nomads--the Gipsies, the only class for whom
+there is so little legislation, or with whose actions and habits, lawless
+as they are, the agents of the law so seldom interfere.  The miners of
+the Black Country owe the suppression of juvenile labour and the short
+time law to the long exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler.
+The brickmaker may no longer debase and ruin, both morally and
+physically, his child of the tender age of nine or ten years, by turning
+it--boy or girl--into the brick-yard to toil, shoeless and ragged, at
+carrying heavy lumps on its head.  The canal population--they who are
+born and die in the circumscribed hole at the end of a barge, dignified
+by the name of 'cabin,' are just now receiving the special attention of
+Mr. Smith, of Coalville, and certainly, excepting the section of whom I
+am writing, there is not to be found in privileged England a people so
+utterly debased and regardless of the characteristics of civilised life.
+The Factory Act prevents the employing of boys or girls under a certain
+age, and secures for those who are legally employed a sufficient time for
+recreation.  But who cares for, or thinks about, the wandering Romany?
+True, Police-Constable Argus receives authority by which he, _sans
+ceremonie_, commands them to 'move on,' should he come across any by the
+roadside in his diurnal or nocturnal perambulations.  But it often occurs
+that the object for which they 'camped' in the spot has been
+accomplished.  The farmer's hedge has been made to supply them with fuel
+for warmth and for culinary purposes; his field has been trespassed upon,
+and fodder stolen for their overworked and cruelly-treated quadrupeds;
+so, the 'move on' simply means a little inconvenience resulting from
+their having to transfer their paraphernalia to another 'camp ground' not
+far off.  They also enjoy certain immunities which are withheld from
+other classes.  Excepting that some of them pay for a hawker's licence,
+they roam about as they list, untaxed and uncontrolled, though the
+earnings of most of them amount to a considerable sum every year; as they
+are free from the conventional rule which requires the house-dwelling
+population, often at great inconvenience, to 'keep up appearances,' it
+often happens that the wearer of the most tattered garments earns the
+most money.  They can and do live sparingly, and spend lavishly.  The
+labour which they choose is the most remunerative kind.  Ploughing or
+stone-breaking is not the employment, which the Gipsy usually seeks!  He
+takes the cream and leaves the skimmed milk for the cottier, and having
+done all there is to do of the kind he chooses, he is off to some other
+money-making industry.  A Gipsy will make four harvests in one year;
+first he goes 'up the country,' as he calls going into Middlesex, for
+'peas-hacking.'  That over, he goes into Sussex
+(Chichester--'wheat-fagging' or tying), and on that being done, returns
+toward Hampshire--North Hants--to 'fag' or tie, and that being done he
+enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a 'bin' in one of the
+gardens).  Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the
+following fact:--Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of
+age, and two women, earned on a farm in one harvest, no less than 42
+pounds.  After that, they went hop-picking, and, in answer to my
+question, 'How much will they earn there?' the farmer, who is a
+hop-grower, said, 'More than they have here.'  These operations were
+performed in less than a quarter of the year.  In the places through
+which they pass to their work they sell what they can, and at night pitch
+their tent or draw their van on some common or waste land, buy no corn
+for their horses, nor spend any money for coal or wood.  If they locate
+themselves on the margin of a wood, and make a prolonged sojourn, the
+uproar, the screams, the cries of 'murder' heard from their rendezvous
+
+    "'Make night hideous.'
+
+All this, and more, they do with impunity.  'It is only the Gipsies
+quarrelling.'  No inspector of nuisances pays them a visit; the
+tax-gatherer knows not their whereabouts; the rate-collector troubles
+them not with any 'demand note;' their children are not provided with
+proper and necessary education, yet no school attendance officer serves
+them with a summons.  Their existence is not known officially, saving the
+time a census is taken, when, at the _expense of the house-dwellers_, a
+registry is made of them.  Not a farthing do they contribute to the
+government, imperial or local, though many of them are in a position to
+do it, and can, without inconvenience, find from 40 to 80 pounds; or 100
+pounds for a new-travelling van when they want one.  Overcrowding and
+numerous indecencies exist in galore among them, yet no representative of
+the Board of Health troubles himself about the number of cubic feet of
+air per individual there may be in their tent or van.  Is this neglect,
+indifference, obliviousness, or do the authorities believe that the
+impurities and unsanitary exhalements are sufficiently oxidised to
+prevent any disease?  It is worthy of remark that they are not liable to
+the epidemics which afflict others.  The loss of a pony from a common
+simultaneously with their exodus is a suspicious fact occasionally.  They
+live in defiance of social, moral, civil, and natural law, a disgrace to
+the legislature.--J. W. B."
+
+In the _Hand and Heart_, September 19th of last year, the editor says,
+with reference to our roadside arabs:--"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville,
+whose efforts to better the condition of the wretched canal population
+have met deserved success, draws attention to the state of another
+neglected class.  Parliament, he says, which has lately been reforming so
+many things, would have done well to consider the case of the Gipsies,
+'our roadside arabs.'  Of the idleness, ignorance, heathenism, and
+general misery prevailing among these strange people he gives some
+curious instances.  One old man, whose acquaintance Mr. Smith made,
+calculates that 'there are about 250 families of Gipsies in ten of the
+Midland counties, and thinks that a similar proportion will be found in
+the rest of the United Kingdom.  He has seen as many as ten tents of
+Gipsies within a distance of five miles.  He thinks there will be an
+average of five children in each tent.  He has seen as many as ten or
+twelve children in some tents, and not many of them able to read or
+write.  His child of six months old--with his wife ill at the same time
+in the tent--sickened, died, and was "laid out" by him, and it was also
+buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at
+Barrow-upon-Soar, last January.  When the poor thing died he had not
+sixpence in his pocket.'  An old woman bore similar testimony.  'She said
+that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of
+them being born in a roadside tent.  She says that she was married out of
+one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at
+Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch.  This poor woman knows about three
+hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern
+counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling
+in Lincolnshire at the present time.  She said she could not read
+herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in twenty can.  She has travelled
+all her life.  Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is
+the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent.'  Mr.
+Smith's conclusion (which will not be disputed) is that 'to have between
+three and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children
+classed in the Census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the
+country, in ignorance and evil training that carries peril with it, is
+not a pleasant look-out for the future.'  He contends that 'if these poor
+children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed
+to live in these places, they should be registered in a manner analogous
+to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under
+the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised
+and civilised as other children.'"
+
+The _Illustrated London News_, October 4th, says:--"Among the papers to
+be read at Manchester is one on the condition of the Gipsy children and
+roadside 'arabs' in our midst, by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville,
+Leicester.  Here, indeed, is a gentleman who is certainly neither a
+dealer in crotchets nor a rider of hobbies.  Mr. Smith has done admirable
+service on behalf of the poor children on board our barges and
+canal-boats, and the even more pitiable boys and girls in our
+brick-fields; and to his philanthropic exertions are mainly due the
+recent amendments in the Factory Acts regulating the labour of young
+children.  He has now taken the case of the juvenile 'Romanies' in hand;
+and I wish him well in his benevolent crusade.  Mr. Smith has obligingly
+sent me a proof of his address, from which I gather that, owing to a
+superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and
+the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the
+enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any
+idea of the number of Bohemians in this country.  The result of Mr.
+Smith's diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are
+not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy
+and 'arab'--that is to say, tramp--children roaming about the country
+'outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.'"
+
+The following leading article, relating to my paper upon "The Condition
+of the Gipsy Children," appears in the _Daily News_, October 6th:--"At
+the Social Science Congress Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, will
+to-morrow open a fresh campaign of philanthropy.  The philanthropic
+Alexander is seldom in the unhappy condition of his Macedonian original,
+and generally has plenty of worlds remaining ready to be conquered.
+Brick-yards and canal-boats have not exhausted Mr. Smith's energies, and
+the field he has now entered upon is wider and perhaps harder to work
+than either of these.  Mr. Smith desires to bring the Gipsy children
+under the operation of the Education Act.  Education and Gipsies seem at
+first sight to be words mutually contradictory.  Amid the mass of
+imaginative fiction, idle speculation, and deliberate forgery that has
+been set afloat on the subject of the Gipsies, one thing has been made
+tolerably clear, and that is the intense aversion which the pure bred
+Gipsy has to any of the restraints of civilised life.  Whether those
+restraints take the form of orderly and cleanly living in houses of brick
+and of stone, or of military service, or of school attendance, is pretty
+much a matter of indifference to him.  Schools, indeed, may be regarded
+from the Gipsy point of view as not merely irksome, but useless
+institutions.  Our most advanced places of technical education do not
+teach fortune-telling, or that interesting branch of the tinker's art
+which enables the practitioner in mending one hole in a kettle to make
+two.  Except for music the Gipsies do not seem to have much aptitude for
+the arts; they are more or less indifferent to literature; and business,
+except of certain dubious kinds, is a detestable thing to them.  Their
+vagrant habits, on the other hand, enable them, without much difficulty,
+to evade the great commandment which has gone forth, that all the English
+world shall be examined.
+
+"The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy one.  We may pass
+over those degenerate members of the race who have elected to pitch
+permanent tents in the slums and rookeries of great towns, because, in
+the first place, they are degenerate, and in the second, their children
+ought to be within reach of School Board visitors who do their duty
+diligently.  It is only the Gipsy proper who has the opportunity of
+evading this vigilance.  His opportunity is an excellent one, and he
+fully avails himself of it.  Gipsy households, if they can be so called,
+are of the most fluid, not to say intangible character.  The partnerships
+between men and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit
+of aliases and double names make identification still more difficult.  As
+a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and though the hardships to
+which young children are exposed thin it considerably, the proportion of
+children to adults is still very large.  Hawking, their chief ostensible
+occupation, cannot legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and
+until that time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and
+loaf about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices.  Idleness and
+ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent
+things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average
+Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the _ne
+plus ultra_ of both.  It is true that Gipsies do not very often make
+their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the
+cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their
+well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild
+but very definite terrorism which they exercise.  Country residents, when
+a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of
+blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time
+the strangers, if not interfered with, will go.  Interference with them
+is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red
+cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken
+here and a vanished blanket there.  So the Ishmaelites are left pretty
+much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick
+up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of
+undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.
+
+"The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons
+used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany.  Nor, perhaps is any
+country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours.  England is
+every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not
+enclosed are more and more carefully looked after.  Whether in our
+climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question
+not easy to answer.  But even if we admit that it might have been merry
+in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in
+ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day.  There is no
+good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty
+sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and
+at considerable risk, is difficult.  The cheapness of modern manufactures
+has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind
+having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw
+them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled.
+Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled
+with by the Gorgio and his laws.  The _raison d'etre_ of the vagabond
+Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes on the
+likelihood of his practices becoming more and more undisguisedly criminal
+is obvious.  The best way to prevent this is, of course, to catch him
+young and educate him.  A century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of
+the race might have made this difficult, if not impossible.  But it is
+clear that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during
+their four centuries of residence in England, other influences have been
+sufficient to work upon them.  If they can live in towns at all, they can
+live in them after the manner of civilised townsmen.  A Gipsy at school
+suggests odd ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate
+some day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that promising
+South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took off his trousers
+(as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from his feet), and began
+vigorously to kill colonists.  But it is by no means certain that this
+would be the case.  The old order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any
+rate, become something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance.
+It has ceased to be even picturesque."
+
+The following is a copy of my paper upon the "Condition of Gipsy
+Children," as read by me before the Social Science Congress, held at
+Manchester on October 7th, 1879.  Although it was at the "fag end" of the
+session, and the last paper but two, it was evident the announcement in
+the papers that my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a
+little interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began
+to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr. Haviland, it
+was manifest I was to be honoured with a large audience, so much so,
+that, before I had proceeded very far with it, the hall was nearly full
+of merchant princes--who could afford to leave their bags of gold and
+cotton--and ladies and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale
+of neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called
+"Gipsies' children."  Dr. Gladstone, of the London School Board, opened
+the discussion and said that he could, from his own observation and
+knowledge of the persons I had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my
+remarks.  Dr. Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other
+gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous feeling
+of those present that something should be done to remedy this sad state
+of things; and the chairman said that the result of my labours with
+regard to the Gipsies would be that something would be done in the way of
+legislation.  The paper caused some excitement in the country, and was
+copied lengthily into many of the daily papers, including the _Leicester
+Daily Post_, _Leicester Daily Mercury_, _Nottingham Guardian_,
+_Nottingham Journal_, _Sunday School Chronicle_, _Record_, and others
+nearly in full, and was read as follows:--
+
+"As it is not in my power to open out a painful subject in the flowery
+language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in musical sounds of the
+highest pitch of refinement, culture, and sentiment, I purpose following
+out very briefly the same course on the present occasion as I adopted on
+the three times I have had the honour to address the Social Science
+Congress with reference to the brick-yard and canal-boat children--viz.,
+that of attempting to place a few serious, hard, broad dark facts in a
+plain, practical, common-sense view, so as to permeate your nature till
+they have reached your hearts and consciences, and compelled you to
+extend the hand of sympathy and help to rescue my young clients from the
+dreadful and perilous condition into which they have fallen through long
+years of neglect.
+
+       [Picture: A Farmer's Pig that does not like a Gipsy's Tent]
+
+"Owing to a superstitious regard and dislike the Gipsies had towards the
+Census, and their endeavours to evade being taken, no correct number has
+been arrived at; and it is only by guess work and conjecture we can form
+any idea of the number of Gipsies there are in this country.  The Census
+puts the number at between 4,000 and 5,000.  A gentleman who has lived
+and moved among them many years writes me to say that there cannot be
+less than 2,000 in the neighbourhood of London, whose Paradises are in
+the neighbourhood of Wormwood Scrubs, Notting Hill Pottery, New Found
+Out, Kensal Green, Battersea, Dulwich Common, Lordship Lane, Mitcham
+Common, Barnes Common, Epping Forest, Cherry Island, and like places.  A
+gentleman told me some time since that he gave a tea to over 150 Gipsies
+residing in the neighbourhood of Kensal Green.  A Gipsy woman who has
+moved about all her life says she knows about 300 families in ten of the
+Midland counties.  Another Gipsy, in a different part of England, tells
+me a similar story, and says the same proportion will be borne out all
+over the country.  Of hawkers, auctioneers, showmen, and others who live
+in caravans with their families, there would be, at a rough calculation,
+not less than 3,000 children; taking these things along with others, and
+the number given in the Census, it may be fairly assumed that I am under
+the mark when I state that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and
+women, and 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and other children moving about the
+country outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.
+
+"Some few Gipsies who have arrived at what they consider the highest
+state of a respectable and civilised life, reside in houses which, in 99
+cases out of 100, are in the lowest and most degraded part of the towns,
+among the scum and offscouring of all nations, and like locusts they
+leave a blight behind them wherever they have been.  Others have their
+tents and vans, and there are many others who I have tents only.  A tent
+as a rule is about 7ft. 6in. wide, 16ft. long, and 4ft. 6in. high at the
+top.  They are covered with pieces of old cloth, sacking, &c., to keep
+the rain and snow out; the opening to allow the Gipsies to go in and out
+of their tent is covered with a kind of coverlet.  The fire by which they
+cook their meals is placed in a kind of tin bucket pierced with holes,
+and stands on the damp ground.  Some of the smoke or sulphur arising from
+the sticks or coke finds its way through an opening at the top of the
+tent about 2ft. in diameter.  The other part of the smoke helps to keep
+their faces and hands the proper Gipsy colour.  Their beds consist of a
+layer of straw upon the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the
+case may be.  An old soapbox or tea-chest serves as a chest of drawers,
+drawing-room table, and clothes-box.  In these places children are born,
+live, and die; men, women, grown-up sons and daughters, lie huddled
+together in such a state as would shock the modesty of South African
+savages, to whom we send missionaries to show them the blessings of
+Christianity.  As in other cases where idleness and filth abounds, what
+little washing they do is generally done on the Saturday afternoons; but
+this is a business they do not indulge in too often.  They are not
+overdone with cooking utensils, and the knives and forks they principally
+use are of the kind Adam used, and sensitive when applied to hot water.
+They take their meals and do their washing squatting upon the ground like
+tailors and Zulus.  Lying, begging, thieving, cheating, and every other
+abominable, low, cunning craft that ignorance and idleness can devise,
+they practise.  In some instances these things are carried out to such a
+pitch as to render them more like imbeciles than human beings endowed
+with reason.  Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances
+used only as a 'blind;' while the women and children go about the country
+begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their heathenish tents
+sufficient to keep the family.  The poor women are the slaves and tools
+for the whole family, and can be seen very often with a child upon their
+backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.
+Upon the shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for
+the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens.  Many of the women enjoy their
+short pipes quite as much as the men.
+
+"Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various
+parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are
+married.  No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even 'jumping
+the broomstick,' as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a
+respectable Gipsy woman, 'they go together, take each other's words, and
+there is an end of it.'  I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real
+respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy,
+who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as
+men and wives are married.  When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used,
+she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, 'we are
+either like devils or like lambs.'  In the case of some of the adult
+Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place.
+There is some good among them as with others.  A Gipsy in Wiltshire has
+built himself a house at the cost of 600 pounds.  Considerable difficulty
+is experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by
+two names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children.
+Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting
+of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and
+the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their
+dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them--except in rare
+cases--they are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training,
+without being taught how to get an honest living.  No ray of hope enters
+their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as
+the food comes, no matter by whom or how it comes so that they get it.
+In many instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs.  The real
+old-fashioned Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised--if such a thing
+could be--by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps,
+vagabonds, 'rodneys,' and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight
+from the 'stone cup' and settle among them as they are camping on the
+ditch banks; the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot
+of dirty ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children,
+have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers--by supplying their
+wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to
+game--to locate in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip
+from the farmer to pass on to his neighbours.  Children born under such
+circumstances, unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a
+class of most dangerous characters.  Very much, up to the present, the
+wants of the women and children have been supplied through gulling the
+large-hearted and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with,
+and the result has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their
+way into gaols.  This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably
+their offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do
+not like the idea of having their stacks fired and property destroyed,
+and have given the Gipsies a wide berth.  Gipsies, as a rule, have very
+large families, generally between eight and sixteen children are born in
+their tents.  Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground they
+suffer much from chest and throat complaints.  Large numbers of the
+children die young before they are 'broken' in.'  And it is a 'breaking
+in' in a tremendous sense, fraught with fearful consequences.  With
+regard to their education, the following cases, selected from different
+parts of the country, may be fairly taken as representative of the entire
+Gipsy community.  Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had nine sons
+and daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen grandchildren, and
+none of them can read or write; and he also thinks that about half the
+Gipsy men and women living as husbands and wives are unmarried.  Mrs.
+Simpson, a Gipsy woman and a Christian, says she has six sons and
+daughters and sixteen grandchildren, and only two can read and write a
+little.  Mrs. Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters.  Mr.
+Eastwood, a Christian and a Gipsy, has eight brothers and sisters, many
+among them have large families, making a total of adults and children of
+about fifty of all ages, and there is scarcely one among them who can
+tell a letter or read a sentence; in addition to this number they have
+between them from 130 to 150 first and second cousins, among whom there
+are not more than two who can read or write, and that but very little
+indeed, and Mr. Eastwood thinks this proportion will apply to other
+Gipsies.  Mrs. Trayleer has six brothers and sisters, all Gipsies, and
+not one can read or write.  A Gipsy woman, whose head-quarters are near
+Ashby-de-la-Zouch, has fifteen brothers and sisters, some of whom have
+large families.  She herself has fifteen sons and daughters alive, some
+of whom are married.  But of the whole of these brothers and sisters,
+nieces, nephews, grandchildren, &c., numbering not less than 100 of all
+ages, not more than three or four can read or write, and they who can but
+very imperfectly.  Mrs. Matthews has a family of seven children, nearly
+all grown-up, and not one out of the whole of these can read or write;
+thus it will be seen that I shall be under the mark when I state that not
+five per cent. of the Gipsies, &c., travelling about the country in tents
+and vans can either read or write; and I have not found one Gipsy but
+what thinks it would be a good thing if their tents and vans were
+registered, and the children compelled to go to school--in fact, many of
+them are anxious for such a thing to be brought about.  In the case of
+the brick-yard and canal-boat children, they were over-worked as well as
+ignorant.  In the case of the Gipsy children, these children and roadside
+arabs, for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are
+indulging in practices that are fast working their own destruction and
+those they are brought into contact with, and a great deal of this may
+lay at the door of flattery, twaddle, petting, and fear.
+
+"The plan I would adopt to remedy this sad state of things is to apply
+the principles of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 to all movable
+habitations--_i.e._, I would have all tents, shows, caravans,
+auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings registered and
+numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements and supervision of the
+sanitary inspectors and School Board officers in every town and village.
+With regard to the education of the children when once the tent or van is
+registered and numbered, the children, whether travelling as Gipsies,
+auctioneers, &c., are mostly idle during the day; consequently, a book
+similar to the half-time book, in which their names and attendance at
+school could be entered, they could take from place to place as they
+travel about, and it could be endorsed by the schoolmaster showing that
+the child was attending school.  The education obtained in this way would
+not be of the highest order; but through the kindness of the
+schoolmaster--for which extra trouble he should be compensated, as he
+ought to be under the Canal Boats Act--and the vigilance of the School
+Board visitor, a plain, practical, and sound education could be imparted
+to, and obtained by, these poor little Gipsy children and roadside arabs,
+who, if we do our duty, will be qualified to fill the places of those of
+our best artisans who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes
+abroad."
+
+The following is a leading article in the _Birmingham Daily Mail_,
+October 8th:--"Mr. George Smith, whose exertions on behalf of the canal
+population and the children employed in brick-yards have been accompanied
+with so much success, is now turning his attention to the education of
+the Gipsies.  He read a paper on this subject at the Social Science
+Congress, yesterday, suggesting that the same plan of registration which
+had proved advantageous in the case of the canal-boatmen and their
+families should be adopted for the more nomadic class who roam from place
+to place, with no settled home and no local habitation.  The Gipsies are
+a strange race, with a romantic history, and their vagabond life is
+surrounded with enough of the mysterious to give them at all times a
+special and curious interest.  In the days of our infancy we are
+frightened with tales of their child-thieving propensities, and even when
+years and reason have asserted their influence we are apt to regard with
+a survival of our childish awe the wandering 'diviners and wicked
+heathens' who roam about the country, living in a mysterious aloofness
+from their fellow-men.  Scores of theories have been propounded as to the
+origin of the Gipsy race, whence they sprang, and how they came to be so
+largely scattered over three of the four quarters of the globe.  Opinion,
+following in the wake of the learned Rudiger, has finally settled down to
+the view that they came from India, but whether they are the Tshandalas
+referred to in the laws of Menou, or kinsmen of the Bazeegars of
+Calcutta, or are descended from the robbers of the Indus, or are
+identical with the Nuts and Djatts of Northern India, has not been
+ascertained with any degree of certainty.  The Gyptologists are not yet
+agreed upon the ancestry of this ancient but obscure race, and possibly
+they never will be.  We know, however, that the Gipsies have wandered up
+and down Europe since the eleventh century, if not from a still earlier
+period, and that they have preserved their Bohemian characteristics,
+their language--which is a sort of daughter of the old Sanscrit--their
+traditions, and the mysteries of their religion during a long career of
+restless movement and frequent persecution.  And they have kept, too,
+their indolent, and not too creditable habits.  Early in the twelfth
+century an Austrian monk described them as 'Ishmaelites and braziers, who
+go peddling through the wide world, having neither house, nor home,
+cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving mankind, but not
+openly.'  That description would hold good at the present day.  The
+Gipsies are still a lazy, thieving set of rogues, who get their living by
+robbing hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and 'snapping up unconsidered
+trifles' like Autolycus of old.  Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of
+magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the
+special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the
+modern Zingaris.  Without education, and without industry, they transmit
+their vagrant habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all
+the vices of a lawless and nomadic life.
+
+"It is very easy to give a romantic and even a sentimental colouring to
+the wandering Romany.  The 'greenwood home,' with its freedom from all
+the restraints of a conventional state of society, is not without its
+attractive side--in books and in ballads.  Minor poets have told us that
+'the Gipsy's life is a joyous life,' and plays and operas have been
+written to illustrate the superiority of vagabondage over civilisation.
+But the pretty Gitana of the stage is altogether a different sort of
+being from the brown-faced, elf-locked, and tawdrily dressed female who
+haunts back entries with the ostensible object of selling clothes-pegs,
+but with the real motive of picking up whatever may be lying in her way.
+There is but small chance of Bohemian Girls finding themselves in
+drawing-rooms nowadays.  The last experiment of the kind was made by the
+writer of a charming book on the Gipsies, who was so fascinated by one of
+their number that he married her; but the wild, restless spirit was
+untameable, and the divorce court proved that the supposed precept of
+fidelity, which is said to guide the conduct of Gipsy wives, is not
+without its exceptions.  The Gipsies have nothing in common with our
+conventional ways and habits, and whether it is possible ever to remove
+the barrier that separates them from civilisation is a question which
+only experiment can satisfactorily answer.  Mr. Smith's scheme is not the
+first, by many, that has been made to improve the conditions of Gipsy
+life.  Nearly half a century ago the Rev. Mr. Crabb, of Southampton,
+formed a society with the object of amalgamating the Gipsies with the
+general population, but the scheme was comparatively futile.  Still, past
+failure is no reason why a new attempt should not be made.  Mr. Smith
+says there cannot be less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000
+to 20,000 Gipsy children moving about the country, outside the
+educational laws and the pale of civilisation, and not five per cent. of
+them can either read or write.  Their mode of life is such as 'would
+shock the modesty of South African savages,' for men, women, and grown-up
+sons and daughters lie huddled together, and in many cases they 'live
+like pigs and die like dogs.'  There is certainly room enough here for
+education, and education is the only thing that is likely to have any
+practical results.
+
+"It is proposed that the principles of the Canal Boats Act shall be
+applied to all movable habitations; that is, that all tents, shows,
+caravans, auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings, shall be
+registered and numbered, and put under proper sanitary supervision.  Mr.
+Smith points out that when once a tent or van had been registered and
+numbered, it could be furnished with a book similar to a half-time book,
+in which the names of the children having first been entered, the
+attendances at school could be endorsed by the schoolmaster--for which
+extra trouble he should be compensated--as the children travelled about
+from place to place.  By this means something tangible would be done to
+prevent the roadside waifs from growing up in the ignorance which is the
+parent of idleness.  Why should these ten or fifteen thousand little
+nomads be allowed to remain in the neglected condition which has
+characterised their strange race for centuries?  It is time that the
+spell was broken.  There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth
+perpetuating; there is no sentimental halo around its history which it
+would be cruel to dispel.  In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected
+to harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more enlightened
+times to deal with them on a humaner plan.  It is only by the expanding
+influence of education that the little minds of their children can gain a
+necessary experience of the utility and dignity of honest labour.  When
+they have received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to
+emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break
+away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many
+generations of them in thrall.  Mr. Smith's idea is worthy the attention
+of legislators.  It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is
+a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war
+upon the unoffending barbarian abroad.  The instincts and habits which
+have been transmitted from father to son for hundreds of years are not,
+of course, to be eradicated in a day, or even in a generation; but the
+time will, perhaps, eventually come when the Gipsies will cease to exist
+as a separate and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general
+population of the country.  Whether that absorption takes place sooner or
+later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the young 'Arabs' of the
+tents the rudiments of an education which will hereafter be helpful to
+them if they are desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and
+of earning an industrious livelihood.  Their dread of fixed and
+continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy with the
+conditions of industrial life may teach them that civilisation has some
+compensations to offer for the sacrifice of their roaming propensities,
+and for taking away from them their 'free mountains, their plains and
+woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds' which are the companions of
+their free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives."
+
+The _Weekly Dispatch_, in a leading article, October 13th, says:--"Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, has an eye for the nomads of the country.
+His name must already be unfavourably known throughout most of the canal
+barges of the United Kingdom.  If he is not the Croquemitaine of every
+floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought to be,
+for it was mainly he who thrust a half-time book into the hands of the
+bargee and compelled him, by the Canal Boats Act of 1877, to soap his
+infants' faces and put primers in their way.  With Smith of Coalville,
+therefore, it may be expected that each juvenile of the wharves and locks
+now associates his most unhappy moments.  The half-time book of the act
+comes between him and the blessed state of his previous ignorance.
+Registered and numbered, supervised and inspected, he has been put on the
+road to know things that must necessarily disillusionise him of the black
+enchantments of life on the water highway.  It is allowable to hope,
+however, that having recovered from the first discomforts of civilising
+soap and primers, he will yet live to appreciate Mr. Smith's name as one
+associated with kindly intent and generous aspirations in his behalf.  A
+generation of bargemen who had a less uncompromising vocabulary of oaths,
+who could beguile some of the tedium of their voyaging with reading, and
+who in other important respects showed the influences of half-time, would
+be a smiling reward of philanthropy and an important addition to our
+civilisation.  That Mr. Smith anticipates some such reward is evident
+from the eagerness with which he has been pushing the principle in
+another quarter.  At the Social Science Congress he has just propounded a
+scheme of educational annexation for Gipsy children similar in every
+respect to that applied to the occupants of the canal-boats.  That is, he
+would have every tent and van numbered and furnished with a half-time
+book, and he would ordain it as the duty of School Board visitors to see
+that the Gipsies render their children amenable to the terms of the act
+to the extent of their wandering ability, under threat of the usual
+penalties.  The prospect which he foresees from such treatment is that a
+body of wanderers numbering not much below 20,000 will be rescued from a
+position which, he says, would at present shock South African savages,
+and will thus be brought in to honest industry and 'qualified to fill the
+places of our best artisans, who are leaving the country to seek their
+fortunes abroad.'  It is impossible not to wish Mr. Smith's scheme well,
+especially as he contends that the Gipsies themselves are not averse to
+having their children educated; but it is equally impossible to be
+sanguine as to results.  The true Gipsy, who is not to be confounded with
+the desultory hawker of English origin, has many arteries of untameable
+blood within him.  He has never as yet shown the slightest concern about
+the English phases of civilisation which Mr. Smith would like to press
+upon his notice.  Such ideas as those of God, immortality, and marriage
+are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and
+thine.  He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book
+and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke
+to be cracked with impunity at the expense of the rural School Boards."
+
+   [Picture: Gipsies' Winter Quarters near Latimer Road, Notting Hill]
+
+The _Sportsman_ of October 16th, 1879, has the following notice:--"Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of 'our
+canal-boat population' are well known, has lately turned his attention to
+the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to
+procuring at least a modicum of education for their children.  He says
+that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to
+write their names.  By certain proceedings which took place at
+Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of
+the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much.  At all
+events, they occasionally manifest an ability to 'take a stave' out of
+the rest of the community.  At the court in question a Gipsy woman named
+Emma Barney was brought to task for 'imposing by subtle craft to extort
+money' from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver.  It seems that
+Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that Emma Barney--not an
+inappropriate name, by the way--said she could cure these by means of a
+certain herb, the name of which she would divulge 'for a consideration.'
+Before doing so, however, she required Richard's coat and waistcoat, and
+some silver to 'steam in hot water,' after which the name of the herb
+would be given--on the following day.  It is needless to say that the
+coat, waistcoat, and silver did not return to the Oliver home, and that
+the pimples did not depart from the Oliver face.  The 'Gipsy's home' for
+the next two months will be in the county gaol.  It is a curious
+reflection, however, that such strange credulity as that displayed by the
+Bournemouth shopkeeper in this case can be found in the present year of
+grace, with its gigantic machinery for educating the masses."
+
+The following leading article, taken from the _Daily Telegraph_, under
+date October 17th of last year, will show that crime is far from abating
+among the classes of the Gipsy fraternity:--"The melancholy truth that
+there exists a 'breed' of criminals in all societies was well illustrated
+at Exeter this week.  Sir John Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon
+Quarter Sessions, in charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the
+calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years.
+There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is
+twenty-five, taking the last five years.  Sir John could assign no
+particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the
+prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it.
+But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an
+examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five
+prisoners twenty had been previously convicted.  Such a percentage goes
+far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to a certain
+degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only enhances the immense
+importance of national education, by which alone society can hope to
+conquer the predatory tendency in certain baser blood, and to supply it
+with the means and the instincts of industry.  In justice, however, to
+the existing generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such
+serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by released
+prisoners in living honestly.  A rat will not steal where traps are set
+if it can only find food in the open, and some of these twice-captured
+vermin of our community might tell a piteous tale of the obstacles that
+lie in the way of honesty."
+
+The _Weekly Times_, under date October 26th, 1879, has the following
+article upon the Gipsies near London.  The locality described is not one
+hundred miles from Mary's Place and Notting Hill Potteries.  The writer
+goes on to say that "There are at the present time upwards of two
+thousand people--men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy
+tribe--camped in the outlying districts of London.  They are settled upon
+waste places of every kind.  Bits of ground that will ere long be
+occupied by houses, waste corners that seem to be of no good for
+anything, yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of 'common' over
+which no authority claims any rights; or if there are rights, the
+authority is too obscure to interfere with such poor settlers as Gipsies,
+who will move away again before an authoritative opinion can be
+pronounced upon any question affecting them.  The Gipsies, in the winter,
+certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the metropolis.
+They do not cause rents to rise.  They are satisfied to put up their tent
+where a Londoner would only accommodate his pig or his dog, and they
+certainly do not affect the balance of labour, few of them being ever
+guilty of robbing a man of an honest day's work.  Yet, with all their
+failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take their part
+in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account of their hard lot,
+and the scanty measure with which the good things of this life have been,
+and still are, meted out to them.  Constrained by an irresistible force
+to keep ever moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree
+of cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit.  As the
+approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest possible
+number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ the whole of his
+time profitably, and those who only follow an outdoor life for the
+pleasures it yields naturally gravitate towards the shelter of large
+towns in which to spend the winter months of every year.  So when the
+cold winds begin to blow, and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to
+town, and settle upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused
+yards, and eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where
+their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before them.  The young
+men get a day's work where they can; the young women hawk wool mats,
+laces, or other women's vanities; while the more skilful go round with
+rope mats, and every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes
+and canes.  The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or tinker pots
+and pans; and, if a fine day or a pleasure fair calls forth all the
+useful mouths and hands from their tents and caravans, the babies will
+take care of themselves in the straw which makes the pony's bed until
+some member of the camp returns home in the evening.  So the winter
+months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to call,
+these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is acquainted with, go
+forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or on the commons of the
+country, pass their summer, earning a precarious subsistance--honestly if
+they can--content with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel
+the free air of heaven blowing about them night and day, while the sun
+paints their cheeks the colour of the ancient Egyptians.  Our Gipsies
+have always been a favourite study with ethnological folk; poets have
+sung their wild, free life, and painters have taken them as types of the
+happy, if the careless; while philanthropists have occasionally gone
+amongst them, and told pitiful tales of their degradation, ignorance, and
+misery.  It was not from any feeling of romance or pity that we were
+induced the other day to accept an invitation from Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, to spend a few hours amongst some of these people.  Mr. George
+Smith's life has been devoted to the amelioration of the condition of
+many very poor and almost entirely neglected classes of the community,
+and it was pleasant to have the opportunity of going with such a
+simple-hearted hero amongst those in whom he takes a deep interest.
+Having devoted many years of his life to the poor brick-yard children,
+and afterwards to the children labouring in canal-boats, he has found one
+more class still left outside every Act of Parliament, and beyond every
+chance of being helped in the right way to earn an honest living and
+become industrious members of society.  These are the Gipsies and their
+children, who have been let alone so severely by all so-called
+right-thinking men and women that there is great danger of their becoming
+a sore evil in our midst.  Unable to read or write--their powers of
+thought thereby cramped--with no one to look after them, separated from
+the people in whose midst they live, there can be little wonder that they
+should grow up with certain loose notions about right and wrong, and a
+manner of life the reverse of that which prevails amongst Christian
+people; but, now that Mr. George Smith has got his eyes and his heart
+fixed upon them, there will surely be something done which, in the near
+future, will redeem these people from many of the disadvantages under
+which they labour, and add to the body corporate a tribe possessed of
+many amiable characteristics.  Mr. Smith never takes up more than one
+thing at a time, and upon the accomplishment of it he concentrates all
+his energies.  This attribute is the one which has enabled him to carry
+to successful conclusions the acts for the relief of the brick-yard and
+the canal-boat children; but while he is about a work he becomes
+thoroughly possessed by his subject, and the most important event that
+may happen for the country, or for the world, loses all value in his eyes
+unless it bears directly upon the accomplishment of the object in hand.
+Thus it happened that, from the time we sallied out together in search of
+a Gipsy camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of
+nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but what had
+some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of life.  The Zulus were to
+be pitied because theirs was a sort of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies' tents
+were nothing more than kraals.  All his stories were of what Gipsies he
+had met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in the
+train were only noticeable because they looked like some Gipsy man or
+woman whom he had met elsewhere.  We had a short ride by rail, and a
+tramp through a densely-populated district, and then we came to the
+camping-ground we wanted.  It was a spacious yard, entered through a
+gate, and surrounded with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure.
+There were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was
+Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants were at home.  Those who were
+absent were a few children able to go to Sunday-school, whither they went
+of their own free will and with the approval of their parents.  The
+kraals were not all constructed on the same pattern--two were circular in
+form and the third was square.  This was on the right hand at entering,
+and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a calf, who had many
+years before gone the way of all beef--into a butcher's shop.  There were
+tiles on the low roof--in places--but plenty of openings were left for
+the rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in the bucket to
+find a way out if it chose.  The floor was common earth, and very uneven
+in places.  Alice, the mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty,
+with a face the colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of
+work.  As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of the loss of
+her spectacles, without which she solemnly declared she could not read a
+line.  She left the spectacles one day when she was going 'hopping,'
+hidden under a tile above her head, and when she returned the case was
+there, but the spectacles were gone.  She carried her licence to hawk in
+her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily beg the
+gift of a pair of new ones.  Her husband, a white-haired old man, with a
+look of innocent wonder in his face, sat on a lump of wood, warming his
+hands over the fire.  He said little--his wife scarcely allowing an
+opportunity for any one else to speak--but seemed to consider that he was
+a fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife.  There was a handsome
+young woman sitting in the only chair in the place, daughter of the old
+couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed made of indescribable
+things in one portion of the cabin, where the tiles in the roof showed no
+openings to the sky.  His wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a
+baby--their first-born--on the edge of the bed.  The wood walls were
+covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd things, fastened
+in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned with a few pots and pans
+used in cooking.  Here, for six or seven winters, this family had
+resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most severe
+winters.  Nor could they be made to admit that a cottage would be more
+comfortable; that hut had served them well enough so many years, and
+would be good enough as long as they lived.  Besides, said Alice, the
+rent was a consideration, and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week.  This
+woman was the mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living.
+Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of two
+young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed us as to
+the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind of remembrance to
+be left with them.  But we did not accept their invitation to walk up,
+but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by
+another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young
+man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch
+beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we
+heard, high jinks were going on with some children.  At the sound of a
+tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen,
+who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in.  We looked up in
+amazement; the girl's face appeared like an apparition--so fair, so
+beautiful, so like some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused
+and puzzled.  In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen that face
+before in several of the choicest canvases that have hung in recent years
+upon the walls of the Academy; we had met with the fairest Gipsy model
+that ever stood before the students of the Academy, the favourite alike
+of the young artist and the head of his profession.  It can only fall to
+the lot of a few to see Annie, the Gipsy model; but the curious may look
+upon her counterpart, only of heroic size, in Clytie, at the British
+Museum.  Annie has a face of exquisite Grecian form, and a hand so
+delicate that it has been painted more than once in the 'portrait of a
+titled lady.'  When she was a very little girl, she told us, hawking
+laces in a basket one day, a gentleman met her at the West-end who was a
+painter, and from that day to the present Annie has earned a living--and
+at times of great distress maintained all the family--by the fees she
+received as a model.  Her mother had had nine children, of whom eight
+were living; and three of the family are constantly employed as models.
+Annie is one, the young fellow who was watched over by the bantam was
+another, and a boy of four was the third.  The father is of pure Gipsy
+blood, but the mother is an Oxfordshire woman, and neither of them
+possess any striking characteristic in their faces; yet all their girls
+are singularly beautiful, and their sons handsome fellows.  They have got
+a reputation for beauty now, and ladies have, but without success, tried
+to negotiate for the possession of the youngest.  Never before had we
+seen such fair faces, such dainty limbs, such exquisite eyes, as were
+possessed by the Gipsy occupants of that caravan.  Annie was as modest
+and gentle-voiced and mannered as she was beautiful; and there came a
+flush of trouble over her fair face as she told us that not being able to
+read or write had 'been against' her all her life.  There was more
+refinement about Annie and her mother than we had discovered amongst
+others with whom we had conversed.  Thus, Annie, speaking of her
+grandfather, laid great emphasis on the assertion that he was a fine man.
+He lived to be 104, she said, and walked as upright as a young man to his
+death.  He went about crying 'chairs to mend,' in that very locality, up
+to within a short time of his death, and all the old ladies employed him
+because he was so handsome.  She was playing with a baby girl as she
+talked with us, and the child fixed her black eyes upon her sister's
+face, and crooned with baby pleasure.  'What is baby's name,' we asked?
+'Comfort,' replied Annie.  'We were hopping one year' said the mother,
+'and there was a young woman in the party I took to very much, and her
+name was Comfort.  Coming away from the hop grounds, the caravans had to
+cross a river, and while we were in the water one day the river suddenly
+rose, the caravans were upset, and eleven were drowned, Comfort amongst
+the number.  So I christened baby after her in remembrance.'  All the
+family were neatly dressed, and once, when Annie opened the cupboard door
+for an instant, we caught sight of a dish of small currant puddings."
+
+A visit to a batch of Gipsy wigwams, Wardlow Street, Garrett Lane,
+Wandsworth, induced me to send the following letter to the London and
+country daily papers, and it appeared in the _Daily Chronicle_ and _Daily
+News_, November 20th, as under:--"The following touching incident may
+slightly show the thorough heartfelt desire there is--but lacking the
+power--among the Gipsies to be partakers of some of the sanitary and
+educational advantages the Gorgios or Gentiles are the recipients of.  A
+few days since I wended my way to a large number of Gipsies located in
+tents, huts, and vans near Wandsworth Common, to behold the pitiable
+spectacle of some sixty half-naked, poor Gipsy children, and thirty Gipsy
+men and women, living in a state of indescribable ignorance, dirt, filth,
+and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, making their beds upon peg
+shavings and straw, and divested of the last tinge of romantical
+nonsense, which is little better in this case--used as a deal of it
+is--than paper pasted upon the windows, to hide from public view the mass
+of human corruption which has been festering in our midst for centuries,
+breeding all kinds of sin and impurities, except in the eyes of those who
+see beautiful colours and delights in the aroma of stagnant pools and
+beauty in the sparkling hues of the gutter, and revel in adding tints and
+pictures to the life and death of a weasel, lending enchantment to the
+life of a vagabond, and admire the non-intellectual development of beings
+many of whom are only one step from that of animals, if I may judge from
+the amount of good the 20,000 Gipsies have accomplished in the world
+during the last three or four centuries.  Connected with this encampment
+not more than four or five of the poor creatures could read a sentence or
+write a letter.  In creeping almost upon 'all-fours,' into one of the
+tents, I came across a real, antiquated, live, good kind of Gipsy woman
+named Britannia Lee, who boasted that she was a Lee of the fourth
+generation; and in sitting down upon a seat that brought my knees upon a
+level with my chin, I entered into conversation with the family about the
+objects of my inquiries--of which they said they had heard all
+about--viz., to get all the Gipsy tents, vans, and other movable
+habitations in the country registered and under proper sanitary
+arrangements, and the children compelled to attend school wherever they
+may be temporarily located, and to receive an education which will in
+some degree help to get these poor unfortunate people out of the
+heartrending and desponding condition into which they have been allowed
+to sink.  Although Mrs. Lee was ill and poor, her face beamed with
+gladness to find that I was trying in my humble way to do the Gipsy
+children good; and in a kind of maternal feeling she said she should be
+pleased to show her deep interest in my work, and asked me if I would
+accept all the money she had in the world, viz., one penny and two
+farthings?  With much persuasion and hesitation, and under fear of
+offending her, I accepted them, which I purpose keeping as a token of a
+woman's desire to do something towards improving her 'kith and kin.'  She
+said that Providence would see that she was no loser for the mite she had
+given to me.  He once sent her, in her extremity, a shilling in the
+middle of a potato, which she found when cooking.  With many expressions
+of 'God bless you in your work among the children!  You will be rewarded
+some day for all your time, trouble, and expense,' we parted."
+
+The London correspondent of the _Croydon Chronicle_ writes as under, on
+November 22nd, touching a visit we both made to a number of poor Gipsy
+children squatting about upon Mitcham Common.  Among other things he
+says:--"I have had a day in your neighbourhood with George Smith, of
+Coalville.  He is visiting all the Gipsy grounds he can find and reach,
+for the purpose of gaining information as to the condition of the swarms
+of children who live in squalor and ignorance under tents.  He is of
+opinion that he will be able to get them into schools, and do as much for
+them generally as he has done for the brick-field and canal children; and
+I have no doubt myself that he will succeed.  Well, the other day he
+asked me to have a run round with him, and we went to Mitcham Common to
+see some of the families there.  He told me that one of the Gipsy women
+had been confined, and that she wanted him to give the child a name.  He
+did not know what to call it, so we had to put our heads together and
+settle the matter.  After a great deal of careful deliberation he decided
+that when we reached the common the child should be called 'Deliverance.'
+I have been told that this sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and
+perhaps it would have done as well for one as for the other.  The tents
+were much of a character--some kind of stitched-together rags thrown over
+sticks.  Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was not particularly
+cold, and the first tent we came to had been opened at the top.  We
+looked over (these tents are only about five feet high), and beheld six
+children, the eldest being a girl of about eight or ten.  The father was
+anywhere to suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking.  These
+children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle of them, were
+making clothes-pegs.  The process seemed simple.  The sticks are chopped
+into the necessary lengths and put into a pan of hot water.  This I
+suppose swells the wood and loosens the bark.  A child on the other side
+takes out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its
+teeth.  Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so the work goes
+on.  When the day is done they look for the mother coming home from
+hawking with anything she may have picked up.  When they have devoured
+such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down where they have
+worked and as they are, and go to sleep.  It is a wonderful and
+mysterious arrangement of Providence that they can sleep.  They have only
+a rag between them and the snow.  A good wind would blow their homes over
+the trees.  I do not wish to make any particularly violent remarks, but I
+should like some of the comfortable clergymen of your neighbourhood, when
+they have done buying their toys and presents for young friends at
+Christmas, to walk to Mitcham Common and see how the children are there.
+They would then find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the
+work of the Master.  One tent is very much like another.  We visited
+about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the child.  We stayed in
+this tent for about ten minutes.  It was inhabited by two families,
+numbering in all about twenty.  I talked a little time with the woman
+lying on the ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me.  I do
+not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but 'Deliverance' will do for
+either one or the other.  She asked me to write the name on a piece of
+paper, and I did so.  With a few words, as jolly as we could make them,
+we crawled out, thanks and blessings following George Smith, as they
+always do."
+
+[Picture: A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and
+                     in which "Deliverance" was born]
+
+Leading article in the _Primitive Methodist_, November 27th:--"Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, is endeavouring to do a work for the children of
+Gipsies similar to that he has done for the children employed in
+brick-yards and the children of canal-boatmen--that is, bring them under
+some sort of supervision, so that they may secure at least a small share
+in the educational advantages of the country.  Recently he published an
+account of a visit to an encampment of the Gipsies near Wandsworth
+Common, and it is evident that these wanderers without any settled place
+of abode look on his efforts with some considerable approval.  The
+encampment was made up of a number of tents, huts, and vans, and
+contained some sixty half-naked poor Gipsy children and thirty Gipsy men
+and women, living in an indescribable state of ignorance, dirt, filth,
+and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, or otherwise making their
+beds upon peg shavings and straw; and it turned out upon inquiry that not
+more than four of these poor creatures could read a sentence or write a
+letter.  They are, however, not indisposed to be subject to regulations
+that will contribute to their partial education, if to nothing more.  In
+passing from one of these miserable habitations to another, Mr. Smith
+found an old Gipsy woman proud of her name and descent, for she was a
+Lee, and a Lee of the fourth generation.  To this old woman he explained
+his purpose, sitting on a low seat under the cover of the tent with his
+knees on a level with his chin.  He wanted, he said, 'to get all the
+Gipsy tents and vans, and other movable habitations in the country,
+registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the children
+compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily located, and
+to receive an education which will in some degree help to get them out of
+the low, heartrending condition into which they have been allowed to
+sink.'  Mrs. Lee listened with pleasure to this narration of Mr. Smith's
+purpose, and, though in great poverty, desired to aid this good work.
+Her stock of cash amounted to three-halfpence; but this she insisted upon
+giving, so that she might contribute a little, at any rate, towards the
+improvement of her people.  We hope Mr. Smith may succeed in his work,
+and succeed speedily, so that these Gipsy children, who are trained up to
+a vagabond life, may have a chance of learning something better.  And
+evidently, from Mr. Smith's experience, there is no hostility to such a
+measure as he wishes to have made law among the Gipsies themselves."
+
+Owing to my letters, papers, articles and paragraphs, and efforts in
+other directions during the last several months, the Gipsy subject might
+now be fairly considered to have made good headway, consequently the
+proprietor of the _Illustrated London News_, without any difficulty, was
+induced--in fact, with pleasure--to have a series of sketches of Gipsy
+life in his journal, the first appearing November 29th, connected with
+which was the following notice, and in which he says:--"Our
+illustrations, from a sketch taken by one of our artists in the
+neighbourhood of Latimer Road, Notting Hill, which is not far from
+Wormwood Scrubs, show the habits of living folk who are to be found as
+well in the outskirts of London, where there are many chances of picking
+up a stray bit of irregular gain, as in more rural parts of the country.
+The figure of a gentleman introduced into this sketch, who appears to be
+conversing with the Gipsies in their waggon encampment, is that of Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the well-known benevolent promoter
+of social reform and legislative protection for the long-neglected class
+of people employed on canal-barges, whose families, often living on board
+these vessels, are sadly in want of domestic comfort and of education for
+the children."  The editor also inserted my Congress paper fully.  The
+following week another sketch of Gipsy life appeared in the same journal,
+connected with which were the following remarks:--"Another sketch of the
+wild and squalid habits of life still retained by vagrant parties or
+clans of this singular race of people, often met with in the
+neighbourhood of suburban villages and other places around London, will
+be found in our journal.  We may again direct the reader's attention to
+the account of them which was contributed by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester, to the late Social Science Congress at Manchester,
+and which was reprinted in our last week's publication.  That well-known
+advocate of social reform and legal protection for the neglected vagrant
+classes of our population reckons the total number of Gipsies in this
+country at three or four thousand men and women and ten thousand
+children.  He is now seeking to have all movable habitations--_i.e._,
+tents, vans, shows, &c.--in which the families live who are earning a
+living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in
+the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled to send their children
+to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it
+National, British, or Board school.  The following is Mr. Smith's note
+upon what was to be seen in the Gipsies' tent on Mitcham Common:--
+
+"'Inside this tent--with no other home--there were two men, their wives,
+and about fourteen children of all ages: two or three of these were
+almost men and women.  The wife of one of the men had been confined of a
+baby the day before I called--her bed consisting of a layer of straw upon
+the damp ground.  Such was the wretched and miserable condition they were
+in that I could not do otherwise than help the poor woman, and gave her a
+little money.  But, in her feelings of gratitude to me for this simple
+act of kindness, she said she would name the baby anything I would like
+to chose; and, knowing that Gipsies are fond of outlandish names, I was
+in a difficulty.  After turning the thing over in my mind for a few
+hours, I could think of nothing but "Deliverance."  This seemed to please
+the poor woman very much; and the poor child is named Deliverance G---.
+Strange to say, the next older child is named "Moses."'"
+
+On December 13th, an additional sketch, showing the inside of a van, was
+given, to which were added the following remarks:--"Another sketch of the
+singular habits and rather deplorable condition of these vagrant people,
+who hang about, as the parasites of civilisation, close on the suburban
+outskirts of our wealthy metropolis, is presented by our artist,
+following those which have appeared in the last two weeks.  Mr. G. Smith,
+of Coalville, Leicester, having taken in hand the question of providing
+due supervision and police regulation for the Gipsies, with compulsory
+education for their children, we readily dedicate these local
+illustrations to the furtherance of his good work.  The ugliest place we
+know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn, is not
+Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old Ford, at the East-end;
+but it is the tract of land, half torn up for brick-field clay, half
+consisting of fields laid waste in expectation of the house-builder,
+which lies just outside of Shepherd's Bush and Notting Hill.  There it is
+that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour's walk
+of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility
+and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond
+the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley's avenue of universal shopping.
+It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few
+serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of
+the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of
+every savage tribe in South and West Africa and Central Asia.  The
+encampment is usually formed of two or three vans and a rude cabin or a
+tent, placed on some piece of waste ground, for which the Gipsy party
+have to pay a few shillings a week of rent.  This may be situated at the
+back of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom or
+parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet inhabitants.
+The interior of one of the vans, furnished as a dwelling-room, which is
+shown in our artist's sketch, does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith
+informs us that these receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly
+overcrowded.  Besides a man, his wife, and their own children, the little
+ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there will be several adult persons
+taken in as lodgers.  The total number of Gipsies now estimated to be
+living in the metropolitan district is not less than 2,000.  Among these
+are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or 'losels' from
+the more settled classes of our people.  It would seem to be the duty of
+somebody at the Home Office, for the sake of public health and good
+order, to call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to
+look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life."
+
+On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were given in the
+_Illustrated London News_.  1. Tent at Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3.
+Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting Hill; 4. A Bachelor's Bedroom, Mitcham
+Common; 5. Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney
+Wick; 7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes.  "A few additional sketches,
+continuing those of this subject which have appeared in our journal, are
+engraved for the present number.  It is estimated by Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, Leicester, who has recently been exploring the queer outcast
+world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2,000 people
+called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu
+Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the neighbourhood of
+London.  They are not all thieves, not even all beggars and impostors,
+and they escape the law of vagrancy by paying a few shillings of weekly
+rent for pitching their tents or booths, and standing their waggons or
+wheeled cabins, on pieces of waste ground.  The western side of Notting
+Hill, where the railway passenger going to Shepherd's Bush or Hammersmith
+sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry in the gardens and
+courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered towards Wormwood Scrubs by
+a dismal expanse of brick-fields, might tempt the Gipsies so inclined to
+take a clean shirt or petticoat--certainly not for their own wearing.
+But we are not aware that the police inspectors and magistrates of that
+district have found such charges more numerous in their official record
+than has been experienced in other quarters of London; and it is possible
+that honest men and women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may
+exist among this odd fragment of our motley population.  It is for the
+sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of
+the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their
+parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr.
+George Smith has brought this subject under public notice.  The Gipsies,
+so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct
+the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active
+nuisance than the Italian organ-grinders in our city streets, whose
+tormenting presence we are content to suffer, to the sore interruption
+both of our daily work and our repose.  But it is expedient that there
+should be an Act of Parliament, if the Home Secretary has not already
+sufficient legal powers, to establish compulsory registration of the
+travelling Gipsy families, and a strict licensing system, with constant
+police supervision, for their temporary encampments, while their children
+should be looked after by the local School Board.  These measures,
+combined with judicious offers of industrial help for the adults and
+industrial training for the juniors, with the special exercise of
+Poor-Law Guardian administration, and some parochial or missionary
+religious efforts, might put an end to vagabond Gipsy life in England
+before the commencement of the twentieth century, or within one
+generation.  We hope to see the matter discussed in the House of Lords or
+the House of Commons during the ensuing session; for it actually concerns
+the moral and social welfare of more than thirty thousand people in our
+own country, which is an interest quite as considerable as that we have
+in Natal or the Transvaal, among Zulus and Basutos, and the rest of
+Kaffirdom.  The sketches we now present in illustration of this subject
+are designed to show the squalid and savage aspect of Gipsy habitations
+in the suburban districts, at Hackney and Hackney Wick, north-east of
+London; where the marsh-meadows of the river Lea, unsuitable for
+building-land, seem to forbid the extension of town streets and blocks of
+brick or stuccoed terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and
+Hainault Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on
+summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English kings
+and queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an hour's walk, of
+which the fashionable West-ender knoweth nought.  There lurks the free
+and fearless Gipsy scamp, if scamp he truly be, with his squaw and his
+piccaninnies, in a wigwam hastily constructed of hoops and poles and
+blankets, or perhaps, if he be the wealthy sheikh of his wild Bedouin
+tribe, in a caravan drawn from place to place by some lost and strayed
+plough-horse, the lawful owner of which is a farmer in Northamptonshire.
+Far be it from us to say or suspect that the Gipsy stole the horse;
+'convey, the wise it call;' and if horse or donkey, dog, or pig, or cow,
+if cock and hen, duck or turkey, be permitted to escape from field or
+farmyard, these fascinated creatures will sometimes follow the merry
+troop of 'Romany Rye' quite of their own accord, such is the magic of
+Egyptian craft and the innate superiority of an Oriental race.  These
+Gipsies, Zingari, Bohemians, whatever they be called in the kingdoms of
+Europe, are masters of a secret science of mysterious acquisition, as
+remote from proved crime of theft or fraud as from the ways of earning or
+winning by ordinary industry and trade.  There is many a rich and
+splendid establishment at the West-end supported by a different
+application of the same mysterious craft.  Solicitors and stockbrokers
+may have seen it in action.  It is that of silently appropriating what no
+other person may be quite prepared to claim."
+
+The following remarks appeared in the December number of _The
+Quiver_:--"Mr. George Smith, who has earned a much-respected and worthy
+name by his interest in and persevering efforts for the well-being of our
+canal population, is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children
+and roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and rural
+districts of the land.  By securing the registration of canal-boats as
+human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of poor little outcasts
+within the pale of society and the beneficent influence of the various
+educational machineries of the age.  By bringing the multitudinous tents,
+vans, shows, and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar
+arrangements, he hopes to put civilisation, education, and Christianity
+within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left
+to grow up in ignorance and degradation.  These vagrant juveniles are
+growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal
+classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the
+nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law
+which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity
+to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in
+a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to
+secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come.  It is
+evidently high time that something should be done, otherwise we must
+sooner or later be faced with more serious difficulties than even now
+exist.  Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist;
+and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will win all
+needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a life of crime and
+vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected little ones will be crowned
+with success.
+
+    "'The glories of our mortal state
+       Are shadows, not substantial things;
+    There is no armour against fate--
+       Death lays its icy hands on kings:
+          Sceptre and crown
+          Must tumble down,
+          And in the dust be equal made
+    With the poor crooked scythe and spade:
+    Only the actions of the just
+    Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'--_Shirley_."
+
+The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy children's
+homes, as it appeared in the _Daily News_, _Daily Chronicle_, and other
+London and country daily papers, December 2nd:--"Amongst some of the
+sorrowful features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more
+loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision than the wretched
+little rag and stick hovels, scarcely large enough to hold a
+costermonger's wheelbarrow, in which the poor Gipsy women and children
+are born, pig, and die--aye, and men too, if they can be called Gipsies,
+with three-fourths, excepting the faintest cheering tint, of the blood of
+English scamps and vagabonds in their reins, and the remainder consisting
+of the blood of the vilest rascals from India and other nations.  A real
+Gipsy of the old type, of which there are but few, will tell you a lie
+and look straight at you with a chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now
+will tell you a lie and look a thousand other ways while doing so.  In
+their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain
+facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the
+brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible
+may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to
+become in our midst the men and women of the future.  Outside their
+hovels or sack huts, poetically called 'tents' and 'encampments,' but in
+reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed
+lies,--sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, paint immorality
+with Asiatic ideas, notions, and hues, and put a pleasant and cheerful
+aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be seen
+thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant and wretched Gipsy
+children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness.  Inside their
+sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all
+ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a
+bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than
+a manure-heap, in fact sometimes completely rotten, and as a Gipsy woman
+told me last week, 'it is not fit to be handled with the hands.'  In
+noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye-disease, I am
+told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the coke
+fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times also
+causes the children to turn pale and sickly.  The sulphur affects the men
+and women in various ways, sometimes causing a kind of stupor to come
+over them.  I have noticed farther that many of the adults are much
+pitted with small-pox.  It is a wonder to me that there is not more
+disease among them than there appears to be, considering that they are
+huddled together, regardless of sex or age, in the midst of a damp
+atmosphere rising out of the ground, and impregnated with the sulphur of
+their coke fires.  Probably their flitting habits prevent detection.  My
+plan to improve their condition is not by prosecuting them and breaking
+up their tents and vans and turning them into the roads pell-mell, but to
+bring their habitations under the sanitary officers and their children
+under the schoolmaster in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, and
+it has the approval of these wandering herds.  The process will be slow
+but effective, and without much inconvenience.  Unless something be done
+for them in the way I have indicated, they will drift into a state
+similar to Darwin's forefathers and prove to the world that civilisation
+and Christianity are a failure."
+
+The following article appears in the _Christian World_, December 19th, by
+Christopher Crayon (J. Ewing Ritchie), in which he says:--"The other day
+I was witness to a spectacle which made me feel a doubt as to whether I
+was living in the nineteenth century.  I was, as it were, within the
+shadow of that mighty London where Royalty resides, where the richest
+Church in Christendom rejoices in its Abbey and Cathedral, and its
+hundreds of churches, where an enlightened and energetic Dissent has not
+only planted its temples in every district, but has sent forth its
+missionary agents into every land, where the fierce light of public
+opinion, aided by a Press which never slumbers, is a terror to them that
+do evil, and a praise to them that do well; a city which we love to boast
+heads the onward march of man; and yet the scene before me was as
+intensely that of savage life, as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and
+savage life destitute of all that lends it picturesque attractions, or
+ideal charms.  I was standing in the midst of some twenty tents and vans,
+inhabited by that wandering race of whose origin we know so little, and
+of whose future we know less.  The snow was on the ground, there was
+frost in the very air.  Within a few yards was a great Board school;
+close by were factories and workshops, and the other concomitants of
+organised industrial life.  Yet in that small area the Gipsies held
+undisputed sway.  In or about London there are, it is calculated, some
+two thousand of these dwellers in tents.  In all England there are some
+twenty thousand of these sons of Ishmael, with hands against every one,
+or, perhaps to put it more truly, with every one's hands against them.
+In summer-time their lot is by no means to be envied; in winter their
+state is deplorable indeed.
+
+"We entered, Mr. George Smith and I, and were received as friends.  Had I
+gone by myself, I question whether my reception would have been a
+pleasant one.  As Gipsies pay no taxes, they can keep any number of dogs,
+and these dogs have a way of sniffing and snarling, anything but
+agreeable to an unbidden guest.  The poor people complained to me no one
+ever came to see them.  I should be surprised if any one did; but Mr.
+George Smith, of Coalville, is no common man, and having secured fair
+play for the poor children of the brick-fields--he himself was brought up
+in a brick-yard--and for the poor, and sadly-neglected, inmates of the
+canal-boats, he has now turned his attention to the Gipsies.  His idea
+is--and it is a good one--that an Act of Parliament should be passed for
+their benefit--something similar to that he has been the means of
+carrying for the canal and brick-field children.  In a paper read before
+the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all
+tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places used as
+dwellings should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary
+arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers, in
+every town and village.  Thus in every district the children would have
+their names and attendance registered in a book, which they could take
+with them from place to place, and when endorsed by the schoolmaster, it
+would show that the children were attending school.  In carrying out this
+idea, it is a pity that Mr. Smith should have to bear all the burden.  As
+it is, he has suffered greatly in his pocket by his philanthropic effort.
+. . .
+
+"It is no joke going into a Gipsy yard, and it is still less so when you
+go down on your hands and knees, and crawl into the Gipsy's wigwam; but
+the worst of it is, when you have done so, there is little to see after
+all.  In the middle, on a few bricks, is a stove or fireplace of some
+kind.  On the ground is a floor of wood-chips, or straw, or shavings, and
+on this squat some two or three big, burly men, who make linen-pegs and
+skewers, and mend chairs and various articles, the tribe, as they wander
+along, seek to sell.  The women are away, for it is they who bring the
+grist to the mill, as they tell fortunes, or sell their wares, or follow
+their doubtful trade; but the place swarms with children; and it was
+wonderful to see with what avidity they stretched out the dirtiest little
+hand imaginable as Mr. Smith prepared to distribute some sweets he had
+brought with him for that purpose.  As we entered, all the vans were shut
+up, and the tents only were occupied, the vans being apparently deserted
+but presently a door was opened half-way, and out popped a little Gipsy
+head, with sparkling eyes and curly hair; and then another door opened,
+and a similar spectacle was to be seen.  Let us look into the van, about
+the size of a tiny cabin, and chock full, in the first place, with a
+cooking-stove; and then with shelves, with curtains and some kind of
+bedding, apparently not very clean, on which the family repose.  It is a
+piteous life, even at the best, in that van; even when the cooking pot is
+filled with something more savoury than cabbages or potatoes; the usual
+fare; but the children seem happy, nevertheless, in their dirty rags, and
+with their luxurious heads of curly hair.  All of them are as ignorant as
+Hottentots, and lead a life horrible to think of.  I only saw one woman
+in the camp, and I only saw her by uncovering the top and looking into
+the tent in which she resides.  She is terribly poor, she says, and
+pleads earnestly for a few coppers; and I can well believe she wants
+them, for in this England of ours, and especially in the outskirts of
+London, the Gipsy is not a little out of place.  Around us are some
+strapping girls, one with a wonderfully sweet smile on her face, who, if
+they could be trained to domestic service, would have a far happier life
+than they can ever hope to lead.  The cold and wet seem to affect them
+not, nor the poor diet, nor the smoke and bad air of their cabins, in
+which they crowd, while the men lazily work, and the mothers are far
+away.  The leading lady in this camp is absent on business; but she is a
+firm adherent of Mr. George Smith, and wishes to see the children
+educated; and as she is a Lee, and as a Lee in Gipsy annals take the same
+rank as a Norfolk Howard in aristocratic circles, that says a good deal;
+but, then, if you educate a Gipsy girl, she will want to have her hands
+and face, at any rate, clean; and a Gipsy boy, when he learns to read,
+will feel that he is born for a nobler end than to dwell in a stinking
+wigwam, to lead a lawless life, to herd with questionable characters, and
+to pick up a precarious existence at fairs and races; and our poets and
+novelists and artists will not like that.  However, just now, by means of
+letters in the newspapers, and engravings in the illustrated journals, a
+good deal of attention is paid to the Gipsies, and if they can be
+reclaimed and turned into decent men and women a good many farmers' wives
+will sleep comfortably at night, especially when geese and turkeys are
+being fattened for Christmas fare; and a desirable impulse will be given
+to the trade in soap."
+
+                 [Picture: A Gipsy girl washing clothes]
+
+In the _Sunday School Chronicle_, December 19th, the kind-hearted editor
+makes the following allusions:--"Mr. George Smith stirs every feeling of
+pity and compassion in our hearts by his descriptions of the Gipsy
+Children's Homes.  It is one of the curious things of English life that
+the distinct Gipsy race should dwell among us, and, neither socially nor
+politically, nor religiously, do we take any notice of them.  No portion
+of our population may so earnestly plead, 'No man careth for our souls.'
+The chief interest of them, to many of us, is that they are used to give
+point, and plot, to novels.  But can nothing be done for the Gipsy
+_children_?  Christian enterprise is seldom found wanting when a sphere
+is suggested for it; and those who live in the neighbourhood of Gipsy
+haunts should be especially concerned for their well-being.  What must
+the children be, morally and religiously, who _bide_, we cannot say
+_dwell_, in such homes as Mr. George Smith describes?
+
+"'In their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the
+plain facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the
+brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible
+may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to
+become in our midst the men and women of the future.  Outside their
+hovels or sack huts, poetically called "tents" and "encampments," but in
+reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed lies,
+sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, and put a pleasant and
+cheerful aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be
+seen thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant, and wretched Gipsy
+children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness.  Inside their
+sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all
+ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a
+bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than
+a manure-heap, in fact sometimes it is completely rotten, and as a Gipsy
+woman told me last week, "it is not fit to be handled with the hands."
+In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye disease, I
+am told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the
+coke fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times
+also causes the children to turn pale and sickly.'"
+
+The following brief account of the Hungarian Gipsies of the present day,
+as seen by a writer under the initials "A. C.," who visited the Unitarian
+Synod in Hungary last summer, is taken from the _Unitarian Herald_,
+bearing date January 9th, 1880, and in which the author says:--"Not far
+from Rugonfalva we came on a colony of exceedingly squalid Gipsies,
+living in huts which a respectable Zulu would utterly despise.  Their
+appearance reminded me of Cowper's graphic sketch, which I am tempted to
+quote:--
+
+    "'I see a column of slow-rising smoke
+    O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
+    A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
+    Their miserable meal.  A kettle, flung
+    Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
+    Receives the morsel--flesh obscene of dog,
+    Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined
+    From his accustomed perch.  Hard-faring race,
+    They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
+    Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched
+    The spark of life.  The sportive wind blows wide
+    Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
+    The vellum of the livery they claim.'
+
+"Transylvania is one great museum of human as well as natural products,
+and this singular race forms an interesting element of its motley
+population.  It is supposed that the tribe found its way to Hungary in
+the beginning of the fifteenth century, having fled from Central Asia or
+India during the Mongol reign of terror.  About the close of last century
+Pastor Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting
+England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him very well.
+There are now about eighty thousand of them in Transylvania, but
+three-fourths of this number have settled homes, and caste distinctions
+are so strong that the higher grades would not drink from a cup used by
+one of their half-savage brethren.  On reaching the mansion of Mr.
+Jakabhazi, at Simenfalva, who employs about one hundred and forty
+civilised Gipsies on his estate, we had an opportunity after dinner of
+seeing them return in a long procession from the fields.  Some of the
+women carried small brown babies, that appeared able to find footing
+anywhere on their mothers' shoulders, backs, or breasts.  These labourers
+are almost entirely paid in food and other necessaries, and if kindly
+treated are very honourable towards their master, and generally adopt his
+religion.  When smarting under any grievance, they, on the contrary,
+sometimes change their faith _en masse_, and when conciliated undergo as
+speedy a re-conversion.  The women are, as a rule, very fond of
+ornaments, and the men are, above all things, proud of a horse or a pair
+of scarlet breeches.  Of late years they have in a few districts began to
+intermarry with the Wallachs, and the sharp distinction between them and
+the other races in Hungary will, no doubt, gradually disappear."
+
+The _Weekly Times_ again takes up the subject, and the following appears
+on January 9th, 1880:--"We made a second expedition, with Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, on Sunday, in search of a Gipsy encampment; and
+though the way was long and tedious, and we were both lamed with walking
+before we returned at night, yet we had not gone one step out of our way.
+There is no encampment of these ancient and interesting people in the
+neighbourhood of the hundred odd square miles which composes the site of
+the metropolis, with which Mr. Smith is not acquainted, and to which we
+verily believe he could lead a friend if he was blindfolded.  The way we
+went must remain somewhat of a secret, because the Gipsies do not care to
+see many visitors on the only day of the week which is one of absolute
+rest to them.  All that we shall disclose about the way is, that we
+skirted Mount Nod, and for a short distance looked upon the face of an
+ancient river, then up-hill we clambered for many longish miles, until we
+turned out of a certain lane into the encampment.  There was a rude
+picturesqueness in the gaping of the vans and tents.  In the foreground
+were the vans, to the rear the cloth kraals, with their smoky coverings
+stretched over poles; from a hole in the centre the smoke ascended,
+furnishing evidence that the open brazier was burning within.  The vans
+protected the approach to the camp, just in the same way that artillery
+are planted to keep the road to a military encampment.  Mr. Smith's face
+seemed to be well known to these strange people, and we no sooner
+appeared in sight than the swinging door of every van was edged with
+faces, and forth from the strange kraals there crept child and woman,
+youth and dog, to say a kindly word, or bark a welcome to the visitors.
+But for the Gipsies' welcome we might have had an unpleasant reception
+from the dogs.  They were evidently dubious as to our character, their
+training inclining them to bite, if they get a chance, any leg wearing
+black cloth, but to give the ragged-trousered visitors a fawning welcome;
+so they sniffed again and again, and growled, until driven away by the
+voices of their owners.  Perchance, during the remainder of the day, they
+were revolving in their intelligent minds how it had come to pass that
+the black cloth legs were received with evident marks of favour.  Nor
+were they able to settle the point easily, for whenever we happened to
+look round the encampment during the afternoon, from the raised door-way
+of a kraal where we happened to be couched, we noticed the eyes of one or
+other of the four-footed guardians fixed intently on us.  There were
+about twenty vans and tents in all; and each paid one shilling a week to
+the ground landlord.  That money, with whatever else was required for
+food, was obtained by hawking at this season of the year, and trade was
+very bad.  Winter must be a fearful experience for these children of the
+air, and the field, the summer sun, the wild flowers, and the fruits of
+harvest.  Such rains as have descended, such snows as have been falling,
+such cold winds as have been blowing, must discount fearfully the joys of
+the three happier seasons of the year.
+
+"Invitations to stoop and enter any 'tent' were freely tendered, and
+'peeps' were indulged in with regard to a few.  In one, a closed cauldron
+covered the brazier fire, and two men and a dog watched with unceasing
+vigilance.  We tried to make friends here, but failed.  There was a
+steamy exudation from the cauldron which filled the air with fragrance,
+and our curiosity overcame our prudence, but with no satisfactory result.
+'A stew,' we suggested.  'Yes! it was summut stewing.'  'Couldn't we
+guess what it was?'  'Not soon,' was the reply; 'a few bones and a potato
+or two; perhaps a bit of something green.  At such hard times they were
+mostly glad to get anything.'  But nothing more could be gleaned, and the
+two men and the dog never lost sight of the cauldron while the visitors
+remained.  In a few cases the tents were pegged down all round, and
+across the top, upon a stout line, there hung a few articles fresh from
+the wash.  The pegged cloth indicated that the female occupants were
+within, but 'not at home,' nor would they be visible until the wind had
+dried the garments that fluttered overhead.  We tarried, and were made
+quite at home in another kraal, where we gleaned many interesting
+particulars of Gipsy life; and here we held a sort of smoking _levee_,
+and were honoured by the company of many distinguished residents in camp.
+We lay upon a bed of straw, which covered the whole of the interior, save
+a little space filled with the brazier, in which a fire of coke was
+burning; above was a hole, out of which the smoke passed.  The straw had
+been stamped into consistency by the feet of the family; there was no
+odour from it, and in that particular was an improvement on the rush and
+straw floors in the English houses of which Erasmus made such great
+complaint.  There was no chair, stool, or box on which to sit, and all of
+us reclined Eastern fashion in the posture that was most convenient.  The
+owner of the kraal and his wife were very interesting people: the
+mother's hair descended by little steps from the crown of her head, until
+it stuck out like a bush, in a line with the nape of her neck, a dense
+dead-black mass of hair.  She had been a model for painters many a time,
+she said, before small-pox marked her; and, since, the back of her head
+had often been drawn to fit somebody else's face.
+
+"'When I come again what shall I bring you?' said Mr. Smith, in most
+reckless fashion, to the Egyptian Queen.  'Well,' said she, without a
+moment's hesitation, 'if there is one thing more than another that I do
+want, it's a silk handkercher for my head--a real Bandana.'  The request
+was characteristic.  Of the tales we heard one or two were curious, one
+positively laughable, and one related to a deed of blood.  Mr. Smith,
+going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy woman, to whom he told the object
+of his visiting the Gipsies, and what he hoped to accomplish for the
+children, and she forwith handed him a money gift.  On more than one
+occasion a well-polished silver coin of small value, a penny, or a
+farthing has been quietly put into Mr. Smith's hands, in furtherance of
+his work, by some poor Gipsy woman.  The story which made us laugh was of
+a Gipsy marriage.  It is one of the unwritten laws of Gipsy life that the
+wife works while the husband idles about the tent.  The wife hawks with
+the basket or the cart and sells, while the husband loiters about the
+encampment or cooks the evening meal.  But one young Gipsy fell in love
+with an Irish girl named Kathleen, and from the day of their marriage Tom
+never had an idle moment.  In vain did he plead the usages of Gipsy
+married life.  Kathleen was deaf to all such modes of argument, and drove
+her husband forth from tent and encampment, by voice or by stake, until
+she completely cured him of his idleness, and she remained mistress of
+the field.  Whenever a young Gipsy is supposed to be courting a stranger,
+the fate of Tom at the hands of Kathleen is told him as a warning.
+During the afternoon we were continually exhorted to see 'Granny' before
+we left.  Every one spoke of her with respect, and when we were about to
+leave, Patience offered to show us 'Granny's tent.'  Repentance joined
+her sister, and before we were up and out of the tent opening, we saw
+Patience at a tent not far off; she dived head and shoulders through an
+opening she made, and then appeared to be pulling vigorously.  Her
+activity was soon explained.  We thrust our heads through the opening,
+and were face to face with a shrivelled-faced old woman, whose cheeks
+were like discoloured parchment, and whose hands and arms appeared to be
+mere bones.  But her eye was bright, and her tongue proved her to be in
+possession of most of her faculties.  She could not stand or walk, nor
+could she sit up for many minutes at a time, and the action of Patience
+was caused by her hastily seizing the old woman by her arms as she lay on
+her straw floor, and dragging her into a sitting position.  If the old
+dame had been asleep, Patience had thoroughly aroused her.  She greeted
+us with Gipsy courtesy, and told us she was 'fourscore and six years of
+age.'  Her name, in answer to our query, she said was 'Sinfire Smith.'
+'Why, that's the same as mine,' said Mr. Smith.  'O, likely,' said
+Sinfire, 'the Smiths is a long family.'  For four score and six years
+poor Sinfire has led a Gipsy life, and though her house now is only a
+tent, and her bed and bedding straw, she made no moan, and there was
+nothing she wished to have."
+
+    "Farewell, farewell! so rest there, blade!
+    Entomb me where our chiefs are laid;
+    But, hark, methinks I hear the drum,
+    I would that holy man were come."--HARRIS.
+
+    "What sound is that as of one knocking gently?
+    Yet who would enter here at hour so late?
+    Arise! draw back the bolt--unclose the portal.
+    What figure standeth there before the gate?
+
+    "He bears to thee sweet messages from Heaven,
+    Whispers of love from dear ones folded there,
+    And tells thee that a place for thee is waiting,
+    That thou shalt join them in their home so fair."
+
+                                               A. F. B.--"Sunday at Home."
+
+
+
+
+Part III.
+The Treatment the Gipsies have received in this Country.
+
+
+The social history and improvements of our own country seem to have gone
+by irregular leaps and bounds.  The Parliament, like the _Times_, follows
+upon the heels of public opinion in all measures concerning the welfare
+of the nation; and it is well it should be so.  An Englishman will be led
+by a child; but it requires a strong hand and a sharp whip to drive him.
+One hundred and forty years ago the Wesleys and Whitfield caused a
+commotion in the religious world.  Upwards of a century ago the first
+canal in this country was opened for the conveyance of goods upon our
+silent highways, and trade began in earnest to show signs of life and
+activity.  A century ago Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, opened his first
+Sunday-school--the beginning of a system ever widening and expanding,
+carrying with it blessings incomprehensible to finite minds, and only to
+be revealed in another world.  Nearly a century ago Raper's translation
+of Grellmann's "Dissertation on the Gipsies" was published, and which
+caused no little stir at the time, being the first work of any kind worth
+notice that had appeared.  Seventy years ago an interesting
+correspondence took place in the _Christian Observer_ upon the condition
+of the Gipsies, and various lines of missionary action were suggested;
+but no plan was adopted, and all words blown to the wind.  Then, as now,
+people would look at the Gipsies in their pitiable condition, and with a
+shrug of the shoulders would say, "Poor things," and away they would go
+to their mansions, doff their warm winter clothing, put on their
+needleworked slippers, stretch their legs before a blazing fire in the
+drawing-room, and call "John" to bring a box of the best cigars, the
+champagne, dry sherry, and crusted port, and then noddle off to sleep.
+Sixty-four years ago Hoyland's "Historical Survey of the Gipsies" made
+its appearance, a work that caught the fire and spirit of Grellmann's,
+the object of both being to stir up the missionary zeal of this country
+in the cause of the Gipsies.  Fifty years ago James Crabb began his
+missionary work among the Gipsies at Southampton, and for a while did
+well; but in course of time, owing to the Gipsies moving about, as in the
+case of "Our Canal Population," the work dwindled down and down, till
+there is not a vestige of this good man's efforts to be seen.  About the
+same time that Crabb was at work among the Gipsies missionary efforts
+were put in motion to improve the canal-boatmen, and mission stations
+were established at Newark, Stoke-on-Trent, Aylesbury, Oxford,
+Birmingham, and other places, but fared the same fate as the missionary
+effort of Crabb and others among the Gipsies.  Fifty years ago railways
+were opened, which gave an impetus to trade never experienced before.
+Fifty years ago the preaching of Bourne and Clowes was causing
+considerable excitement in the country.  Nearly fifty years ago witnessed
+the passing of the Reform Bill, and the Factory Act received the Royal
+signature.  Forty years have passed away since George Borrow's missionary
+efforts among the Gipsies were prominently before the public, which, sad
+to say, shared the fate of Crabb's, Hoyland's, Roberts', and Raper's.
+From that day till now, except the spasmodic efforts of a clergyman here
+and there, or some other kind-hearted friend, these 20,000 poor slighted
+outcasts have been left to themselves to sink or swim as they thought
+well.  The only man, except the dramatist and novelist, who has seemed to
+notice them has been the policeman, and his vigilant eye and staff have
+been used to drive them from their camping-ground from time to time, and
+thus--if possible--made their lives more miserable, and created within
+them deeper-seated revenge, owing to the way in which they are carrying
+out the Enclosures Act.  All missionary efforts put forth to improve the
+condition of the factory operative and canal-boatmen, previous to the
+passing of the Factory Act, nearly fifty years since, and the Canal Boats
+Act of 1877, were fruitless and unprofitable.  The passing of the Factory
+Act has done more for the children in one year than all the missionaries
+in the kingdom could have done in their lifetime.  Similar results are
+the outcome of the Brickyard Act of 1871, as touching the welfare of the
+children.  And so in like manner it will be with the Canal Boats Act when
+properly carried out, the canal-boat children of to-day, in fifty years
+hence, will be equal to other working classes.  From the days of Hoyland,
+and Borrow, and Crabb, down to the present time, but little seems to have
+been done for the Gipsies.  With Crabb died all real interest in the
+welfare of these poor unfortunate people.  The difficulties he had
+encountered seemed to have had a deterrent effect upon others.
+Missionary zeal, without moral force of law and the schoolmaster, will
+accomplish but little for the Gipsies at our doors; and it may be said
+with special emphasis as regards the improvement of the Gipsy children.
+From the days of the relentless, cruel, and merciless persecution the
+Gipsies received under the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, down to
+the present time, nothing has been done by law to reclaim these Indian
+outcasts and Asiatic emigrants.  The case of the Gipsies shows us plainly
+that hunting the women and children with bloodhounds, and dragging the
+Gipsy leaders to the gallows, will neither stamp them out nor improve
+their character and habits; and, on the other hand, it appears that the
+love-like gentleness, child-like simplicity, and religious fervour of the
+circumscribed influence of Crabb and others, about this time, did but
+little for these poor, little, dark-eyed, wandering brethren of ours from
+afar.  The next agents that appeared upon the scene to try to elevate the
+Gipsies into something like a respectable position in society were the
+dramatists and novelists.  These flickering lights of the night have met
+with no better success, in fact, their efforts, in the way they have been
+put forth, have, as a rule, exhibited Gipsy life in a variety of false
+colours and shades, which exhibition has turned out to be a failure in
+accomplishing the object the authors had in view, other than to fill
+their coffers and mislead the public as to the real character of a Gipsy
+vagabond's life; and thus it will be seen, I think, that the Gipsies and
+their children of to-day present to us the miserable failure, of bitter
+persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the efforts of
+Christianity alone at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and more
+recently the novelist and dramatist as a means in themselves, separately,
+to effect a reformation in the habits and character of the Gipsy children
+and their parents.
+
+If the Gipsy and other tramping, travelling "rob rats" of to-day are to
+become honest, industrious, and useful citizens of the future, it must be
+by the influence of the schoolmaster and the sanitary officer, coming to
+a great extent as they do between the fitful and uncertain efforts of the
+missionary, the relentless hands of persecution, the policeman, and the
+stage.
+
+From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down to the
+time when Raper's translation of Grellmann's work appeared in 1787, a
+period of 272 years, nothing seems to have been done to improve the
+Gipsies, except to pass laws for their extermination.  The earliest
+notice of the Gipsies in our own country was published in a quarto volume
+in the year 1612, the object of which was to expose the system of
+fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which reference is
+made to the Gipsies as follows:--"This kind of people about a hundred
+years ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the
+southerne parts.  And this, as I am imformed and can gather, was their
+beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country (belike not for their
+good conditions) arrived heere in England, who for quaint tricks and
+devices, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in
+great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined with
+them, and in time learned their crafty cosening.  The speech which they
+used was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen conversing
+at least learned their language.  These people continuing about the
+country and practising their cosening art, purchased themselves great
+credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry and telling of
+fortunes; insomuch they pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of
+money, silver spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they
+could make."  And he goes on to say, "But what numbers were executed on
+these statutes you would wonder; yet, notwithstanding, all would not
+prevaile, but they wandered as before uppe and downe and meeting once a
+year at a place appointed; sometimes at the Peake's Hole in Derbyshire,
+and other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath."  The annual gathering of the
+Gipsies and others of the same class, who make Leicestershire,
+Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and neighbouring counties,
+their head-quarters, takes place at the well-known Bolton Fair, held
+about Whitsuntide, on the borders of Leicestershire, a village situated
+in a kind of triangle, between Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and
+Derbyshire.  Spellman speaks of the Gipsies about this time as
+follows:--"The worst kind of wanderers and impostors springing up on the
+Continent, but yet rapidly spreading themselves through Britain and other
+parts of Europe, disfigured by their swarthiness, sun-burnt, filthy in
+their clothing and indecent in all their customs."  Under these
+circumstances it is not to be wondered at, in these dark ages, that some
+steps should be taken to stop these lawless desperadoes and vagabonds
+from contaminating our English labourers' and servant girls with their
+loose ideas of labour, cleanliness, honesty, morality, truthfulness, and
+religion.  It was soon manifest what kind of strange people had begun to
+flock to our shores to make their domiciles among us, as will be seen in
+a description given of them in an Act of Parliament passed in the
+twenty-second year of the reign of Henry VIII., being only about seven
+years after their landing in Scotland, and to which I have referred
+before.  In the tenth chapter of the said act they are described as--"An
+outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no crafte nor feat
+of merchandise; who have come into this realm and gone from shire to
+shire and place to place in great company, and used great subtle and
+crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand that by
+palmistry they could tell the men's and women's fortunes, and so many
+times by crafte and subtlety have deceived the people of their money, and
+also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.  Wherefore all
+are directed to avoid the realm and not to return under pain of
+imprisonment and forfeitures of their goods and chattels; and on their
+trials for any felonies which they may have committed they shall not be
+entitled to a jury."  As if this was not sufficient or as if it had not
+the desired effect the authors anticipated viz., in preventing other
+Gipsies flocking to our shores or driving those away from us who were
+already in our midst another act was passed in the twenty-seventh year of
+the same reign, more severe than the previous act, and part of it runs as
+follows:--"Whereas certain outlandish people, who do not profess any
+crafte or trade, whereby to maintain themselves, but go about in great
+numbers from place to pace using insidious underhand means to impose on
+His Majesty's subjects, making them believe that they understand the art
+of foretelling to men and women their good and evil fortunes by looking
+in their hands, whereby they frequently defraud people of their money;
+likewise are guilty of thefts and highway robberies; it is hereby ordered
+that the said vagrants, commonly called Egyptians, in case they remain
+one month in the kingdom, shall be proceeded against as thieves and
+rascals, and at the importation of such Egyptians (the importer) shall
+forfeit 40 pounds for every trespass."
+
+The fine of 40 pounds being inflicted at that time, which means a large
+sum at the present day, carries something more with it than the thefts
+committed by the Gipsies.  It is evident that the Gipsies had wheedled
+themselves into the graces and favours of some portion of the aristocracy
+by their crafts and deception.  If the Gipsy offences had been committed
+against the labouring population it would have been the height of
+absurdity for Parliament to have inflicted a fine of some hundreds of
+pounds upon the working man of the poorer classes.  It has occurred to me
+that the question of Popery may have been one of the causes of their
+persecution; and it is not unlikely that wealthy Roman Catholics may have
+had something to do with their importation into this country.  The fact
+is, before the Gipsies left the Continent for England they were Roman
+Catholic pilgrims, and going about the country doing the work of the Pope
+to some extent, and this may have been one of the objects of those who
+were opposed to the Protestant tendencies of Henry VIII. in causing them
+to come over to England.  At this time our own country was in a very
+disturbed state, religiously, and no people were so suitable to work in
+the dark and carry messages from place to place as the Gipsies,
+especially if by so doing they could make plenty of plunder out of it;
+and this idea I have hinted at before as one of their leading
+characteristics.  It should not be overlooked that telegraphs, railways,
+stagecoaches, and canals had not been established at this time,
+consequently for the Gipsies to be moving about the country from village
+to village under a cloak, as they appeared to the higher powers, was
+sufficient to make them the subjects of bitter persecution.  For the
+Gipsies to have openly avowed that they were Roman Catholics before
+landing upon our shores, would in all probability have defeated the
+object of those who induced--if induced--them to come over to Britain.
+At any rate, we may, I think, fairly assume that this feature of their
+character, an addition to their fortune-telling proclivities, may have
+been one of the causes of their persecution, and in this view I am to
+some extent supported by circumstances.
+
+During the reign of Henry VIII. a number of Gipsies were sent back to
+France, and in the book of receipts and payments of the thirty-fifth of
+the same reign the following entries are made:--"Nett payments, 1st
+Sept., 36 of Henry VIII.  Item, to Tho. Warner, Sergeant of the
+Admyraltie, 10th Sept., for victuals prepared for a shippe appointed to
+convey certaine Egupeians, 58s.  Item, to the same Tho. Warner, to the
+use of John Bowles for freight of said shippe, 6 pounds 5s.  0d.  Item,
+to Robt. ap Rice, Esq., Shriff of Huntingdon, for the charge of the
+Egupeians at a special gailo delivery, and the bringing of them to be
+carreied over the sees; over and besides the sum of 4 pounds 5s. 0d.
+groming of seventeen horses sold at five shillings the peice as apperythe
+by a particular book, 17 pounds 17s. 7d.  Item, to Will. Wever, appointed
+to have the charge of the conduct of the said Egupeians to Callis, 5
+pounds."
+
+In 1426 a first-rate horse was worth about 1 pounds 6s. 8d., and a colt
+4s. 6d.  Twenty-two years later the hay of an acre of land was worth
+about 5 pounds.
+
+There were several acts passed relating to the Gipsies during the reign
+of Philip and Mary, and fifth of Elizabeth, by which it states--"If any
+person, being fourteen years old, whether natural born subject or
+stranger, who had been seen in the fellowship of such persons, or had
+disguised himself like them, or should remain with them one month at once
+or several times, it should be felony without the benefit of the clergy."
+Wraxall, in his "History of France," vol. ii., page 32, in referring to
+the act of Elizabeth, in 1653, states that in her reign the Gipsies
+throughout England were supposed to exceed 10,000.  About the year 1586
+complaints were again made of the increase of vagabonds and loitering
+persons.
+
+The following order is copied from the Harleian MSS. in the British
+Museum:--"Orders, rules, and directions, concluded, appointed, and agreed
+upon by us the Justices of Peace within the county of Suffolk, assembled
+at our general session of peace, holden at Bury, the 22nd daie of Aprill,
+in the 31st yeare of the raigne of our Souraigne Lady the Queen's
+Majestie, for the punishing and suppressinge of roags, vacabonds, idle
+loyterings, and lewde persons, which doe or shall hereafter wander and
+goe aboute within the hundreths of Thingo cum Bury, Blackborne,
+Thedwardstree, Cosford, Babings, Risbridge, Lackford, and the hundreth of
+Exninge, in the said county of Suffolk, contrary to the law in that case
+made and provided.
+
+"Whereas at the Parliament beganne and holden at Westminster, the 8th
+daie of Maye, in the 14th yeare of the raigne of the Queen's Majesty that
+nowe is, one Acte was made intytuled, 'An Acte for the punishment of
+Vacabonds and for releife of the Pooere and Impotent'; and whereas at a
+Session of the Parliament, holden by prorogacon at Westminster, the eight
+daie of February, in the 28th yeare of Her Majesties raigne, an other
+Acte was made and intytuled, 'An Act for settinge of the Poore to work
+and for the avoydinge of idleness'; by virtue of which severall Acts
+certeyne provisions and remedies have been ordeyned and established, as
+well for the suppressinge and punishinge of all roags, vacabonds, sturdy
+roags, idle and loyteringe persons; as also for the reliefe and setting
+on worke of the aged and impotente persons within this realm, and
+authoritie gyven to justices of peace, in their several charges and
+commissions, to see that the said Acts and Statuts be putte in due
+execution, to the glorie of Allmightie God and the benefite of the Common
+Welth.
+
+"And whereas also yt appeareth by dayly experience that the numbr of
+idle, vaggraunte, loyteringe sturdy roags, masterless men, lewde and yll
+disposed persons are exceedingly encreased and multiplied, committinge
+many grevious and outerageous disorders and offences, tendinge to the
+great . . . of Allmightie God, the contempt of Her Majesties laws, and to
+the great charge, trouble, and disquiet of the Common Welth:
+
+"We, the Justices of Peace above speciefied, assembled and mett together
+at our general sessions above-named for remedie of theis and such lyke
+enormitities which hereafter shall happen to arrise or growe within the
+hundreths and lymits aforesaid, doe by theis presents order, decree, and
+ordeyne That there shall be builded or provided a convenient house, which
+shall be called the House of Correction, and that the same be establishd
+within the towne of Bury, within the hundreth of Thingoe aforesaid: And
+that all persons offendinge or lyvinge contrary to the tenor of the said
+twoe Acts, within the hundreths and lymitts aforesaid, shall be, by the
+warrante of any Justice of Peace dwellinge in the same hundreths or
+lymitts, committed thether, and there be received, punished, sett to
+worke, and orderd in such sorte and accordinge to the directions,
+provisions, and limitations hereafter in theis presents declard and
+specified.
+
+"Fyrst--That yt maie appeare what persons arre apprehended, committed,
+and brought to the House of Correction, it is ordered and appointed, that
+all and every person and persons which shall be found and taken within
+the hundreths and lymitts aforesaid above the age of 14 yeares, and shall
+take upon them to be procters or procuraters goinge aboute without
+sufficiente lycense from the Queen's Majestie; all idle persons goinge
+aboute usinge subtiltie and unlawfull games or plaie; all such as faynt
+themselves to have knowledge in physiognomeye, palmestrie, or other
+absurd sciences; all tellers of destinies, deaths, or fortunes, and such
+lyke fantasticall imaginations."
+
+In Scotland, the Gipsies, and other vagrants of the same class, were
+dealt with equally as severely under Mary Queen of Scots as they were
+under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth in England.  In an act passed in 1579 I
+find the following relating to Gipsies and vagabonds:--"That sik as make
+themselves fules and ar bairdes, or uther sik like runners about, being
+apprehended, sall be put into the Kinge's Waird, or irones, sa lang as
+they have ony gudes of their owin to live on, and fra they have not
+quhair upon to live of thir owin that their eares be nayled to the trone
+or to an uther tree, and thir eares cutted off and banished the countrie;
+and gif thereafter they be found againe, that they be hanged.
+
+"And that it may be knowen quwhat maner of persones ar meaned to be idle
+and strong begares, and vagabounds, and worthy of the punischment before
+specified, it is declared: That all idle persones ganging about in any
+countrie of this realm, using subtil craftie and unlawful playes, as
+juglarie, fast-and-lous, and sik uthers; the idle people calling
+themselves _Egyptians_, or any uther, that feinzies themselves to have a
+knowledge or charming prophecie, or other abused sciences, quairby they
+perswade peopil that they can tell thir weirds, deaths, and fortunes, and
+sik uther phantastical imaginations," &c., &c.
+
+Another law was passed in Scotland in 1609, not less severe than the one
+passed in 1579, called Scottish Acts, and in which I find the
+following:--"Sorcerers, common thieves, commonly called Egyptians, were
+directed to pass forth of the kingdom, under pain of death as common,
+notorious, and condemned thieves."  This was persecution with vengeance,
+and no mistake; and it was under this kind of treatment, severe as it
+was, the Gipsies continued to grow and prosper in carrying out their
+nefarious practices.  The case of these poor miserable wretches, midnight
+prowlers, with eyes and hearts and bending steps determined upon mischief
+and evil-doing, presents to us the spectacle of justice untempered with
+mercy.  The phial filled with revenge, malice, spite, hatred,
+extermination and blood--without the milk of human kindness, the honey of
+love, water from the crystal fountain, and the tincture of Gethsemane's
+garden being added to take away the nauseousness of it--being handed
+these poor deluding witches and wretches to drink to the last dregs,
+failed to get rid of social and national grievances.  The hanging of
+thirteen Gipsies at one of the Suffolk Assizes a few years before the
+Restoration carried with it none of the seeds of a reformation in their
+character and habits, nor did it lessen the number of these wandering
+prowlers, for we find that from the landing of a few hundred of Gipsies
+from France in 1514, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century,
+the number had increased to something like 15,000.  The number who had
+been hung, died in prison, suffered starvation, and the fewness of those
+who were Christians, and gone to heaven, during the period of over 250
+years, and prior to the noble efforts of Raper, Sir Joseph Banks,
+Hoyland, Crabb, Borrow, and others, is fearful to contemplate.  Hoyland
+tells us that in his day, "not one Gipsy in a thousand could read or
+write."
+
+Efforts put forth to exterminate these Asiatic heathens, babble-mongers,
+and bush-ranging thieves, were not confined to England alone.  King
+Ferdinand of Spain was the first to set the persecuting machine at work
+to grind them to powder, and passed an edict in the year 1492 for their
+extermination, which only drove them into hiding-places, to come out,
+with their mouths watering, in greater numbers, for fresh acts of
+violence and plunder.  At the King's death, the Emperor Charles V.
+persecuted them afresh, but with no success, and the consequence was they
+were left alone in Spain to pursue their course of robbery and crime for
+more than 200 years.  In France an edict was passed by Francis I.  At a
+Council of the State of Orleans an order was sent to all Governors to
+drive the Gipsies out of the country with fire and the sword.  Under this
+edict they still increased, and a new order was issued in 1612 for their
+extermination.  In 1572 they were driven from the territories of Milan
+and Parma, and earlier than this date they were driven beyond the
+Venetian jurisdiction.
+
+    "It is the sound of fetters--sound of work
+    Is not so dismal.  Hark! they pass along.
+    I know it is those Gipsy prisoners;
+    I saw them, heard their chains.  O! terrible
+    To be in chains."
+
+In Denmark they were not allowed to pass about the country unmolested,
+and every magistrate was ordered to take them into custody.  A very sharp
+and severe order came out for their expulsion from Sweden in the year
+1662.  Sixty-one years later a second order was published by the Diet;
+and in 1727 additional stringent measures were added to the foregoing
+edicts.  Under pain of death they were excluded from the Netherlands by
+Charles V., and in 1582 by the United Provinces.  Germany seems to have
+led the van in passing laws for their extermination.  At the Augsburg
+Diet in 1500, Maximillian I. had the following edict drawn
+up:--"Respecting those people who call themselves Gipsies roving up and
+down the country.  By public edict to all ranks of the empire, according
+to the obligations under which they are bound to us and the Holy Empire,
+it is strictly ordered that in future they do not permit the said Gipsies
+(since there is authentic evidence of their being spies, scouts, and
+conveyers of intelligence, betraying the Christians to the Turks) to pass
+or remain within their territories, nor to trade or traffic, neither to
+grant them protection nor convoy, and that the said Gipsies do withdraw
+themselves before Easter next ensuing from the German Dominions, entirely
+quit them, nor suffer themselves to be found therein.  As in case they
+should transgress after this time, and receive injury from any person,
+they shall have no redress, nor shall such persons be thought to have
+committed any crime."  Grellmann says the same affair occupied the Diet
+in 1530, 1544, 1548, and 1551, and was also enforced in the stringent
+police regulations of Frankfort in 1577, and he goes on to say that with
+the exception of Hungary and Transylvania, they were similarly proscribed
+in every civilised state.  I think it will be seen by the foregoing
+German edict that there is some foundation for the supposition I have
+brought forward earlier, viz., that the persecution of the Gipsies in
+this country was not so much on account of their thieving deeds, plunder,
+and other abominations, as their connection with the emissaries of the
+Pope of Rome, and in the secrecy of their movements in going from village
+to village, undermining the foundation of the State, law, and order,
+civil and religious liberty.  The only bright spot and cheerful tint upon
+this sorrowful picture of persecution which took place in our own country
+during these dark ages was the appearance of the Star of Elstow, John
+Bunyan, the Bedfordshire tinker, whose life and death forcibly
+illustrates the last words of Jesus upon the Cross, "Father, forgive
+them, they know not what they do."
+
+    "'Twere ill to banish hope and let the mind
+    Drift like a feather.  I have had my share
+    Of what the world calls trial.  Once a fire
+    Came in the darkness, when the city lay
+    In a still sea of slumber, stretching out
+    Great lurid arms which stained the firmament;
+    And when I woke the room was full of sparks,
+    And red tongues smote the lattice.  Then a hand
+    Came through the sulphur, taking hold of mine,
+    And the next moment there were shouts of joy.
+    Ah! I was but a child and my first care
+    Was for my mother."--HARRIS (the Cornish poet).
+
+Towards the end of the eighteenth century it became evident that edicts
+and persecutions were not going to stamp out the Gipsies in this country,
+for instead of them decreasing in numbers they kept increasing; at this
+time there were supposed to be about 18,000 in the country.  The
+following sad case, showing the malicious spirits of the Gipsies, and the
+relentless hand of the hangman, seemed to have had the effect of bringing
+the authorities to bay.  They had begun to put their "considering caps"
+on, and were in a fix as to the next move, and it was time they had.
+They had never thought of tempering justice with mercy.  A century ago,
+1780, a number of young Gipsies were arrested at Northampton, upon what
+charge it does not appear.  It should be noted that Northamptonshire at
+this time was a favourite round for the Gipsy fraternity as well as the
+adjoining counties.  This, it seems, excited the feelings of the Gipsies
+in the county, and they sought to obtain the release of the young Gipsies
+who were in custody, but were not successful in their application to the
+magistrate; the consequence was--true to their instincts--the spirit of
+revenge manifested itself to such a degree that the Gipsies threatened to
+set fire to the town, and would, in all probability have carried it out
+had not a number of them been brought to the gallows for these threats.
+With this case the hands of persecution began to hang down, for it was
+evident that persecution _alone_ would neither improve these Gipsies nor
+yet drive them out of the country.  The tide of events now changed.  Law,
+rigid, stern justice alone could do no good with them, and consequently
+handed them over to the minister of love and mercy.  This step was a
+bound to the opposite extreme, and as we go along we shall see that the
+efforts put forth in this direction alone met with but little more
+success than under the former treatment.  Seven years after the foregoing
+executions Grellmann's work upon the Gipsies appeared, which caused a
+considerable commotion among the religious communities, following, as it
+did, the universal feeling aroused in the welfare of the children of this
+country by the establishment of Sunday-schools throughout the length and
+breadth of the land to teach the children of the working-classes reading
+and writing and the fundamental principles of Christianity.  After
+repeated efforts put forth by a number of Christian gentlemen, and the
+interest caused by the publication of Grellmann's book, the work of
+reforming the Gipsies by purely religious and philanthropic action began
+to lag behind; the result was, as in the case of persecution, no good was
+observable, and the Gipsies were allowed to go again on their way to
+destruction.  The next step was one in the right direction, viz., that of
+trying to improve the Gipsies by the means of the schoolmaster; although
+humble and feeble in its plan of operation, yet if we look to the agency
+put forth and its results, the Sunday-school teacher must have felt
+encouraged in his work as he plodded on Sunday after Sunday.
+
+It may be said of Thomas Howard as it was said of the poor widow of old,
+he "hath done more than them all."  The following account of this
+cheerful, encouraging, and interesting gathering is taken from Hoyland,
+in which he says:--"The first account he received of any of them was from
+Thomas Howard, proprietor of a glass and china shop, No. 50, Fetter Lane,
+Fleet Street.  This person, who preached among the Calvinists, said that
+in the winter of 1811 he had assisted in the establishment of a
+Sunday-school in Windwill Street, Acre Lane, near Clapham.  It was under
+the patronage of a single gentlewoman, of the name of Wilkinson, and
+principally intended for the neglected and forlorn children of
+brick-makers and the most abject poor."  At the present day Gipsies
+generally locate in the neighbourhood of brick-yards and low, swampy
+marshes, or by the side of rivers or canals.  It was begun on a small
+scale, but increased till the number of scholars amounted to forty.
+
+"During the winter a family of Gipsies, of the name of Cooper, obtained
+lodgings at a house opposite the school.  Trinity Cooper, a daughter of
+the Gipsy family, who was about thirteen years of age, applied to be
+instructed at the school; but in consequence of the obloquy affixed to
+that description of persons she was repeatedly refused.  She nevertheless
+persevered in her importunity, till she obtained admission for herself
+and two of her brothers.  Thomas Howard says, surrounded as he was by
+ragged children, without shoes and stockings, the first lesson he taught
+them was silence and submission.  They acquired habits of subordination
+and became tractable and docile; and of all his scholars there were not
+any more attentive and affectionate than these; and when the Gipsies
+broke up in the spring, to make their usual excursions, the children
+expressed much regret at leaving school.  This account was confirmed by
+Thomas Jackson, of Brixton Row, minister of Stockwell Chapel, who
+said:--Since the above experiment, several Gipsies had been admitted to a
+Sabbath-school under the direction of his congregation.  At their
+introduction, he compared them to birds when first put into the cage,
+which flew against the sides of it, having no idea of restraint; but by a
+steady, even care over them, and the influence of the example of other
+children, they soon become settled and fell into their ranks."  The next
+step taken to let daylight upon the Gipsy and his dark doings in the dark
+ages was by means of letters to the Press, and what surprises me is that
+this step, the most important of all, was not taken before.
+
+In a letter addressed to the _Christian Observer_, vol. vii., p. 91, in
+the year about 1809, "Nil" writes:--"As the divine spirit of Christianity
+deems no object, however uncouth or insignificant, beneath her notice, I
+venture to apply to you on behalf of a race, the outcasts of society, of
+whose pitiable condition, among the many forms of human misery which have
+engaged your efforts, I do not recollect to have seen any notice in the
+pages of your excellent miscellany.  I allude to the deplorable state of
+the Gipsies, on whose behalf I beg leave to solicit your good offices
+with the public.  Lying at our very doors, they seem to have a peculiar
+claim on our compassion.  In the midst of a highly refined state of
+society, they are but little removed from savage life.  In this happy
+country, where the light of Christianity shines with its purest lustre,
+they are still strangers to its cheering influence.  I have not heard
+even of any efforts which have been made either by individuals or
+societies for their improvement."  "Fraternicus," writing to the same
+Journal, vol. vii., and in the same year, says:--"It is painful to
+reflect how many thousands of these unhappy creatures have, since the
+light of Christianity has shone on this island, gone into eternity
+ignorant of the ways of salvation;" and goes on to say that, "there is an
+awful responsibility attached to this neglect," and recommends the
+appointment of missionaries to the work; and finishes his appeal as
+follows:--"Christians of various denominations, perhaps may, through the
+divine providence, be the means of exciting effectual attention to the
+spiritual wants of this deplorable set of beings; and the same
+benevolence which induced you to exert your talents and influence on
+behalf of the oppressed negroes may again be successfully employed in
+ameliorating the condition of a numerous class of our fellow-creatures."
+"H." wrote to the _Christian Observer_, and said he hoped "to see the day
+when the nation, which has at length done justice to the poor negroes,
+will be equally zealous to do their duty in this instance," and he
+offered to subscribe "twenty pounds per annum towards so good an object."
+"Minimus," another writer to the same paper, with reference to missionary
+enterprise, says:--"The soil which it is proposed to cultivate is
+remarkably barren and unpropitious; of course, a plentiful harvest must
+not be soon expected;" and finishes his letter by saying, "Let us arise
+and build; let us begin; there is no fear of progress and help."  "H.," a
+clergyman, writes again and says:--"Surely, when our charity is flowing
+in so wide a channel, conveying the blessings of the Gospel to the most
+distant quarters of the globe, we shall not hesitate to water this one
+barren and neglected field in our own land.  My attention was drawn to
+the state of this miserable class of human beings by the letter of
+'Fraternicus,' and looking upon it as a reproach to our country;" and
+ends his letter with a short prayer, as follows: "It is my earnest prayer
+to God that this may not be one of these projects which are only talked
+of and never begun; but that it may tend to the glory of His name and to
+the bringing back of these poor lost sheep to the fold of their
+Redeemer."  "J. P." writes to the same Journal, April 28, 1810, in which
+he says:--"Circumstances lead to think that were encouragement given to
+them the Gipsies would be inclined to live in towns and villages like
+other people; and would in another generation become civilised, and with
+the pains which are now taken to educate the poor, and to diffuse the
+Scriptures and the knowledge of Christ, would become a part of the
+regular fold.  It would require much patient continuance in well doing in
+those who attempted it, and they must be prepared, perhaps, to meet with
+some untowardness and much disappointment."  "Fraternicus" sums up the
+correspondence by suggesting a plan of taking the school to the Gipsies
+instead of taking the Gipsies to the schools:--"If the compulsory
+education of the Gipsies had taken place a century ago, and their tents
+brought under some sort of sanitary inspection, what a change by this
+time would have taken place in their habits," &c.; and he further
+says:--"By degrees they might be brought to attend divine worship; and if
+in the parish of a pious clergyman he would probably embrace the
+opportunity of teaching them.  Much might be done by a pious schoolmaster
+and schoolmistress, by whom the girls might be taught different kinds of
+work, knitting, sewing, &c.  Should these suggestions be deemed worthy of
+your insertion, they might, perhaps, awaken the attention of some
+benevolent persons, whose superior talents and experience in the ways of
+beneficence would enable them to perfect and carry into execution a plan
+for the effectual benefit of these unhappy portioners of our kind."
+
+"Junius," in the _Northampton Mercury_, under date June 27th, 1814,
+writes:--"When we consider the immense sums raised for every probable
+means of doing good which have hitherto been made public, we cannot doubt
+if a proper method should be proposed for the relief and ameliorating the
+state of these people it would meet with deserved encouragement.  Suppose
+that legislature should think this not unworthy its notice, and as a part
+of the great family they ought not to be overlooked."  Another
+correspondent to the same Journal, "A Friend of Religion," writes under
+date July 21st, 1815, urging the necessity of some means being adopted
+for their improvement, and remarks as follows:--"Thousands of our
+fellow-creatures would be raised from depravity and wretchedness to a
+state of comfort; the private property of individuals be much more
+secure, and the public materially benefited."
+
+Instead of putting into practice measures for their improvement, and the
+State taking hold of them by the hand as children belonging to us, and
+with us, and for whom our first care ought to have been, we have said in
+anger--
+
+             "'Heathen dog!
+    Begone, begone! you shall have nothing here.'
+    The Indian turned; then facing Collingrew,
+    In accents low and musical, he said:
+    'But I am very hungry; it is long
+    Since I have eaten.  Only give me a crust,
+    A bone, to cheer me on my weary way.'
+    Then answered he, with fury and a frown:
+    'Go!  Get you gone! you red-skinned heathen hound!
+    I've nothing for you.  Get you gone, I say!'"
+
+                                               HARRIS, "Wayside Pictures."
+
+During the summer of 1814, Mr. John Hoyland, of Sheffield, set to work in
+earnest to try to improve the condition of the Gipsies, and for that
+purpose he visited, in conjuction with Mr. Allen, solicitor at Higham
+Ferners, many parts of Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties; and he
+also sent out a circular to most of the sheriffs in England with a number
+of questions upon it relating to their numbers, condition, &c., and the
+following are a few of the answers sent in reply:--1. All Gipsies suppose
+the first of them came from Egypt.  2. They cannot form any idea of the
+number in England.  5. The more common names are Smith, Cooper, Draper,
+Taylor, Boswell, Lee, Lovell, Leversedge, Allen, Mansfield, Glover,
+Williams, Carew, Martin, Stanley, Buckley, Plunkett, and Corrie.  6 and
+7. The gangs in different towns have not any connection or organisation.
+8. In the county of Herts it is computed there may be sixty families,
+having many children.  Whether they are quite so numerous in
+Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire the answers are not
+sufficiently definite to determine.  In Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire,
+Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, greater numbers are calculated
+upon.  9. More than half their numbers follow no business; others are
+dealers in horses and asses, &c., &c.  10. Children are brought up in the
+habits of their parents, particular to music and dancing, and are of
+dissolute conduct.  11. The women mostly carry baskets with trinkets and
+small wares, and tell fortunes.  13. In most counties there are
+particular situations to which they are partial.  15, 16, and 17. Do not
+know of any person that can write the language, or of any written
+specimen of it.  19. Those who profess any religion represent it to be
+that of the country in which they reside; but their description of it
+seldom goes beyond repeating the Lord's Prayer, and only a few of them
+are capable of that.  20. They marry, for the most part, by pledging to
+each other, without any ceremony.  21. They do not teach their children
+religion.  22 and 23. Not _one in a thousand can read_.  Most of these
+answers were confirmed by Riley Smith, who, during many years, was
+accounted the chief of the Gipsies in Northamptonshire.  Mr. John Forster
+and Mr. William Carrington, respectable merchants of Biggleswade, and who
+knew Riley Smith well, corroborated his statements.  After Hoyland had
+published his book no one stepped into the breach, with flag in hand, to
+take up the cry; and for several years--except the efforts of a clergyman
+here and there--the interest in the cause of the Gipsies dwindled down,
+and became gradually and miserably less, and the consequence was the
+Gipsies have not improved an iota during the three centuries they have
+been in our midst.  As they were, so they are, and likely to remain
+unless brought under State control.
+
+                "On the winds
+    A voice came murmuring, 'We must work and wait';
+    And every echo in the far-off fen
+    Took up the utterance: 'We must work and wait.'
+    Her spirit felt it, 'We must work and wait.'"
+
+                                                                   HARRIS.
+
+No one heeded the warning.  No one listened to the cries of the poor
+Gipsy children as they glided into eternity.  No one put out their hands
+to save them as they kept disappearing from the gaze of the bystanders,
+among whom were artificial Christians, statesmen, and philanthropists.
+All was as still as death, and the poor black wretches passed away.
+
+Whether His Majesty George III. had ever read Grellmann's or Hoyland's
+works on Gipsies has not been shown.  The following interesting account
+will show that royal personages are not deaf to the cries of suffering
+humanity, be it in a Gipsy's wigwam, a cottage, or palace.  It is taken
+from a missionary magazine for June, 1823, and in all probability the
+circumstance took place not many years prior to this date, and is as
+follows:--"A king of England of happy memory, who loved his people and
+his God better than kings in general are wont to do, occasionally took
+the exercise of hunting.  Being out one day for this purpose, the chase
+lay through the shrubs of the forest.  The stag had been hard run; and,
+to escape the dogs, had crossed the river in a deep part.  As the dogs
+could not be brought to follow, it became necessary, in order to come up
+with it, to make a circuitous route along the banks of the river, through
+some thick and troublesome underwood.  The roughness of the ground, the
+long grass and frequent thickets, gave opportunity for the sportsmen to
+separate from each other, each one endeavouring to make the best and
+speediest route he could.  Before they had reached the end of the forest
+the king's horse manifested signs of fatigue and uneasiness, so much so
+that his Majesty resolved upon yielding the pleasures of the chase to
+those of compassion for his horse.  With this view he turned down the
+first avenue in the forest and determined on riding gently to the oaks,
+there to wait for some of his attendants.  His Majesty had only proceeded
+a few yards when, instead of the cry of the hounds, he fancied he heard
+the cry of human distress.  As he rode forward he heard it more
+distinctly.  'Oh, my mother! my mother!  God pity and bless my poor
+mother!'  The curiosity and kindness of the king led him instantly to the
+spot.  It was a little green plot on one side of the forest, where was
+spread on the grass, under a branching oak, a little pallet, half covered
+with a kind of tent, and a basket or two, with some packs, lay on the
+ground at a few paces distant from the tent.  Near to the root of the
+tree he observed a little swarthy girl, about eight years of age, on her
+knees, praying, while her little black eyes ran down with tears.
+Distress of any kind was always relieved by his Majesty, for he had a
+heart which melted at 'human woe'; nor was it unaffected on this
+occasion.  And now he inquired, 'What, my child, is the cause of your
+weeping?  For what do you pray?'  The little creature at first started,
+then rose from her knees, and pointing to the tent, said, 'Oh, sir! my
+dying mother!'  'What?' said his Majesty, dismounting, and fastening his
+horse up to the branches of the oak, 'what, my child? tell me all about
+it.'  The little creature now led the king to the tent; there lay, partly
+covered, a middle-aged female Gipsy in the last stages of a decline, and
+in the last moments of life.  She turned her dying eyes expressively to
+the royal visitor, then looked up to heaven; but not a word did she
+utter; the organs of speech had ceased their office! _the silver cord was
+loosed_, _and the wheel broken at the cistern_.  The little girl then
+wept aloud, and, stooping down, wiped the dying sweat from her mother's
+face.  The king, much affected, asked the child her name, and of her
+family; and how long her mother had been ill.  Just at that moment
+another Gipsy girl, much older, came, out of breath, to the spot.  She
+had been at the town of W---, and had brought some medicine for her dying
+mother.  Observing a stranger, she modestly curtsied, and, hastening to
+her mother, knelt down by her side, kissed her pallid lips, and burst
+into tears.  'What, my dear child,' said his Majesty, 'can be done for
+you?'  'Oh, sir!' she replied, 'my dying mother wanted a religious person
+to teach her and to pray with her before she died.  I ran all the way
+before it was light this morning to W---, and asked for a minister, _but
+no one could I get to come with me to pray with my dear mother_!'  The
+dying woman seemed sensible of what her daughter was saying, and her
+countenance was much agitated.  The air was again rent with the cries of
+the distressed daughters.  The king, full of kindness, instantly
+endeavoured to comfort them.  He said, 'I am a minister, and God has sent
+me to instruct and comfort your mother.'  He then sat down on a pack by
+the side of the pallet, and, taking the hand of the dying Gipsy,
+discoursed on the demerit of sin and the nature of redemption.  He then
+pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour.  While the king was
+doing this the poor creature seemed to gather consolation and hope; her
+eyes sparkled with brightness, and her countenance became animated.  She
+looked up; she smiled; but it was the last smile; it was the glimmering
+of expiring nature.  As the expression of peace, however, remained strong
+in her countenance, it was not till some little time had elapsed that
+they perceived the struggling spirit had left mortality.
+
+"It was at this moment that some of his Majesty's attendants, who had
+missed him at the chase, and who had been riding through the forest in
+search of him, rode up, and found the king comforting the afflicted
+Gipsies.  It was an affecting sight, and worthy of everlasting record in
+the annals of kings.
+
+"His Majesty now rose up, put some gold into the hands of the afflicted
+girls, promised them his protection, and bade them look to heaven.  He
+then wiped the tears from his eyes and mounted his horse.  His
+attendants, greatly affected, stood in silent admiration.  Lord L--- was
+now going to speak, when his Majesty, turning to the Gipsies, and
+pointing to the breathless corpse, and to the weeping girls, said, with
+strong emotion, 'Who, my lord, who, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto
+these?'"
+
+    "Hark!  Don't you hear the rumbling of its wheels?
+    Nearer it comes and nearer!  Oh, what light!
+    The tent is full; 'tis glory everywhere!
+    Dear Jesus, I am coming!  Then she fell--
+    As falls a meteor when the skies are clear."
+
+After this solemn but interesting event nothing further seems to have
+been done by either Christian or philanthropist towards wiping out this
+national disgrace, and the Gipsies were left to follow the bent of their
+evil propensities for several years, till Mr. Crabb's reading of Hoyland
+and witnessing the sentence of death passed upon a Gipsy at Winchester,
+in 1827, for horse-stealing.
+
+Mr. Crabb happened to enter just as the judge was passing sentence of
+death on two unhappy men.  To one he held out the hope of mercy; but to
+the other, a poor Gipsy, who was convicted of horse-stealing, he said, no
+hope could be given.  The young man, for he was but a youth, immediately
+fell on his knees, and with uplifted hands and eyes, apparently
+unconscious of any persons being present but the judge and himself,
+addressed him as follows: "Oh, my Lord, save my life!"  The judge
+replied, "No; you can have no mercy in this world: I and my brother
+judges have come to the determination to execute horse-stealers,
+especially Gipsies, because of the increase of the crime."  The
+suppliant, still on his knees, entreated--"Do, my Lord Judge, save my
+life! do, for God's sake, for my wife's sake, for my baby's sake!"  "No,"
+replied the judge, "I cannot; you should have thought of your wife and
+children before."  He then ordered him to be taken away, and the poor
+fellow was rudely dragged from his earthly judge.  It is hoped, as a
+penitent sinner, he obtained the more needful mercy of God, through the
+abounding grace of Christ.  After this scene Mr. Crabb could not remain
+in court.  As he returned he found the mournful intelligence had been
+communicated to some Gipsies who had been waiting without, anxious to
+learn the fate of their companion.  They seemed distracted.
+
+On the outside of the court, seated on the ground, appeared an old woman
+and a very young one, and with them two children, the eldest three years
+and the other an infant but fourteen days old.  The former sat by its
+mother's side, alike unconscious of her bitter agonies and of her
+father's despair.  The old woman held the infant tenderly in her arms,
+and endeavoured to comfort its weeping mother, soon to be a widow under
+circumstances the most melancholy.  "My dear, don't cry," said she;
+"remember you have this dear little baby."  Impelled by the sympathies of
+pity and a sense of duty, Mr. Crabb spoke to them on the evil of sin, and
+expressed his hope that the melancholy event would prove a warning to
+them, and to all their people.  The poor man was executed about a
+fortnight after his condemnation.
+
+Mr. Crabb being full of fire and zeal, set to work in right good earnest,
+and succeeded in forming a committee at Southampton to bring about a
+reformation among the Gipsies.  He also enlisted the sympathy of other
+earnest Christians in the work, and for a time, while the sun shone,
+received encouraging signs of success, in fact, according to his little
+work published in 1831, his labours were attended with blessed results
+among the adult portion of the Gipsies.  Owing to the wandering habits of
+the Gipsies, discouragements, and his own death, the work, so far as any
+organisation was concerned, came to an end.  No Elisha came forward to
+catch his mantle, the consequence was the Gipsies were left again to work
+out their own destruction according to their own inclinations and tastes,
+as they deemed best, plainly showing that voluntary efforts are very
+little better than a shadow, vanishing smoke, and spent steam, to
+illuminate, elevate, warm, cheer, and encourage the wandering, dark-eyed
+vagabonds roving about in our midst into paths of usefulness, honesty,
+and sobriety.
+
+Thus far in this part I have feebly endeavoured to show that rigid,
+stern, inflexible law and justice on the one hand, and meek, quiet, mild,
+human love and mercy on the other hand, have separately failed in the
+object the promoters had in view.  Justice tried to exterminate the
+Gipsy; mercy tried to win them over.  Of the two processes I would much
+prefer that of mercy.  It is more pleasant to human nature to be under
+its influence, and more in the character of an Englishman to deal out
+mercy.  The next efforts put forth to reform these renegades was by means
+of fiction, romance, and poetry.  Some writers, in their praiseworthy
+endeavours to make up a medicine to improve the condition of the Gipsies,
+have neutralised its effects by adding too much honey and spice to it.
+Others, who have mistaken the emaciated condition of the Gipsy, have been
+dosing him with cordials entirely, to such a degree, that he--Romany
+_chal_--imagines he is right in everything he says and does, and he ought
+to have perfect liberty to go anywhere or do anything.  Some have
+attempted to paint him white, and in doing so have worked up the
+blackness from underneath, and presented to us a character which excites
+a feeling in our notions--a kind of go-between, akin to sympathy and
+disgust.  Not a few have thrown round the Gipsy an enchanting, bewitching
+halo, which an inspection has proved nothing less than a delusion and a
+snare.  Others have tried to improve this field of thistles and sour
+docks by throwing a handful of daisy seeds among them.  It requires
+something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and bring him
+to land.  Scents and perfumes in a death-bed chamber only last for a
+short time.  A bottle of rose-water thrown into a room where
+decomposition is at work upon a body will not restore life.  Scattering
+flowers upon a cesspool of iniquity will not purify it.  A fictitious
+rope composed of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy
+children.  To put artificially-coloured feathers upon the head of a Gipsy
+child dressed in rags and shreds, with his body literally teeming with
+vermin and filth, will not make him presentable at court or a fit subject
+for a drawing-room.  To dress the Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy
+with the violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the
+repulsive aspect of his features.  The first storm of persecution brings
+him out again in his true colour.  The forked light of imagination thrown
+across the heavens on a dark night is not the best to reveal the
+character of a Gipsy and set him upon the highways for usefulness and
+heaven.  The dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various
+characters in his endeavour to improve his condition.  After the fine
+colours have been doffed, music finished, applause ceased, curtain
+dropped, and scene ended, he has been a black, swarthy, idle, thieving,
+lying, blackguard of a Gipsy still.  Applause, fine colours, and dazzling
+lights have not altered his nature.  Bad he is, and bad he will remain,
+unless we follow out the advice of the good old book, "Train up a child
+in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
+
+Would to God the voice of the little Gipsy girl would begin to ring in
+our ears, when she spoke with finger pointed and tears in her eyes:--
+
+    "There is a cabin half-way down the cliff,
+    You see it from this arch-stone; there we live,
+    And there you'll find my mother.  Poverty
+    Weeps on the woven rushes, and long grass
+    Rent from the hollows is our only bed.
+    I have no father here; he ran away;
+    Perhaps he's dead, perhaps he's living yet,
+    And may come back again and kiss his child;
+    For every day, and morn, and even star,
+    I pray for him with face upturned to heaven,
+    'O blessed Saviour, send my father home!'"
+
+The word "Gipsy" seems to have a magic thread running through it,
+beginning at the tip end of "G" and ending with the tail end of "y."
+Geese have tried to gobble it, ducks swallow it, hens scratched after it,
+peacocks pecked it, dandy cocks crowed over it, foxes have hid it, dogs
+have fought for it, cats have sworn and spit over it, pigs have tried to
+gulp it as the daintiest morsel, parrots have chatted about it, hawks,
+eagles, jackdaws, magpies, ravens, and crows have tried to carry it away
+as a precious jewel, and in the end all have put it down as a thing they
+could neither carry nor swallow; and after all, when it has been stripped
+of its dowdy colours, what has it been?  Only a "scamp," in many cases,
+reared and fostered among thieves, pickpockets, and blackguards, in our
+back slums and sink gutters.  Strip the 20,000 men, women, and children
+of the word "Gipsy," moving about our country under the artificial and
+unreal association connected with Gipsy life, so-called, of the "red
+cloaks," "silver buttons," "pretty little feet," "small hands,"
+"bewitching eyes," "long black hair," in nine cases out of ten in name
+only, and you, at a glance, see the class of people you have been
+neglecting, consequently sending to ruin and misery through fear on the
+one hand and lavishing smiles on the other.
+
+In all ages there have been people silly enough to be led away by sights,
+sounds, colours, and unrealities, to follow a course of life for which
+they are not suited, either by education, position, or tastes.  No one
+acts the part of a butterfly among school-boys better than the black-eyed
+Gipsy girl has done among "fast-goers," swells, and fops.  In ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred she has trotted them out to perfection and then
+left them in the lurch, and those, when they have come to their senses,
+and had their eyes opened to the stern facts of a Gipsy's life, have said
+to themselves, "What fools we have been, to be sure," and they would have
+given any amount to have undone the past.  The praise, flattery, and
+looks bestowed upon the "bewitching deceivers," when they have been
+labouring under the sense of infatuation and fascination instead of
+reason, has made them in the presence of friends hang down their heads
+like a willow, and to escape, if possible, the company of their "old
+chums" by all sorts of manoeuvres.  Hubert Petalengro--a gentleman, and a
+rich member of a long family--conceived the idea, after falling madly in
+love with a dark-eyed beauty, so-called, of turning Gipsy and tasting for
+himself--not in fiction and romance--the charms of tent life, as he
+thought, in reality passing through the "first," "second," and "third
+degrees."  At first, it was ideal and fascinating enough in all
+conscience; it was a pity Brother Petalengro did not have a foretaste of
+it by spending a month in a Gipsy's tent in the depth of winter, with no
+balance at his banker's, and compelled to wear Gipsy clothing, and make
+pegs and skewers for his Sunday broth; gather sticks for the fire, and
+sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and peeping through
+the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his back, surrounded by
+Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, cursing each other under
+the maddening influence of brandy and disappointment.  To make himself
+and his damsel comfortable on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold,
+flask with brandy, buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of
+foxes' heads--and I suppose tails too--waterproof covering for the tent,
+and waterproof sheets and a number of blankets to lay on the damp grass
+to prevent their tender bodies being overtaken with rheumatics, and he
+also lays in a stock of potted meats and other dainties; makes all
+"square" with Esmeralda and her two brothers and the donkeys; takes first
+and second-class tickets for the whole of them to Hull--the Balaams
+excepted (it is not on record that they spoke to him on his journey);
+provides Esmeralda with dresses and petticoats--not too long to hide her
+pretty ankles, red stockings, and her lovely little foot--gold and
+diamond rings, violin, tambourine, the guitar, Wellington boots, and
+starts upon his trip to Norway in the midst of summer beauty.  Many times
+he must have said to himself, "Oh! how delightful."  "As we journeyed
+onward, how fragrant the wild flowers--those wild flowers can never be
+forgotten.  Gipsies like flowers, it is part of their nature.  Esmeralda
+would pluck them, and forming a charming bouquet, interspersed with
+beautiful wild roses, her first thoughts are to pin them in the
+button-hole of the Romany Rye (Gipsy gentleman).  As we journeyed quietly
+through the forest, how delightful its scenes.  Free from all care, we
+enjoy the anticipation of a long and pleasant ramble in Norway's happy
+land.  We felt contented with all things, and thankful that we should be
+so permitted to roam with our tents and wild children of nature in
+keeping the solitudes we sought.  The rain had soon ceased, tinkle,
+tinkle went the hawk-bells on the collar of our Bura Rawnee as she led
+the way along the romantic Norwegian road.
+
+       [Picture: A Respectable Gipsy and his Family "on the Road"]
+
+    "'Give the snakes and toads a twist,
+    And banish them for ever,'
+
+sang Zachariah, ever and anon giving similar wild snatches.  Then
+Esmeralda would rocker about being the wife of the Romany Rye (Gipsy
+gentleman) and as she proudly paced along in her heavy boots, she
+pictured in imagery the pleasant life she should lead as her Romany Rye's
+joovel, monshi, or somi.  She was full of fun, yet there was nothing in
+her fanciful delineations which could offend us.  They were but the foam
+of a crested wave, soon dissipated in the air.  They were the evanescent
+creations of a lively, open-hearted girl--wild notes trilled by the bird
+of the forest.  We came again into the open valley.  Down a meadow gushed
+a small streamlet which splashed from a wooden spout on to the roadside."
+"The spot where we pitched our tents was near a sort of small natural
+terrace, at the summit of a steep slope above the road, backed by a mossy
+bank, shaded by brushwood and skirting the dense foliage of the dark
+forest of pine and fir, above our camp."  "We gave two of the peasants
+some brandy and tobacco."  "Then all our visitors left, except four
+interesting young peasant girls, who still lingered."  "They had all
+pleasant voices."  "We listened to them with much pleasure; there was so
+much sweetness and feeling in their melody.  Zachariah made up for his
+brother's timidity.  Full of fun, what dreadful faces the young Gipsy
+would pull, they were absolutely frightful; then he would twist and turn
+his body into all sorts of serpentine contortions.  If spoken to he would
+suddenly, with a hop, skip, and a jump alight in his tent as if he had
+tumbled from the sky, and, sitting bolt upright, make a hideous face till
+his mouth nearly stretched from ear to ear, while his dark eyes sparkled
+with wild excitement, he would sing--
+
+    "'Dawdy!  Dawdy! dit a kei
+    Rockerony, fake your bosh!'
+
+"At one time a woman brought an exceedingly fat child for us to look at,
+and she wanted Esmeralda to suckle it, which was, of course, hastily
+declined.  We began to ask ourselves if this was forest seclusion.  Still
+our visitors were kind, good-humoured people, and some drank our brandy,
+and some smoked our English tobacco.  After our tea, at five o'clock, we
+had a pleasant stroll.  Once more we were with Nature.  There we lingered
+till the scenes round us, in their vivid beauty, seemed graven deep in
+our thought.  How graphic are the lines of Moore:--
+
+    "'The turf shall be my fragrant shrine,
+    My temple, Lord, that arch of Thine,
+    My censor's breath the mountain airs,
+    And silent thoughts my only prayers.
+
+    "'My choir shall be the moonlight waves,
+    When murm'ring homeward to their caves,
+    Or when the stillness of the sea
+    Even more of music breathes of Thee!'
+
+How appropriate were the words of the great poet to our feelings.  We
+went and sat down."  "As we were seated by our camp fire, a tall, old
+man, looking round our tents, came and stood contemplating us at our tea.
+He looked as if he thought we were enjoying a life of happiness.  Nor was
+he wrong.  He viewed us with a pleased and kindly expression, as he
+seemed half lost in contemplation.  We sent for the flask of brandy.
+Returning to our tents we put on our Napoleon boots and made some
+additions to our toilette."  Of course, kind Mr. Petalengro would assist
+lovely Esmeralda with hers.  "Whilst we were engaged some women came to
+our tents.  The curiosity of the sex was exemplified, for they were dying
+to look behind the tent partition which screened us from observation.  We
+did not know what they expected to see; one, bolder than the rest, could
+not resist the desire to look behind the scenes, and hastily drew back
+and dropped the curtain, when we said rather sharply, 'Nei! nei!'
+Esmeralda shortly afterwards appeared in her blue dress and silver
+buttons.  Then we all seated ourselves on a mossy bank, on the side of
+the terrace, with a charming view across the valley of the Logan.  At
+eight o'clock the music commenced.  The sun shone beautifully, and the
+mosquitoes and midges bit right and left with hungry determination.  We
+sat in a line on the soft mossy turf of the grassy slope, sheltered by
+foliage.  Esmeralda and Noah with their tambourines, myself with the
+castanets, and Zachariah with his violin.  Some peasant women and girls
+came up after we had played a short time.  It was a curious scene.  Our
+tents were pleasantly situated on an open patch of green sward,
+surrounded by border thickets, near the sunny bank and the small flat
+terrace.  The rising hills and rugged ravines on the other side of the
+valley all gave a singular and romantic beauty to the lovely view.
+Although our Gipsies played with much spirit until nine o'clock, none of
+the peasants would dance.  At nine o'clock our music ceased, and we all
+retired to our tents with the intention of going to bed.  When we were
+going into our tents, a peasant and several others with him, who had just
+arrived, asked us to play again.  At length, observing several peasant
+girls were much disappointed, we decided to play once more.  It was past
+nine o'clock when we again took up our position on the mossy bank; so we
+danced, and the peasant girls, until nearly ten o'clock.  Once we nearly
+whirled ourself and Esmeralda over the slope into the road below.
+Esmeralda's dark eyes flashed fire and sparkled with merriment and
+witchery."
+
+"The bacon and fish at dinner were excellent; we hardly knew which was
+best.  A peasant boy brought us a bundle of sticks for our fire.  The sun
+became exceedingly hot.  Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade
+near our tents."  "Noah stood in the shade blacking his boots, and
+observed to Esmeralda, 'I shall not help my wife as Mr. Petalengro does
+you.'  'Well,' said Esmeralda, 'what is a wife for?'  'For!' retorted
+Noah, sharply, giving his boot an extra brush, 'why, to wait upon her
+husband.'  'And what,' said Esmeralda, 'is a husband for?'  'What's a
+husband for!' exclaimed Noah, with a look of profound pity for his
+sister's ignorance, 'why, to eat and drink, and look on.'"  Mr.
+Petalengro goes on to say: "It would seem to us that the more rude energy
+a man has in his composition the more a woman will be made to take her
+position as helpmate.  It is always a mark of great civilisation and the
+effeminacy of a people when women obtain the undue mastery of men."  And
+he farther goes on to say: "We were just having a romp with Esmeralda and
+her two brothers as we were packing up our things, and a merry laugh,
+when some men appeared at the fence near our camping-ground.  We little
+think," says Mr. Petalengro, "how much we can do in this world to lighten
+a lonely wayfarer's heart."
+
+                  [Picture: A Bachelor Gipsy's Bedroom]
+
+Esmeralda and Mr. Petalengro tell each other their fortunes.  "Esmeralda
+and myself were sitting in our tents.  Then the thought occurred to her
+that we should tell her fortune.  'Your fortune must be a good one,' said
+we, laughing; 'let me see your hand and your lines of life.'  We shall
+never forget Esmeralda.  She looked so earnestly as we regarded
+attentively the line of her open hand."  (Mr. Petalengro does not say
+that tears were to be seen trickling down those lovely cheeks of
+Esmeralda while this fortune-telling, nonsensical farce was being played
+out.)  "Then we took her step by step through some scenes of her supposed
+future.  We did not tell all.  The rest was reserved for another day.
+There was a serious look on her countenance as we ended; but, reader,
+such secrets should not be revealed.  Esmeralda commenced to tell our
+fortunes.  We were interested to know what she would say.  We cast
+ourselves on the waves of fate.  The Gipsy raised her dark eyes from our
+hand as she looked earnestly in the face.  You are a young gentleman of
+good connections.  Many lands you have seen.  But, young man, something
+tells me you are of a wavering disposition.'"  And then charming
+Esmeralda would strike up "The Little Gipsy"--
+
+    "My father's the King of the Gipsies, that's true,
+    My mother she learned me some camping to do;
+    With a packel on my back, and they all wish me well,
+    I started up to London some fortunes for to tell.
+
+    "As I was a walking up fair London streets,
+    Two handsome young squires I chanced for to meet,
+    They viewed my brown cheeks, and they liked them so well,
+    They said 'My little Gipsy girl, can you my fortune tell?'
+
+    "'Oh yes! kind Sir, give me hold of your hand,
+    For you have got honours, both riches and land;
+    Of all the pretty maidens you must lay aside,
+    For it is the little Gipsy girl that is to be your bride.'
+
+    "He led me o'er the Mils, through valleys deep I'm sure,
+    Where I'd servants for to wait on me, and open me the door;
+    A rich bed of down to lay my head upon--
+    In less than nine months after I could his fortune tell.
+
+    "Once I was a Gipsy girl, but now a squire's bride,
+    I've servants for to wait on me, and in my carriage ride.
+    The bells shall ring so merrily, sweet music they shall play,
+    And will crown the glad tidings of that lucky, lucky day."
+
+The drawback to this evening's whirligig farce was that the mosquitoes
+determined to come in for a share.  These little, nipping, biting
+creatures preferred settling upon young blood, full of life and activity,
+existing under artificial circumstances, to the carcase of a dead horse
+lying in the knacker's yard.  To prevent these little stingers drawing
+the sap of life from the sweet bodies of these pretty, innocent, lovable
+creatures, the Gipsies acted a very cruel part in dressing their faces
+over with a brown liquid, called the "tincture of cedar."  It is not
+stated whether the "tincture of cedar "was made in Shropshire or Lebanon,
+nor whether it was extracted from roses, or a decoction of thistles.
+Alas, alas! how fickle human life is!  How often we say and do things in
+jest and fun which turn out to be stern realities in another form.
+
+"As we looked upon the church and parsonage, surrounded as they were by
+the modern park, with the broad silver lake near, the rising mountains on
+all sides, and the clear blue sky above, our senses seemed entranced with
+the passing beauty of the scene.  It was one of those glimpses of perfect
+nature which casts the anchor deep in memory, and leaves a lasting
+impression of bygone days."  And then Esmeralda danced as she sang the
+words of her song; the words not in English are her own, for I cannot
+find them even in the slang Romany, and what she meant by her bosh is
+only known to herself.
+
+    "Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,
+    I'll set me down on yonder hill;
+    And there I'll cry my fill,
+    And every tear shall turn a mill.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn.
+
+    "Shula gang shaugh gig a magala,
+    I'll buy me a petticoat and dye it red,
+    And round this world I'll beg my bread;
+    The lad I love is far away.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn.
+
+    "Shul shul gang along with me,
+    Gang along me, I'll gang along with you,
+    I'll buy you a petticoat and dye it in the blue,
+    Sweet William shall kiss you in the rue.
+    Shula gang shaugh gig a magala
+    To my Uskadina slawn slawn."
+
+"We were supremely happy," says Mr. Petalengro, "in our wandering
+existence.  We contrasted in our semi-consciousness of mind our absence
+from a thousand anxious cares which crowd upon the social position of
+those who take part in an overwrought state of extreme civilisation.  How
+long we should have continued our half-dormant reflections which might
+have added a few more notes upon the philosophy of life, we knew not, but
+we were roused by the rumble of a stolk-jaerre along the road."
+
+"For the dance no music can be better than that of a Gipsy band; there is
+life and animation in it which carries you away.  If you have danced to
+it yourself, especially in a _czardas,_ {176} then to hear the stirring
+tones without involuntarily springing up is, I assert, an absolute
+impossibility."  Poor, deluded mortals, I am afraid they will find--
+
+    "Nothing but leaves!
+    Sad memory weaves
+       No veil to hide the past;
+    And as we trace our weary way,
+    Counting each lost and misspent day,
+       Sadly we find at last,
+    Nothing but leaves!"
+
+The converse of all this artificial and misleading Gipsy life is to be
+seen in hard fate and fact at our own doors--"Look on this picture and
+then on that."
+
+    "There is a land, a sunny land,
+       Whose skies are ever bright;
+    Where evening shadows never fall:
+       The Saviour is its light."
+
+    "There's a land that is fairer than day,
+       And by faith we can see it afar;
+    For the Father waits over the way
+       To prepare us a dwelling-place there
+                In the sweet by-and-bye."
+
+George Borrow, during his labours among the Gipsies of Spain forty years
+ago, did not find much occasion for rollicking fun, merriment, and
+boisterous laughter; his path was not one of roses, over mossy banks,
+among the honeysuckles and daisies, by the side of running rivulets
+warbling over the smooth pebbles; sitting among the primroses, listening
+to the enchanting voices of the thousand forest and valley songsters;
+gazing at the various and beautiful kinds of foliage on the hill-sides as
+the thrilling strains of music pealed forth from the sweet voice of
+Esmeralda and her tambourine.  No, no, no!  George Borrow had to face the
+hard lot of all those who start on the path of usefulness, honour, and
+heaven.  Hard fare, disappointment, opposition, few friends, life in
+danger, his path was rough and covered with stones; his flowers were
+thistles, his songs attended with tears, and sorrow filled his heart.
+But note his object, and mark his end.  In speaking of some of the
+difficulties in his travels, he says:--"My time lay heavily on my hands,
+my only source of amusement consisting in the conversation of the woman
+telling of the wonderful tales of the land of the Moors--prison escapes,
+thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures in which she had been
+engaged.  There was something very wild in her gestures.  She goggled
+frightfully with her eyes."  And then speaking of the old Gipsy woman
+whom he went to see:--"Here, thrusting her hand into her pocket, she
+discharged a handful of some kind of dust or snuff into the fellow's
+face.  He stamped and roared, but was for some time held fast by the two
+Gipsy men; he extricated himself, however, and attempted to unsheath a
+knife which he wore in his girdle; but the two young Gipsies flung
+themselves upon him like furies."
+
+Borrow says, after travelling a long distance by night, and setting out
+again the next morning to travel thirteen leagues:--"Throughout the day a
+drizzling rain was falling, which turned the dust of the roads into mud
+and mire.  Towards evening we reached a moor--a wild place enough, strewn
+with enormous stones and rocks.  The wind had ceased, but a strong wind
+rose and howled at our backs.  The sun went down, and dark night
+presently came over us.  We proceeded for nearly three hours, until we
+heard the barking of dogs, and perceived a light or two in the distance.
+'That is Trujillo,' said Antonio, who had not spoken for a long time.  'I
+am glad of it,' I replied; 'I am so thoroughly tired, I shall sleep
+soundly in Trujillo.'  That is as it may be.  We soon entered the town,
+which appeared dark and gloomy enough.  I followed close behind the
+Gipsy, who led the way, I knew not whither, through dismal streets and
+dark places where cats were squalling.  'Here is the house,' said he at
+last, dismounting before a low, mean hut.  He knocked, but no answer.  He
+knocked again, but no answer.  'There can be no difficulty,' said I,
+'with respect to what we have to do.  If your friends are gone out, it is
+easy enough to go to a posada.'  'You know not what you say,' replied the
+Gipsy.  'I dare not go to the mesuna, nor enter any house in Trujillo
+save this, and this is shut.  Well, there is no remedy; we must move on;
+and, between ourselves, the sooner we leave the place the better.  My own
+brother was garroted at Trujillo.'  He lighted a cigar by means of a
+steel and yesca, sprung on his mule, and proceeded through streets and
+lanes equally dismal as those through which we had already travelled."
+Mr. Borrow goes on to say:--"I confess I did not much like this decision
+of the Gipsy; I felt very slight inclination to leave the town behind,
+and to venture into unknown places in the dark of the night, amidst rain
+and mist--for the wind had now dropped, and the rain again began to fall
+briskly.  I was, moreover, much fatigued, and wished for nothing better
+than to deposit myself in some comfortable manger, where I might sink to
+sleep lulled by the pleasant sound of horses and mules despatching their
+provender.  I had, however, put myself under the direction of the Gipsy,
+and I was too old a traveller to quarrel with my guide under present
+circumstances.  I therefore followed close to his crupper, our only light
+being the glow emitted from the Gipsy's cigar.  At last he flung it from
+his mouth into a puddle, and we were then in darkness.  We proceeded in
+this manner for a long time.  The Gipsy was silent.  I myself was equally
+so.  The rain descended more and more.  I sometimes thought I heard
+doleful noises, something like the hooting of owls.  'This is a strange
+night to be wandering abroad in,' I at length said to Antonio, the Gipsy.
+(The Gipsy word for Antonio is 'Devil.')  'It is, brother,' said the
+Gipsy; 'but I would sooner be abroad in such a night, and in such places,
+than in the estaripel of Trujillo.'
+
+"We wandered at least a league further, and now appeared to be near a
+wood, for I could occasionally distinguish the trunks of immense trees.
+Suddenly Antonio stopped his mule.  'Look, brother,' said he, 'to the
+left, and tell me if you do not see a light; your eyes are sharper than
+mine.'  I did as he commanded me.  At first I could see nothing, but,
+moving a little further on, I plainly saw a large light at some distance,
+seemingly amongst the trees.  'Yonder cannot be a lamp or candle,' said
+I; 'it is more like the blaze of a fire.'  'Very likely,' said Antonio.
+'There are no queres (_houses_) in this place; it is doubtless a fire
+made by durotunes (_shepherds_); let us go and join them, for, as you
+say, it is doleful work wandering about at night amidst rain and mire.'
+
+"We dismounted and entered what I now saw was a forest, leading the
+animals cautiously amongst the trees and brushwood.  In about five
+minutes we reached a small open space, at the farther side of which, at
+the foot of a large cork-tree, a fire was burning, and by it stood or sat
+two or three figures.  They had heard our approach, and one of them now
+exclaimed, 'Quien Vive?'  'I know that voice,' said Antonio, and, leaving
+the horse with me, rapidly advanced towards the fire.  Presently I heard
+an 'Ola!' and a laugh, and soon the voice of Antonio summoned me to
+advance.  On reaching the fire, I found two dark lads, and a still darker
+woman of about forty, the latter seated on what appeared to be horse or
+mule furniture.  I likewise saw a horse and two donkeys tethered to the
+neighbouring trees.  It was, in fact, a Gipsy bivouac . . . 'Come
+forward, brother, and show yourself,' said Antonio to me; 'you are
+amongst friends; these are of the Errate, the very people whom I expected
+to find at Trujillo, and in whose house we should have slept.'
+
+"'And what,' said I, 'could have induced them to leave their house in
+Trujillo and come into this dark forest, in the midst of wind and rain,
+to pass the night?'
+
+"'They come on business of Egypt, brother, doubtless,' replied Antonio,
+'and that business is none of ours.  Calla boca!  It is lucky we have
+found them here, else we should have had no supper, and our horses no
+corn.'
+
+"'My ro is prisoner at the village yonder,' said the woman, pointing with
+her hand in a particular direction; 'he is prisoner yonder for choring a
+mailla (_stealing a donkey_); we are come to see what we can do in his
+behalf; and where can we lodge better than in this forest, where there is
+nothing to pay?  It is not the first time, I trow, that Calore have slept
+at the root of a tree.'
+
+"One of the striplings now gave us barley for our animals in a large bag,
+into which we successively introduced their heads, allowing the famished
+creatures to regale themselves till we conceived that they had satisfied
+their hunger.  There was a puchero simmering at the fire, half-fall of
+bacon, garbanzos, and other provisions; this was emptied into a large
+wooden platter, and out of this Antonio and myself supped; the other
+Gipsies refused to join us, giving us to understand that they had eaten
+before our arrival; they all, however, did justice to the leathern bottle
+of Antonio, which, before his departure from Merida, he had the
+precaution to fill.
+
+"I was by this time completely overcome with fatigue and sleep.  Antonio
+flung me an immense horse-cloth, of which he bore more than one beneath
+the huge cushion on which he rode.  In this I wrapped myself, and placing
+my head upon a bundle, and my feet as near as possible to the fire, I lay
+down."
+
+How delightful and soul-inspiring it would have been to the weary
+pilgrim, jaded in the cause of the poor Gipsies, if Antonio's heart had
+been full of religious zeal and fervour, and Hubert Petalengro and
+Esmeralda, their souls filled to overflowing with the love of God, had
+been by the side of the camp-fire, and the trio had struck up with their
+sweet voices, as the good man was drawing his weary legs and cold feet
+together before the embers of the dying Gipsy fire--
+
+       "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
+          Pilgrim through this barren land;
+       I am weak, but Thou art mighty,
+          Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
+    Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.
+
+       "Open now the crystal fountain
+          Whence the healing waters flow;
+       Let the fiery, cloudy pillars,
+          Lead me all my journey through.
+    Strong Deliverer, be Thou still my strength and shield."
+
+"Antonio and the other Gipsies remained seated by the fire conversing.  I
+listened for a moment to what they said, but I did not perfectly
+understand it, and what I did understand by no means interested me.  The
+rain still drizzled, but I heeded it not, and was soon asleep.
+
+"The sun was just appearing as I awoke.  I made several efforts before I
+could rise from the ground; my limbs were quite stiff, and my hair was
+covered with rime, for the rain had ceased, and a rather severe frost set
+in.  I looked around me, but could see neither Antonio nor the Gipsies;
+the animals of the latter had likewise disappeared, so had the horse
+which I had hitherto rode; the mule, however, of Antonio still remained
+fastened to the tree.  The latter circumstance quieted some apprehensions
+which were beginning to arise in my mind.  'They are gone on some
+business of Egypt,' I said to myself, 'and will return anon.'  I gathered
+together the embers of the fire, and heaping upon them sticks and
+branches, soon succeeded in calling forth a blaze, beside which I again
+placed the puchero, with what remained of the provision of last night.  I
+waited for a considerable time in expectation of the return of my
+companions, but as they did not appear, I sat down and breakfasted.
+Before I had well finished I heard the noise of a horse approaching
+rapidly, and presently Antonio made his appearance amongst the trees,
+with some agitation in his countenance.  He sprang from the horse, and
+instantly proceeded to untie the mule.  'Mount, brother, mount!' said he,
+pointing to the horse; 'I went with the Callee and her chabes to the
+village where the ro is in trouble; the chino-baro, however, seized them
+at once with their cattle, and would have laid hands also on me; but I
+set spurs to the grasti, gave him the bridle, and was soon far away.
+Mount, brother, mount, or we shall have the whole rustic _canaille_ upon
+us in a twinkling--it is such a bad place.'"
+
+I almost imagine Borrow would have said, under the circumstances, as he
+was putting his foot into the stirrup to mount his horse to fly for his
+life into the wild regions of an unknown country:--
+
+    "Jesus, lover of my soul,
+       Let me to Thy bosom fly;
+    While the nearer waters roll,
+       While the tempest still is high.
+    Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
+       Till the storm of life is past,
+    Safe into the haven guide,
+       Oh, receive my soul at last.
+
+    "Other refuge have I none,
+       Hangs my helpless soul on Thee,
+    Leave, O leave me not alone,
+       Still support and comfort me.
+    All my trust on Thee is stayed,
+       All my help from Thee I bring,
+    Cover my defenceless head,
+       With the shadow of Thy wing."
+
+Sir Walter Scott, in "Guy Mannering," speaking of the dark deeds of the
+Gipsies, says:--"The idea of being dragged out of his miserable
+concealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight murder, without
+weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties which would
+be only their sport, and cries for help which could never reach other ear
+than their own--his safety intrusted to the precarious compassion of a
+being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and
+imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling--the
+bitterness of his emotions almost choked him.  He endeavoured to read in
+her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her
+features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which
+females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether
+smother.  There was no such touch of humanity about this woman."
+
+"'Never fear,' said the old Gipsy man, 'Meg's true-bred; she's the last
+in the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and often cuts
+queer words.'  With more of this gibberish, they continued the
+conversation, rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark, obscure
+dialect, eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing
+distinctly or in plain language the subject on which it turned."
+
+G. P. Whyte-Melville speaks of the Russian Gipsies in the language of
+fiction in his "Interpreter" as follows:--"The morning sun smiles upon a
+motley troop journeying towards the Danube.  Two or three lithe, supple
+urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and bright
+black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the advanced guard.
+Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the whole property of the tribe.  The
+main body consists of sinewy, active-looking men, and strikingly handsome
+girls, all walking with the free, graceful air and elastic gait peculiar
+to those whose lives are passed entirely in active exercise, under no
+roof but that of heaven.  Dark-browed women in the very meridian of
+beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race of swarthy progeny,
+all alike distinguished for the sparkling eyes and raven hair, which,
+with a cunning nothing can overreach, and a nature nothing can tame, seem
+to be the peculiar inheritance of the Gipsy.  Their costume is striking,
+not to say grotesque.  Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind their
+brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form a very picturesque
+and not unbecoming head-gear; whilst in a few instances coins even of
+gold are strung amongst the jetty locks of the Zingyni beauties.  The men
+are not so particular in their attire.  One sinewy fellow wears only a
+goatskin shirt and a string of beads round his neck, but the generality
+are clad in the coarse cloth of the country, much tattered, and bearing
+evident symptoms of weather and wear.  The little mischievous urchins who
+are clinging round their mothers' necks, or dragging back from their
+mothers' hands, and holding on to their mothers' skirts, are almost
+naked.  Small heads and hands and feet, all the marks of what we are
+accustomed to term high birth, are hereditary among the Gipsies; and we
+doubt if the Queen of the South herself was a more queenly-looking
+personage than the dame now marching in the midst of the throng, and
+conversing earnestly with her companion, a resolute-looking man scarce
+entering upon the prime of life, with a Gipsy complexion, but a bearing
+in which it is not difficult to recognise the soldier.  He is talking to
+his protectress--for such she is--with a military frankness and vivacity,
+which even to that royal personage, accustomed though she be to exact all
+the respect due to her rank, appear by no means displeasing.  The lady is
+verging on the autumn of her charms (their summer must have been
+scorching indeed!), and though a masculine beauty, is a beauty
+nevertheless.  Black-browed is she, and deep-coloured, with eyes of fire,
+and locks of jet, even now untinged with grey.  Straight and regular are
+her features, and the wide mouth, with its strong, even dazzling teeth,
+betokens an energy and force of will which would do credit to the other
+sex.  She has the face of a woman that would dare much, labour much,
+everything but _love_ much.  She ought to be a queen, and she _is_ one,
+none the less despotic for ruling over a tribe of Gipsies instead of a
+civilised community . . .
+
+"'Every Gipsy can tell fortunes; mine has been told many a time, but it
+never came true.'
+
+"She was studying the lines on his palm with earnest attention.  She
+raised her dark eyes angrily to his face.
+
+"'Blind! blind!' she answered, in a low, eager tone.  'The best of you
+cannot see a yard upon your way.  Look at that white road, winding and
+winding many a mile before us upon the plain.  Because it is flat and
+soft and smooth as far as we can see, will there be no hills on our
+journey, no rocks to cut our feet, no thorns to tear our limbs?  Can you
+see the Danube rolling on far, far before us?  Can you see the river you
+will have to cross some day, or can you tell me where it leads?  I have
+the map of our journey here in my brain; I have the map of your career
+here on your hand.  Once more I say, when the chiefs are in council, and
+the hosts are melting like snow before the sun, and the earth quakes, and
+the heavens are filled with thunder, and the shower that falls scorches
+and crushes and blasts--remember me!  I follow the line of wealth: Man of
+gold! spoil on; here a horse, there a diamond; hundreds to uphold the
+right, thousands to spare the wrong; both hands full, and broad lands
+near a city of palaces, and a king's favour, and a nation of slaves
+beneath thy foot.  I follow the line of pleasure: costly amber; rich
+embroidery; dark eyes melting for the Croat; glances unveiled for the
+shaven head, many and loving and beautiful; a garland of roses, all for
+one--rose by rose plucked and withered and thrown away; one tender bud
+remaining; cherish it till it blows, and wear it till it dies.  I follow
+the line of blood:--it leads towards the rising sun--charging squadrons
+with lances in rest, and a wild shout in a strange tongue; and the dead
+wrapped in grey, with charm and amulet that were powerless to save; and
+hosts of many nations gathered by the sea--pestilence, famine, despair,
+and victory.  Rising on the whirlwind, chief among chiefs, the honoured
+of leaders, the counsellor of princes--remember me!  But ha! the line is
+crossed.  Beware! trust not the sons of the adopted land; when the lily
+is on thy breast, beware of the dusky shadow on the wall! beware, and
+remember me!' . . .
+
+"I proffered my hand readily to the Gipsy, and crossed it with one of the
+two pieces of silver which constituted the whole of my worldly wealth.
+The Gipsy laughed, and began to prophesy in German.  There are some
+events a child never forgets; and I remember every word she said as well
+as if it had been spoken yesterday.
+
+"'Over the sea, and again over the sea; thou shalt know grief and
+hardship and losses, and the dove shall be driven from its nest.  And the
+dove's heart shall become like the eagle's, that flies alone, and fleshes
+her beak in the slain.  Beat on, though the poor wings be bruised by the
+tempest, and the breast be sore, and the heart sink; beat on against the
+wind, and seek no shelter till thou find thy resting-place at last.  The
+time will come--only beat on.'
+
+"The woman laughed as she spoke; but there was a kindly tone in her voice
+and a pitying look in her bright eyes that went straight to my heart.
+Many a time since, in life, when the storm has indeed been boisterous and
+the wings so weary, have I thought of those words of encouragement, 'The
+time will come--beat on.' . . .
+
+"'Thou shalt be a "De Rohan," my darling, and I can promise thee no
+brighter lot--broad acres, and blessings from the poor, and horses, and
+wealth, and honours.  And the sword shall spare thee, and the battle turn
+aside to let thee pass.  And thou shalt wed a fair bride with dark eyes
+and a queenly brow; but beware of St. Hubert's Day.  Birth and burial,
+birth and burial--beware of St. Hubert's Day.'"
+
+Disraeli, speaking of the Gipsies in his "Venetia," says:--"As Cadurcis
+approached he observed some low tents, and in a few minutes he was in the
+centre of an encampment of Gipsies.  He was for a moment somewhat
+dismayed, for he had been brought up with the usual terror of these wild
+people; nevertheless he was not unequal to the occasion.  He was
+surrounded in an instant, but only with women and children, for Gipsy men
+never immediately appear.  They smiled with their bright eyes, and the
+flashes of the watch-fire threw a lurid glare over their dark and
+flashing countenances; they held out their practised hands; they uttered
+unintelligible, but not unfriendly sounds."
+
+Matilda Betham Edwards, in her remarks upon Gipsies, says:--"Your pulses
+are quickened to Gipsy pitch, you are ready to make love or war, to heal
+and slay, to wander to the world's end, to be outlawed and hunted down,
+to dare and do anything for the sake of the sweet, untramelled life of
+the tent, the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the
+joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery love."
+
+I come now to notice what a few of the poets have said about these
+ignorant, nomadic tribes, who have been skulking and flitting about in
+our midst, since the days of Borrow, Roberts, Hoyland, and Crabb--a
+period of over forty years.
+
+    "He grows, like the young oak, healthy and broad,
+    With no home but the forest, no bed but the sward;
+    Half-naked he wades in the limpid stream,
+    Or dances about in the scorching beam.
+    The dazzling glare of the banquet sheen
+    Hath never fallen on him I ween,
+    But fragments are spread, and the wood pine piled,
+    And sweet is the meal of the Gipsy child."--ELIZA COOK.
+
+    "The Gipsy eye, bright as the star
+    That sends its light from heaven afar,
+    Wild with the strains of thy guitar,
+       This heart with rapture fill.
+    Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,
+    Come, touch me with the light guitar.
+    Thy brow unworked by lines of care,
+    Decked with locks of raven hair,
+    Seems ever beautiful and fair
+       At moonlight's stilly hour.
+    What bliss! beside the leafy maze,
+    Illumined by the moon's pale rays,
+    On thy sweet face to sit and gaze,
+       Thou wild, uncultured flower.
+    Then, maiden fair, beneath this star,
+    Come, touch me with the light guitar."
+
+                                      HUBERT SMITH: "Tent Life in Norway."
+
+    "From every place condemned to roam,
+    In every place we seek a home;
+    These branches form our summer roof,
+    By thick grown leaves made weather-proof;
+    In shelt'ring nooks and hollow ways,
+    We cheerily pass our winter days.
+    Come circle round the Gipsy's fire,
+    Come circle round the Gipsy's fire,
+    Our songs, our stories never tire,
+    Our songs, our stories never tire."--REEVE.
+
+    "Where is the little Gipsy's home?
+       Under the spreading greenwood tree,
+    Wherever she may roam,
+       Wherever that tree may be.
+    Roaming the world o'er,
+       Crossing the deep blue sea,
+    She finds on every shore,
+       A home among the free,
+    A home among the free,
+       Ah, voila la Gitana, voila la Gitana."--HALLIDAY.
+
+    "He checked his steed, and sighed to mark
+    Her coral lips, her eyes so dark,
+    And stately bearing--as she had been
+    Bred up in courts, and born a queen.
+    Again he came, and again he came,
+    Each day with a warmer, a wilder flame,
+    And still again--till sleep by night
+    For Judith's sake fled his pillow quite."--DELTA.
+
+    "A race that lives on prey, as foxes do,
+    With stealthy, petty rapine; so despised,
+    It is not persecuted, only spurned,
+    Crushed under foot, warred on by chance like rats,
+    Or swarming flies, or reptiles of the sea,
+    Dragged in the net unsought and flung far off,
+    To perish as they may."
+
+                                GEORGE ELIOT: "The Spanish Gipsies," 1865.
+
+    "Help me wonder, here's a booke,
+    Where I would for ever looke.
+    Never did a Gipsy trace
+    Smoother lines in hands or face;
+    Venus here doth Saturne move
+    That you should be the Queene of Love."
+
+                                                               BEN JONSON.
+
+    "Fond dreamer, pause! why floats the silvery breath
+    Of thin, light smoke from yonder bank of heath?
+    What forms are those beneath the shaggy trees,
+    In tattered tent, scarce sheltered from the breeze;
+    The hoary father and the ancient dame,
+    The squalid children, cowering o'er the flame?
+    Those were not born by English hearths to dwell,
+    Or heed the carols of the village bell;
+    Those swarthy lineaments, that wild attire,
+    Those stranger tones, bespeak an eastern sire;
+    Bid us in home's most favoured precincts trace
+    The houseless children of a homeless race;
+    And as in warning vision seem to show
+    That man's best joys are drowned by shades of woe.
+
+    "Pilgrims of Earth, who hath not owned the spell
+    That ever seems around your tents to dwell;
+    Solemn and thrilling as the nameless dread
+    That guards the chambers of the silent dead!
+    The sportive child, if near your camp he stray,
+    Stands tranced with fear, and heeds no more his play;
+    To gain your magic aid, the love-sick swain,
+    With hasty footsteps threads the dusky lane;
+    The passing traveller lingers, half in sport,
+    And half in awe beside your savage court,
+    While the weird hags explore his palm to spell
+    What varied fates these mystic lines foretell.
+
+    "The murmuring streams your minstrel songs supply,
+    The moss your couch, the oak your canopy;
+    The sun awakes you as with trumpet-call,
+    Lightly ye spring from slumber's gentle thrall;
+    Eve draws her curtain o'er the burning west,
+    Like forest birds ye sink at once to rest.
+
+    "Free as the winds that through the forest rush,
+    Wild as the flowers that by the wayside blush,
+    Children of nature wandering to and fro,
+    Man knows not whence ye came, nor where ye go;
+    Like foreign weeds cast upon Western strands,
+    Which stormy waves have borne from unknown lands;
+    Like the murmuring shells to fancy's ears that tell
+    The mystic secrets of their ocean cell.
+
+    "Drear was the scene--a dark and troublous time--
+    The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime;
+    Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill
+    Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will.
+    Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows,
+    And black night flickers with the driving snows,
+    A stranger people, 'mid that murky gloom,
+    Knocked at the gates of awe-struck Christendom!
+    No clang of arms, no din of battle roared
+    Round the still march of that mysterious horde;
+    Weary and sad arrayed in pilgrim's guise,
+    They stood and prayed, nor raised their suppliant eyes.
+    At once to Europe's hundred shores they came,
+    In voice, in feature, and in garb the same.
+    Mother and babe and youth, and hoary age,
+    The haughty chieftain and the wizard sage;
+    At once in every land went up the cry,
+    'Oh! fear us not--receive us or we die!'"
+
+                           DEAN STANLEY'S PRIZE POEM, 1837: "The Gipsies."
+
+
+
+
+Part IV.
+Gipsy Life in a Variety of Aspects.
+
+
+         [Picture: A Gipsy's van near Notting Hill, Latimer Road]
+
+In Part III. I have endeavoured, as well as I have been able, to show
+some of the agencies that have been set in motion during the last three
+centuries for and against the Gipsies, with a view to their
+extermination, by the hang-man, to their being reclaimed by the religious
+zeal and fervour of the minister, and to their improvement by the
+artificial means of poetry, fiction, and romance.  First, the persecution
+dealt out to the Gipsies in this, as well as other countries, during a
+period of several centuries, although to a large extent brought upon
+themselves by their horrible system of lying and deception, neither
+exterminated them nor improved their habits; but, on the contrary, they
+increased and spread like mushrooms; the oftener they were trampled upon
+the more they seemed to thrive; the more they were hated, hunted, and
+driven into hiding-places the oftener these sly, fortune-telling, lying
+foxes would be seen sneaking across our path, ready to grab our chickens
+and young turkeys as opportunities presented themselves.  Second, that
+when stern justice said "it is enough," persecution hanging down its
+hands and revenge drooping her head, a few noble-hearted men, filled with
+missionary zeal, took up the cause of the Gipsies for a period of nearly
+forty years in various forms and ways at the end of the last and the
+commencement of the present century.  Except in a few isolated cases,
+they also failed in producing any noticeable change in either the moral,
+social, or religious condition of the Gipsies, and with the death of
+Hoyland, Borrow, Crabb, Roberts, and others, died the last flicker of a
+flickering light that was to lead these poor, deluded, benighted heathen
+wanderers upon a road to usefulness, honesty, uprightness, and industry.
+Third, that on the decline of religious zeal, fervour, and philanthropy
+on behalf of the Gipsies more than forty years ago the spasmodic efforts
+of poets, novelists, and dramatists, in a variety of forms of fiction and
+romance, came to the front, to lead them to the goal through a lot of
+questionable by-lanes, queer places, and artificial lights, the result
+being that these melodramatic personages have left the Gipsies in a more
+pitiable condition than they were before they took up their cause,
+although they, in doing so, put "two faces under one hat," blessing and
+cursing, smiling and frowning, all in one breath, praising their faults
+and sins, and damning their _few_ virtues.  In fact, to such a degree
+have fiction writers painted the black side of a Gipsy's life, habits,
+and character in glowing colours that, to take another 20,000 men, women,
+and children out of our back slums and sink-gutters and write the word
+"Gipsy" upon their back, instead of "scamp," and send them through the
+country with a few donkeys, some long sticks, old blankets and rags, dark
+eyes, dirty faces, filthy bodies, short petticoats, and old scarlet hoods
+and cloaks, you would in fifty years make this country not worth living
+in.  It is my decided conviction that unless we are careful, and take the
+"bull by the horns," and compel them to educate their children, and to
+put their habitations, tents, and vans under better sanitary
+arrangements, we shall be fostering seeds in these dregs of society that
+will one day put a stop to the work of civilisation, and bring to an end
+the advance in arts, science, laws, and commerce that have been making
+such rapid strides in this country of late years.
+
+It is more pleasant to human nature to sit upon a stile on a midsummer
+eve, down a country lane, in the twilight, as the shades of evening are
+gathering around you, the stars twinkling over head, the little silver
+stream rippling over the pebbles at your feet in sounds like the distant
+warbling of the lark, and the sweet notes of the nightingale ringing in
+your ears, than to visit the abodes of misery, filth, and squalor among
+the Gipsies in their wigwams.  It is more agreeable to the soft parts of
+our hearts and our finer feelings to listen to the melody and harmony of
+lively, lovely damsels as they send forth their enchanting strains than
+to hear the cries of the poor little, dirty Gipsy children sending forth
+their piteous moans for bread.  It is more delightful to the poetic and
+sentimental parts of our nature to guide over the stepping-stones a
+number of bright, sharp, clean, lively, interesting, little dears, with
+their "hoops," "shuttle-cocks," and "battle-doors," than to be seated
+among a lot of little ragged, half-starved Gipsy children, who have never
+known what soap, water, and comb are.  It is more in harmony with our
+sensibilities to sit and listen to the drollery, wit, sarcasm, and fun of
+_Punch_ than to the horrible tales of blood, revenge, immorality, and
+murder that some of the adult Gipsies delight in setting forth.  It is
+more in accordance with our feelings to sit and admire the innocent,
+angelic being, the perfection of the good and beautiful, than to sit by
+the hardened, wicked, ugly, old Gipsy woman who has spent a lifetime in
+sin and debauchery, cursing the God who made her as she expires.
+Nevertheless, these things have to be done if we are to have the angelic
+beings from the other world ministering to our wants, and wafting us home
+as we leave our tenement of clay behind to receive the "Well done."
+
+I will now, as we pass along, endeavour to show what the actual condition
+of the Gipsies has been in the past, and what it is at the present time,
+which, in some cases, has been touched upon previously, with reference to
+the moral, social, and religious traits in their character that go to the
+making up of a MAN--the noblest work of God.  The peculiar fascinating
+charms about them, conjured up by ethnologists and philologists, I will
+leave for those learned gentlemen to deal with as they may think well.  I
+will, however, say that, as regards their so-called language, it is
+neither more nor less than gibberish, not "full of sound and fury
+signifying nothing," but full of "sound and fury" signifying something.
+They never converse with it openly among themselves for a good purpose,
+as the Frenchmen, Germans, Turks, Spaniards, or other foreigners do.
+Some of the old Gipsies have a thousand or more leading words made up
+from various sources, English, French, German, Spanish, Indian, &c.,
+which they teach their children, and use in the presence of strangers
+with a certain amount of pride, and, at the same time, to throw dust into
+their eyes while the Gipsies are talking among themselves.  They will in
+the same breath bless you in English and curse you in Romany; this I
+experienced myself lately while sitting in a tent among a dozen
+uninteresting-looking Gipsies, while they one and all were thanking me
+for taking steps to get the children educated.  There was one among them
+who with a smile upon his face, was cursing me in Romany from his heart.
+Many writers differ in the spelling and pronunciation of Gipsy words, and
+what strikes me as remarkable is, the Gipsies themselves are equally
+confused upon these points.  No doubt the confusion in the minds of
+writers arises principally from the fact that they have had their
+information from ignorant, lying, deceiving Gipsies.  Almost all Gipsies
+have an inveterate hatred and jealousy towards each other, especially if
+one sets himself up as knowing more than John Jones in the next yard.
+One Gipsy would say paanengro-gujo means sailor, or water gentile,
+another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile; another
+would say poovengri-gujo meant a sailor; another would say it means an
+Irishman.  They glory in contradictions and mystification.  I was at an
+encampment a few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and
+forty children there were not three that could talk Romany, and there was
+not one who could spell a single word of it.  Their language, like
+themselves, was Indian enough, no doubt, when they started on their
+pilgrimage many centuries ago; but, as a consequence of their mixing with
+the scum of other nations in their journey westward, the charm in their
+language and themselves has pretty nearly by this time vanished.  If I
+were to attempt to write a book about their language it would not do the
+Gipsies one iota of good.  "God bless you" are words the Gipsies very
+often use when showing their kindness for favours received, and, as a
+kind of test, I have tried to find out lately if there were any Gipsies
+round London who could tell me what these words were in Romany, and I
+have only found one who could perform the task.  They all shake their
+heads and say, "Ours is not a language, only slang, which we use when
+required."  Taking their slang generally, according to Grellmann,
+Hoyland, Borrow, Smart, and Crofton, there is certainly nothing very
+elevating about it.  Worldliness, sensuality, and devilism are things
+helped forward by their gibberish.  Words dealing with honesty,
+uprightness, fidelity, industry, religion, cleanliness, and love are very
+sparse.
+
+William Stanley, a converted Gipsy, said, some years since, that "God
+bless you" was in Romany, Artmee Devillesty; Smart and Crofton say it is,
+Doovel, parav, parik toot, tooti.  In another place they say it is Doovel
+jal toosa.  Mrs. Simpson says it is, Mi-Doovel-kom-tooti.  Mrs. Smith
+says it is Mi-Doovel Andy-Paratuta.
+
+The following are the whole of the slang words Smart and Crofton have
+under the letters indicated, and which words are taken principally from
+Grellmann, Hoyland, Borrow, and Dr. Paspati:--
+
+I.
+
+I,                          Man, me, mandi, manghi.
+
+Ill,                        Nasfelo, naffelo doosh.
+
+Illness,                    Naffelopen.
+
+Ill-tempered,               Korni.
+
+Imitation,                  Foshono.
+
+Immediately,                Kenaw sig.
+
+In,                         Adre, dre, ando, inna.
+
+Indebted,                   Pazerous.
+
+Inflame,                    Katcher.
+
+Injure,                     Dooka.
+
+Inn,                        Kitchema.
+
+Innkeeper,                  Kitchemengro.
+
+Intestine,                  Venderi.
+
+Into,                       Ande, adre, dre.
+
+Ireland,                    Hindo-tem, Hinditemeskro-tem.
+
+Irishman,                   Hindi-temengro, poovengri gaujo.
+
+Irish Gipsy,                Efage.
+
+Iron,                       Saster, saasta, saashta.
+
+Iron,                       Sastera.
+
+Is,                         See.
+
+It,                         Les.
+
+Itch,                       Honj.
+
+J.
+
+Jail,                       Steripen.
+
+Jews,                       Miduvelesto-mauromengri.
+
+Jockey,                     Kestermengro.
+
+Judgment,                   Bitchama.
+
+Jump,                       Hokter hok oxta.
+
+Jumper,                     Hoxterer.
+
+Just now,                   Kenaw sig.
+
+Justice of the peace,       Chivlo-gaujo, chuvno-gaujo, pokenyus,
+                            pookinyus.
+
+K.
+
+Keep,                       Righer, riker.
+
+Kettle,                     Kekavvi, kavvi.
+
+Key,                        Klerin klisin.
+
+Kick,                       Del, de.
+
+Kill,                       Maur.
+
+Kin,                        Simensa.
+
+Kind,                       Komelo komomuso.
+
+King,                       Kralis.
+
+Kingdom,                    Kralisom tem.
+
+Kiss,                       Chooma.
+
+Knee,                       Chong, choong.
+
+Knife,                      Choori chivomengro chinomengro.
+
+Knock,                      Koor, de.
+
+Know,                       Jin.
+
+Knowing,                    Yoki, jinomengro, jinomeskro.
+
+Q.
+
+Quarrel,                    Chingar.
+
+Quarrel,                    Chingariben, godli.
+
+Quart,                      Trooshni.
+
+Queen,                      Kralisi krailisi.
+
+Quick,                      Sig.
+
+Quick, Be,                  Sigo toot, ressi toot kair abba.
+
+Quietly,                    Shookar.
+
+The following dozen words will show, in some degree, the fearful amount
+of ignorance there is amongst them, even when using the language of their
+mother country, for England is the mother country of the present race of
+Gipsies.  For--
+
+Expensive,           Expencival.
+
+Decide,              Cide.
+
+Advice,              Device.
+
+Dictionary,          Dixen.
+
+Equally,             Ealfully.
+
+Instructed,          Indistructed.
+
+Gentleman,           Gemmen.
+
+Daunted,             Dauntment.
+
+Spitefulness,        Spiteliness.
+
+Habeas Corpus,       Hawcus paccus.
+
+Increase,            Increach.
+
+Submit,              Commist.
+
+
+
+I cannot find joy, delight, eternity, innocent, ever, everlasting,
+endless, hereafter, and similar words, and, on inquiry, I find that many
+of the Gipsies do not believe in an eternity, future punishment, or
+rewards; this belief, no doubt, has its effects upon their morals in this
+life.
+
+The opinion respecting the Gipsy language at the commencement of the
+present century was, that it was composed only of cant terms, or of what
+has been called the slang of beggars; much of this probably was promoted
+and strengthened by the dictionary contained in a pamphlet, entitled,
+"The Life and Adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew."  It consists for the
+most part of English words trumped up apparently not so much for the
+purpose of concealment as a burlesque.  Even if used by this people at
+all, the introduction of this cant and slang as the genuine language of
+the community of Gipsies is a gross imposition on the public.
+
+Rees, in his Encyclopaedia, 1819, describes the Gipsies as "impostors and
+jugglers forming a kind of commonwealth among themselves, who disguise
+themselves in uncouth habits, smearing their faces and bodies, and
+framing to themselves a canting language, wander up and down, and under
+pretence of telling fortunes, curing diseases, &c., abuse the common
+people, trick them of their money, and steal all that they come at."
+
+Mr. Borrow, speaking of the Hungarian Gipsies in his "Zyncali," page 7,
+says:--"Hungary, though a country not a tenth part so extensive as the
+huge colossus of the Russian empire, whose Czar reigns over a hundred
+lands, contains perhaps as many Gipsies, it not being uncommon to find
+whole villages inhabited by this race.  They likewise abound in the
+suburbs of the towns.
+
+"In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its pristine barbarity.
+In no country does the hard hand of oppression bear so heavy upon the
+lower classes--not even in Russia.  The peasants of Russia are serfs, it
+is true, but their condition is enviable compared with that of the same
+class in the other country; they have certain rights and privileges, and
+are, upon the whole, happy and contented, at least, there, whilst the
+Hungarians are ground to powder.  Two classes are free in Hungary to do
+almost what they please--the nobility and the Gipsies (the former are
+above the law, the latter below it).  A toll is wrung from the hands of
+the hard working labourers, that most meritorious class, in passing over
+a bridge, for example, at Perth, which is not demanded from a
+well-dressed person, nor from Zingany, who have frequently no dress at
+all, and whose _insouciance_ stands in striking contrast with the
+trembling submission of the peasants.  The Gipsy, wherever you find him,
+is an incomprehensible being, but nowhere more than in Hungary, where in
+the midst of slavery he is free, though apparently one step lower than
+the lowest slave.  The habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are abominable;
+their hovels appear sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is
+at best rags; their food frequently of the vilest carrion, and
+occasionally, if report be true, still worse: thus they live in filth, in
+rags, in nakedness.  The women are fortune-tellers.  Of course both sexes
+are thieves of the first water.  They roam where they list."
+
+The "Chronicle of Bologna," printed about the year 1422, says:--"And of
+those who went to have their fortunes told few there were who had not
+their purses stolen, or some portion of their garments cut away.  Their
+women also traversed the city six or eight together, entering the houses
+of the citizens, and diverting them with idle talk while one of the party
+secured whatever she could lay her hands upon.  In the shops they
+pretended to buy, but in fact stole.  They were amongst the cleverest
+thieves that the world contained.  Be it noted that they were the most
+hideous crew ever seen in these parts.  They were lean and black, and ate
+like pigs.  The women wore mantles flung upon one shoulder, with only a
+vest underneath."  Forli, who wrote about them about the same time as the
+"Chronicle of Bologna," does not seem to have liked them, and says they
+were not "even civilised, and resembling rather savage and untamed
+beasts."
+
+A writer describes a visit to a Gipsy's tent as follows:--"We were in a
+wigwam which afforded us but miserable shelter from the inclemency of the
+season.  The storm raged without; the tempest roared in the open country;
+the wind blew with violence, and whistled through the fissures of the
+cabin; the rain fell in torrents, and prevented us from continuing our
+route.  Our host was an Indian with sparkling and intelligent eyes, clad
+with a certain elegance, and wrapped majestically in a large fur cloak.
+Seated close to the fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior
+of the wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible
+desire to imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his impressions.
+So taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight
+rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm, then
+raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften when he
+pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the
+branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced
+by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground.  By
+degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the
+chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian shrieked, howled,
+and roared in the most frightful manner; he struggled and struck his
+instrument with extraordinary rapidity; it was a real tempest, to which
+nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling of the dogs, nor the
+bellowing of the affrighted buffaloes."
+
+Mr. Leland, speaking of the Russian Gipsies near Moscow, says that after
+meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, they were
+altogether original, deeply interesting, and able to read and write, and
+have a wonderful capacity for music, and goes on to say that he speedily
+found the Russian Gipsies were as unaffected and childlike as they were
+gentle in manner, and that compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy,
+begging, and always suspecting Gipsy roughs, as a delicate greyhound
+might compare with a very shrewd old bulldog trained by a fly tramp.
+Leland, in his article, speaking of one of the Russian Gipsy maidens,
+says:--"Miss Sarsha, who had a slight cast in one of her wild black eyes,
+which added something to the Gipsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who
+wore in a ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right
+eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady, and
+with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say it.  What with her
+eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her tongue, she constituted altogether
+a fine specimen of irrepressible fireworks."
+
+Leland, referring to the musical abilities of the Russian Gipsies, in his
+article in "Macmillan's Magazine," November, 1879, says:--"These artists,
+with wonderful tact and untaught skill have succeeded in all their songs
+in combining the mysterious and maddening chorus of the true wild eastern
+music with that of regular and simple melody intelligible to every
+western ear."  "I listened," says Leland, "to the strangest, wildest, and
+sweetest singing I ever had heard--the singing of Lurleis, of syrens, of
+witches.  First, one damsel, with an exquisitely clear, firm voice began
+to sing a verse of a love ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus
+stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a
+few seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling lake,
+seemed changed to a midnight tempest roaring over a stormy sea, in which
+the basso of the black captain pealed like thunder, and as it died away a
+second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more
+excitement--it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated
+waters--a strange contralto witch gleam, and then again the chorus and
+the storm, and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger--the
+movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad--a
+locomotive quick step and then a sudden silence--sunlight--the storm had
+blown away;" and adds, "I could only think of those strange fits of
+excitement which thrill the Red Indian, and make him burst into song."
+
+"After the first Gipsy lyric then came another to which the captain
+especially directed my attention as being what Sam. Petalengro calls 'The
+girl in the red chemise'--as well as I can recall his words.  A very
+sweet song, with a simple but spirited chorus, and as the sympathetic
+electricity of excitement seized the performers we were all in a minute
+going down the rapids in a spring freshet.  'Sing, sir, sing!' cried my
+handsome neighbour, with her black Gipsy eyes sparkling fire."
+
+Some excuse ought to be made for Leland getting into this wild state of
+excitement, for he had on his right and on his left, before and behind
+him, dark-eyed Gipsy beauties--as some would call them--among whom was
+one, the belle of the party, dressed in black silk attire, wafting in his
+face the enchanting fan of fascination till he was completely mesmerised.
+How different this hour's excitement to the twenty-three hours' reality!
+
+The following is the full history of a remarkable case which has recently
+occurred in Russia, taken from the London daily papers last November, and
+it shows the way in which Gipsy witches and fortune-tellers are held and
+horribly treated in that country.  It is quite evident that Gipsies and
+witches are not esteemed by the Russians like angels:--
+
+    Agrafena Ignatjewa was as a child simple and amiable, neither sharper
+    nor more stupid than all the other girls of her native village,
+    Wratschewo, in the Government of Novgorod.  But the people of the
+    place having, from her early youth, made up their minds that she had
+    the "evil eye," nothing could eradicate that impression.
+
+    Being branded with this reputation, it naturally followed that powers
+    of divination and enchantment were attributed to her, including the
+    ability to afflict both men and animals with various plagues and
+    sicknesses.
+
+    In spite, however, of the supernatural skill with which she was
+    credited, she met with no suitor save a poor soldier.  She accepted
+    him gladly, and going with him, shortly after her marriage, to St.
+    Petersburg, Wratschewo lost sight of her for some twelve years.  She
+    was, however, by no means forgotten there, for when, after the death
+    of her husband, she again betook herself to the home of her
+    childhood, she found that her old reputation still clung to her.  The
+    news of her return spread like wild-fire, and general disaster was
+    anticipated from her injurious spells.  This, however, was, from
+    fear, talked of only behind her back, and dread of her at length
+    reached such a pitch that the villagers and their wives sent her
+    presents and assisted her in every way, hoping thereby to get into
+    her good graces, and so escape being practised upon by her infernal
+    arts.  As she was now fifty years of age, somewhat weakly, and
+    therefore unable to earn a living, these attentions were by no means
+    unwelcome, and she therefore did nothing to disabuse her neighbours'
+    minds.  Their superstition enabled her to live comfortably and
+    without care, and she knew very well that any assurances she might
+    give would not have produced the slightest effect.
+
+    A short time after her return to Wratschewo, several women fell ill.
+    This was, of course, laid at the door of Ignatjewa, particularly as
+    one of these women, the daughter of a peasant, had been attacked
+    immediately after being refused a slight favour by her.  Whenever any
+    misfortune whatsoever happened in the village, all fingers pointed to
+    Ignatjewa as the source of it.  At the beginning of the present year
+    a dismissed soldier, in the interest of the community, actually
+    instituted criminal proceedings against her before the local
+    urjadnik, the chief of the police of the district, the immediate
+    charge preferred being that she had bewitched his wife.
+
+    Meanwhile the feeling in the village against her became so
+    intensified that it was resolved by the people, pending the decision
+    on the complaint that had been lodged, to take the law into their
+    hands so far as to fasten her up in her cottage.
+
+    The execution of this resolve was not delayed a moment.  Led by
+    Kauschin, Nikisorow, Starovij, and an old man of seventy, one
+    Schipensk, whose wife and daughters were at the time supposed to be
+    suffering from her witchcraft, a crowd of villagers set out on the
+    way to Ignatjewa's dwelling.  Nikisorow had provided himself with
+    hammer and nails, and Iwanow with some chips of pinewood "to smoke
+    out the bad spirits."  Finding the cottage door locked, they beat it
+    in, and while a portion of them nailed up the windows the remainder
+    crowded in and announced to the terrified woman that, by unanimous
+    decision, she was, for the present, to be kept fastened up in her
+    house.  Some of them then proceeded to look through the rooms, where
+    they found, unfortunately, several bottles containing medicaments.
+    Believing these to be enchanted potions, and therefore conclusive
+    proofs of Ignatjewa's guilt, it was decided, on the suggestion of
+    Nikisorow, to burn her and her devilish work there and then.  "We
+    must put an end to it," shouted the peasants in chorus; "if we let
+    her off now we shall be bewitched one and all."
+
+    Kauschin, who held in his hand a lighted chip of pine-wood, which he
+    had used "to smoke out the spirits" and to light him about the
+    premises, instantly applied it to a bundle of straw lying in a room,
+    after which all hastily left.  Ignatjewa attempted in vain to follow
+    them.  The agonised woman then tried to get out at the windows, but
+    these were already nailed up.  In front of the cottage stood the
+    people, blankly staring at the spreading flames, and listening to the
+    cries of their victim without moving a muscle.
+
+    At this point Ignatjewa's brother came on the scene, and ran towards
+    the cottage to rescue his sister.  But a dozen arms held him back.
+    "Don't let her out," shouted the venerable Schipensk, the husband and
+    father of the bewitched women.  "I'll answer for it, that we won't,
+    father; we have put up with her long enough," replied one of the
+    band.  "The Lord be praised!" exclaimed another, "let her burn away;
+    she bewitched my daughters too."
+
+    The little room in which Ignatjewa had taken refuge was not as yet
+    reached by the fire.  Appeals were now made to her to confess herself
+    a witch, the brother joining, probably in the hope that if she did so
+    her life might be spared.  "But I am entirely innocent," the poor
+    woman cried out.  One of the bystanders, apparently the only one in
+    possession of his five senses, made another attempt at rescue, but
+    was hindered by the mob.  He then, in loud tones, warned them of the
+    punishment which would certainly await them, but in vain, no
+    attention was paid to him.  On the contrary, the progress of the
+    flames not appearing rapid enough, it was endeavoured to accelerate
+    it by shoving the snow from the roof and loosening the frame-work.
+    The fire now extended rapidly, one beam after another blazed up, and
+    at length the roof fell in on the wretched woman.
+
+    The ashes smouldered the whole night; on the following morning
+    nothing was found remaining but the charred bones of Ignatjewa.
+
+    The idea now, it would seem, occurred to the murderers that perhaps,
+    after all, their action had not been altogether lawful.  They
+    accordingly resolved to bribe the local authority, who had already
+    viewed the scene of the affair, to hush it up.  For this purpose they
+    made a collection, and handed him the proceeds, twenty-one roubles
+    ninety copecks.  To their astonishment he did not accept the money,
+    but at once reported the horrible deed to his superior officer.
+    Sixteen of the villagers were, in consequence, brought up for trial
+    at Tichwin before the district court of Novgorod on the charge of
+    murdering Agrafena Ignatjewa, in the manner above described.
+
+    After a protracted hearing with jury the following result was arrived
+    at:--Kauschin, who had first set fire to the building; Starovij, who
+    had assisted in accelerating the burning; and Nikisorow, the prime
+    mover in the matter, who had nailed up the windows, were found
+    guilty, and sentenced by the judge to some slight ecclesiastical
+    penance, while the remaining thirteen, including the aged
+    Schipensk--who had used his influence to prevent a rescue--went scot
+    free.
+
+The Spanish Gipsies, in Grellmann's day, would resort to the most wicked
+and inhuman practices.  Before taking one of their horses to the fair
+they would make an incision in some secret part of the skin, through
+which they would blow the creature up till his flesh looked fat and
+plump, and then they would apply a strong sticking plaster to prevent the
+air escaping.  Wolfgang Franz says they make use of another device with
+an eel.  Grellmann says of the Spanish Gipsies in his day that dancing
+was another means of getting something; they generally practised dancing
+when they were begging, particularly if men were about the streets.
+Their dances were of the most disgusting kind that could be conceived;
+the most lascivious attitudes and gestures, young girls and married
+women, travelling with their fathers, would indulge in, to the extent of
+frisking about the streets in a state of nudity.
+
+Further inquiries among the Gipsies more than ever satisfy me that my
+first statement last August, viz., that five per cent. of them could not
+read and write, is being more than fully borne out by facts brought under
+my notice; in fact, I question if there will be three per cent. of the
+Gipsies who can read and write.  The following letter has been sent to me
+by a friend to show that there is one Gipsy in the country, at least, who
+knows how to put a letter together, and as it is somewhat of a curiosity
+I give it, as exactly as possible as I received it, of course leaving out
+the name, and without note or comment.
+
+                                                            "Newtown Moor,
+                                                          "the 22nd, 1877.
+
+    "Dear Sir,--
+
+    "I recivd your last Letter, and proude to say that I shall (if alls
+    well) endeavor to cum on the day mentioned.  I shall start from hear
+    5.36 a.m., and be in Edinburgh betwen 3 and 4.  I have no more to say
+    very particular, only feel proude of having the enviteation (we are
+    all well hear) with the exception of my little Daughter.  She still
+    keeps about the same.  I shall finish (this little bit) by sending
+    all our very kind love and respects to Mrs. --- and yourself.
+    Hopeing this will find you boath in good helth (I shall go on with a
+    little bit of something else)  (by the way, a little filling up which
+    I hope you will parden me for taking up so much of your time.
+
+                                                               "I am yours
+                                                        "Very obediently,t
+                                                            "WELSH HARPER.
+
+    (Now a little more about what my poor old mother leant me when a
+    child) and before I go on any further I want you (if you will be so
+    kind) as to perticullery--understand me--that the ch has a curious
+    sound--also the LR, as, for instence, chommay, in staid hommay, choy
+    in place of hoi.  Chotche yoi instaid of _hotche_ yoi.  Matteva ma
+    tot _in staid_ of lat eva ma tot and so on.  I shall now commence
+    with the feminine and the musculin gender (but I must mind as I don't
+    put my foot in it) as you know a hundred times more than I do about
+    these last words--the same time the maight be a little picket up by
+    _them_.  _Well_, hear goes to make a start.  (You must not always
+    laugh.)
+
+"Singular                  Feminine          M.           F.
+"Masculine gender.         gender.
+
+Dad                        Dai               Dada         Daia
+
+Chavo                      Chai              Chavay       Chaia
+
+Tieno                      Tienoy            Tickna
+
+Morsh                      Jovel             Morsha       Jovya
+
+Gongeo                     Gangee            Gongea       Gongeya
+
+Racloo                     Raclee
+
+Raclay  or                 Racklay
+
+Pal                        Pen               Palla        Peoya
+
+Pella                      Penya             Cock         Bebey
+
+
+
+    (I shall finish this) as you know yourself it will take me to long to
+    go on with more of it.  I shall now sho how my poor mother use to
+    speak her English.
+
+    "THE WHOL FAMALY CAMPING WITH HORSES, DONKEYS, AND DOGS.
+
+    "On the first weakning in the morning (mother speaking to my Father
+    in the Tent)--"Now, man, weak dear Boys up to go and geather some
+    sticks to light the fire, and to see whare dem Hoses and Donkeys are.
+    I think I shoud some marshas helen a pray the Drom and coving the
+    collas out of the pub.  Mother again--Now, boy, go and get some water
+    to put in the ole kettle for breakfast.  The Boy--I davda--I must go
+    and do every bit a thing.  Why don't you send dat gel to cer some
+    thing some times her crie chee tal only wishing talkay all the
+    blessed time.  Mother, I am going to send her to the farm House for
+    milk (jack loses mony) when a Bran of fire is flying after him, and
+    he (the boy) over a big piece of wood, and hurts his knea.
+
+    "The girl goes for the milk (and she has a river to go threw) when
+    presently a Bull is heard roreng.  Mother, dare now, boy, go and meet
+    your sister; does de Bull roreing after her.  She will fall down in a
+    faint in de middle of de riber.  Boy sar can I gal ear yoi ta ma
+    docadom me heroi ta shom quit leam (the old woman), go, man, go, man,
+    and stick has dat charey chai is a beling da da say dat dat is a very
+    bad after jovyas.  Strenge men brings the Horses and donkeys up to
+    the tents, and begins to scould very much.  (The little girl comes
+    with the milk.)  The girl said to her brother that she may fall over
+    the wooden in the river for what he cared; yet the boy said that when
+    she would fall down she would chin a bit, and all the fish would come
+    and nibble at her.  Horras and her bull; and then they began the
+    scrubble, and begins to scould her brother for not going to meet her,
+    when they boath have a scuffel over the fire, and very near knocks
+    the jockett over, when the boy hops away upon one leg, and hops upon
+    one of the dog's paws--un-seen--and dog runs away barking, and runs
+    himself near one of the Donkeys, and the Donkey gives him a kick,
+    until he is briging in the horse.  The old woman: Dare now, dare now,
+    ockkie now chorro jocked mardo.  Breakfast is over with a deal of
+    boather, and a little laughing and cursing and swaring.
+
+    "They strike the tents.  (The old woman)  Men chovolay nen sig waste
+    ja mangay.  I am a faling a vaver drom codires, and you will meet me
+    near old Town.  Be shewer and leave a _pattern_ by the side of the
+    cross road, if you sal be dare before me.
+
+    "(The old man and the Boys Pitches the Tents) and gets himself ready
+    to go to the Town.  The old woman comes up, and one of the girls with
+    her--boath very tired and havey, loaded with _choben_ behind her
+    back, anugh to frighten waggens and carts of the road with her humpey
+    back.
+
+    "(They intend to stay in this delightfull camping place for a good
+    many days.)  To day is soposid to be a very hot day, and a fare day
+    in a Town about three miles and a half from there.  The old woman and
+    one of her Daughters goes out as usual.  The old man takes a couple
+    of Horses to the Fare to try and sell.  (The boys go a fishing.)  The
+    day is very bright and hot.  (The old man soon comes home.)
+
+    "One of the prityist girls takes a strol by herself down to a
+    butyfull streem of water to have herself a wash, and she begins
+    singing to the sound of a waterfall close by her, when all of a suden
+    a very nice looking young gentleman, who got tiard fishing in the
+    morning, and the day being very hot, took a bit of a lull on his
+    face, his basket on his back, and Fishing-rod by his side (the girl
+    did not see him) nor him her) until he was atracted by some strange
+    sound, when all of a instant he sprung upon his heels, and to his
+    surprise seen a most butyfull creature with her bear bosom and her
+    long black hair and butyfull black eyes, white teeth, and a butyfull
+    figure.  He stared with all the eyes he had, and he made a advance
+    towards her, and when she seen him she stared also at him, and
+    aproaching slowly towards her and saying, from whence comest thou
+    hear, my butyfull maid (and staring at her butyfull figure) thinking
+    that she was some angel as droped down (when she with a pleasant
+    smile by showing her ivory and her sparkling eyes)  Oh, my father's
+    tents are not fare off, and seen the day very warm I thought to have
+    a little wash.
+
+    "Gentleman Well indeed I have been fishing to day, and cot a few this
+    morning; but the day turned out so excesably hot I was obliged to go
+    in to a shade and have a sleep, but was alarmed at your sweet voice
+    mingling with the murmuring waters.  They boath steer up to the camp,
+    when now and then as he is speaking to her on the road going up, a
+    loude and shrill laugh is heard many times--the same time he does not
+    sho the least sign of vulgaraty by taking any sort of liberty with
+    her whatever.  They arrive at the tents, when one or the little boys
+    says to his dady Dady, dady, there is a rye a velin a pra.  The
+    gentleman sitts himself down and pulls out a big Flask very near full
+    of Brandy and toboco, and offers to the old man.
+
+    "By this time that young girl goes in her Tent and pull down the
+    front, and presently out she comes butyfully dressed, which bewitched
+    the young gentleman, and he said that they were welcome to come there
+    to stop as long as they had a mind so as they would not tear the
+    Headges.  He goes and leaves them highly delighted towards hime, and
+    he should pay them another visit.  This camping ground belonged to
+    the young gentleman's father, and is situated in a butyfull part of
+    Derbyshire.  One of the little girls sees two young ladys coming a
+    little sideways across the common from a gentleman's house which is
+    very near, which turns out to be the gentleman's two sisters.  The
+    little girl, Mamey, mamey, der is doi Rawngas avelin accai atch a
+    pray.  The young ladys comes to the tents and smiles, when the old
+    woman says to one of them, Good day, meyam, it's a very fine day,
+    meyam; shall I tell you a few words, meyam?  The old woman takes them
+    on one side and tells them something just to please them, now and
+    then a word of truth, the rest a good lot of lies.
+
+    "The old man goes off for a stroll with a couple of dogs.
+
+    "One of the young boys asks his mother for some money, and she
+    refuses him, or says she has got none.  The boy says, Where is the
+    000 pounds tooteys sold froom those doi Rawngas maw did accai I held
+    now from them they pend them not appopolar?  One of the other
+    brothers says to him, Hear, Abraham, ile lend you 5s.  Will you, my
+    blessed brother.  Yes, I will; hear it is.  Now we will boath of us
+    go to the gav togeather.  One gets his fiddle ready and the other the
+    Tamareen.  The harp is too heavy to carry.  They go to call at the
+    post office for a chinginargery--they boath come home rather wary.
+
+    "The next day the Boys go a fishing again and bring home a good lot
+    (as the day was not near so hot as the day before) and comes home in
+    good time to play the harp and violin (and sometimes the Tambureen)
+    for the county gouges [green horns], as a good many comes to have a
+    dance on the green--the collection would be the boys pocket money.
+
+    "There is a great deal of amusement found by those that us to follow
+    Barns.  The have many country people coming them to hear there music
+    and to dance on the green, or sometimes in the barn, but most oftener
+    in the house in a big kitchen, and the country people would be
+    staring at the collays, Gipsies, with all there eyes, and the Gipsies
+    would stare at the people to see them such Dinalays [fools].
+
+    "Those who followed Barns, us to call gentlemen's houses with the
+    Harps, and us to be called in and make a good thing of it.
+
+    "Dear Mr.--With your permission I will leave of now, and let you know
+    a little more when I come.  Hoping that I have not trespased on your
+    time to read such follishness.  All that I have written has happened.
+
+                                                   "I again beg to remain,
+                                                 "Yours very respectfully,
+                                           "WELSHANENGAY BORY BOSHAHENGBO.
+
+                                                          [Hedge Fiddler.]
+
+    "I beg to acquaint you that I am the oldest living Welsh Harper in
+    the world at the present time.  Mr. Thomas G---, Welsh Harper to the
+    Prince of Wales, is next to me."
+
+It would be perhaps a difficult task to find a score of Gipsies out of
+the 15,000 to 20,000 there are in this country who can write as well as
+the foregoing letter.
+
+The following may be considered a fair specimen of the high class or
+"Gentleman Gipsy," so much admired by those who have got the Gipsy spell
+round their necks, the Gipsy spectacles before their eyes, the Gipsy
+charm in their pocket, and who can see nothing but what is lively,
+charming, fascinating, and delightful in the Gipsy, from the crown of his
+head to the sole of his foot.  To those of my friends I present them with
+an account of Ryley Bosvil as a man after their own heart, at the same
+time I would call their attention to his ending, as related by Borrow.
+
+Ryley Bosvil was a native of Yorkshire, a county where, as the Gipsies
+say, "There's a deadly sight of Bosvils."  He was above the middle
+height, exceedingly strong and active, and one of the best riders in
+Yorkshire, which is saying a great deal.  He was thoroughly versed in all
+the arts of the old race; he had two wives, never went to church, and
+considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth and there was
+an end of him.  He frequently used to say that if any of his people
+became Gorgios he would kill them.  He had a sister of the name of Clara,
+a nice, delicate girl, about fourteen years younger than himself, who
+travelled about with an aunt; this girl was noticed by a respectable
+Christian family, who, taking great interest in her, persuaded her to
+come and live with them.  She was instructed by them, in the rudiments of
+the Christian religion, appeared delighted with her new friends, and
+promised never to leave them.  After the lapse of about six weeks there
+was a knock at the door, and a dark man stood before it, who said he
+wanted Clara.  Clara went out trembling, had some discourse with the man
+in an unknown tongue, and shortly returned in tears, and said that she
+must go.  "What for?" said her friends.  "Did you not promise to stay
+with us?"  "I did so," said the girl, weeping more bitterly; "but that
+man is my brother, who says I must go with him; and what he says must
+be."  So with her brother she departed, and her Christian friends never
+saw her again.  What became of her?  Was she made away with?  Many
+thought she was, but she was not.  Ryley put her into a light cart, drawn
+by a "flying pony," and hurried her across England, even to distant
+Norfolk, where he left her with three Gipsy women.  With these women the
+writer found her encamped in a dark wood, and had much discourse with her
+both on Christian and Egyptian matters.  She was very melancholy,
+bitterly regretted her having been compelled to quit her Christian
+friends, and said that she wished she had never been a Gipsy.  She was
+exhorted to keep a firm grip of her Christianity, and was not seen again
+for a quarter of a century, when she was met on Epsom Downs on the Derby
+day, when the terrible horse, "Gladiateur," beat all the English steeds.
+She was then very much changed indeed, appearing as a full-blown Egyptian
+matron, with two very handsome daughters flaringly dressed in genuine
+Gipsy fashion, to whom she was giving motherly counsels as to the best
+means to _hok_ and _dukker_ the gentlefolk.  All her Christianity she
+appeared to have flung to the dogs, for when the writer spoke to her on
+that very important subject she made no answer save by an indescribable
+Gipsy look.  On other matters she was communicative enough, telling the
+writer, amongst other things, that since he saw her she had been twice
+married, and both times very well, for that her first husband, by whom
+she had the two daughters, whom the writer "kept staring at," was a man
+every inch of him, and her second, who was then on the Downs grinding
+knives with a machine he had, though he had not much manhood, being
+nearly eighty years old, had something much better, namely, a mint of
+money, which she hoped shortly to have in her possession.
+
+Ryley, like most of the Bosvils, was a tinker by profession; but though a
+tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of heart.  His grand ambition
+was to be a great man among his people, a Gipsy king (no such individuals
+as either Gipsy kings or queens ever existed).  To this end he furnished
+himself with clothes made after the costliest Gipsy fashion; the two
+hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were broad
+gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the fore-buttons were
+English "spaded guineas," the buttons of the waistcoat were half-guineas,
+and those of the collar and the wrists of his shirt were seven-shilling
+gold-pieces.  In this coat he would frequently make his appearance on a
+magnificent horse, whose hoofs, like those of the steed of a Turkish
+Sultan, were cased in shoes of silver.  How did he support such expense?
+it may be asked.  Partly by driving a trade in "wafedo loovo,"
+counterfeit coin, with which he was supplied by certain honest
+tradespeople of Brummagem; partly and principally by large sums of money
+which he received from his two wives, and which they obtained by the
+practice of certain arts peculiar to Gipsy females.  One of his wives was
+a truly remarkable woman.  She was of the Petalengro or Smith tribe.  Her
+Christian name, if Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri,
+and from her exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called
+by the Gipsies Yocky Shuri--that is, smart or clever Shuri, Yocky being a
+Gipsy word signifying "clever."  She could dukker--that is, tell
+fortunes--to perfection, by which alone, during the racing season, she
+could make a hundred pounds a month.  She was good at the big hok--that
+is, at inducing people to put money into her hands in the hope of it
+being multiplied; and, oh, dear! how she could caur--that is, filch gold
+rings and trinkets from jewellers' cases, the kind of thing which the
+Spanish Gipsies call ustibar pastesas--filching with hands.  Frequently
+she would disappear and travel about England, and Scotland too,
+dukkering, hokking, and cauring, and after the lapse of a month return
+and deliver to her husband, like a true and faithful wife, the proceeds
+of her industry.  So no wonder that the Flying Tinker, as he was called,
+was enabled to cut a grand appearance.  He was very fond of hunting, and
+would frequently join the field in regular hunting costume, save and
+except that instead of the leather hunting cap he wore one of fur, with a
+gold band round it, to denote that though he mixed with Gorgios he was
+still a Romany chal.  Thus equipped, and mounted on a capital hunter,
+whenever he encountered a Gipsy encampment he would invariably dash
+through it, doing all the harm he could, in order, as he said, to let the
+juggals know that he was their king, and had a right to do what he
+pleased with his own.  Things went on swimmingly for a great many years,
+but, as prosperity does not continue for ever, his dark hour came at
+last.  His wives got into trouble in one or two expeditions, and his
+dealings in wafedo loovo to be noised about.  Moreover, by his grand airs
+and violent proceedings, he had incurred the hatred of both Gorgios and
+Gipsies, particularly of the latter, some of whom he had ridden over and
+lamed for life.  One day he addressed his two wives--
+
+    "The Gorgios seek to hang me,
+    The Gipsies seek to kill me;
+    This country we must leave."
+
+                                    SHURI.
+
+    "I'll join with you to heaven,
+    I'll fare with you, Yandors,
+    But not if Lura goes."
+
+                                    LURA.
+
+    "I'll join with you to heaven
+    And to the wicked country,
+    Though Shuri goeth too."
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    "Since I must choose betwixt you,
+    My choice is Yocky Shuri,
+    Though Lura loves me best."
+
+                                    LURA.
+
+    "My blackest curse on Shuri;
+    Oh, Ryley, I'll not curse you,
+    But you will never thrive."
+
+She then took her departure, with her cart and donkey, and Ryley remained
+with Shuri.
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    "I've chosen now betwixt ye,
+    Your wish you now have gotten,
+    But for it you shall smart."
+
+He then struck her with his fist on the cheek and broke her jaw-bone.
+Shuri uttered no cry or complaint, only mumbled--
+
+    "Although with broken jaw-bone,
+    I'll follow thee, my Riley,
+    Since Lura doesn't fal."
+
+Thereupon Ryley and Yocky Shuri left Yorkshire and wended their way to
+London, where they took up their abode in the Gipsyry near Shepherd's
+Bush.  Shuri went about dukkering and hokking, but not with the spirit of
+former times, for she was not quite so young as she had been, and her
+jaw, which was never properly cured, pained her very much.  Ryley went
+about tinkering, but he was unacquainted with London and its
+neighbourhood, and did not get much to do.  An old Gipsy man, who was
+driving about a little cart filled with skewers, saw him standing in a
+state of perplexity at a place where four roads met:--
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    "Methinks I see a brother.
+    Who's your father?  Who's your mother?
+    And what be your name?"
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    "A Bosvil was my father,
+    A Bosvil was my mother,
+    And Ryley is my name."
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    "I'm glad to see you, brother;
+    I am a kaulo camlo. {218a}
+    What service can I do?"
+
+                                    RYLEY.
+
+    "I'm jawing petulengring, {218b}
+    But do not know the country;
+    Perhaps you'll show me round."
+
+                                  OLD GIPSY.
+
+    "I'll sikker tulle prala!
+    Ino bikkening escouyor, {218c}
+    And av along with me."
+
+The old Gipsy showed Ryley about the country for a week or two, and Ryley
+formed a kind of connection and did a little business.  He, however,
+displayed little or no energy, was gloomy and dissatisfied, and
+frequently said that his heart was broken since he had left Yorkshire.
+Shuri did her best to cheer him, but without effect.  Once when she bade
+him get up and exert himself, he said that if he did it would be of no
+use, and asked her whether she did not remember the parting prophecy of
+his other wife, that he would never thrive.  At the end of about two
+years he ceased going his rounds, and did nothing but smoke under the
+arches of the railroad and loiter about beershops.  At length he became
+very weak and took to his bed; doctors were called in by his faithful
+Shuri, but there is no remedy for a bruised spirit.  A Methodist came and
+asked him, "What was his hope?"  "My hope," said he, "is that when I am
+dead I shall be put into the ground, and my wife and children will weep
+over me," and such, it may be observed, is the last hope of every genuine
+Gipsy.  His hope was gratified.  Shuri and his children, of whom he had
+three--two stout young fellows and a girl--gave him a magnificent
+funeral, and screamed and shouted and wept over his grave.  They then
+returned to the "arches," not to divide his property among them, and to
+quarrel about the division, according to Christian practice, but to
+destroy it.  They killed his swift pony--still swift though twenty-seven
+years of age--and buried it deep in the ground without depriving it of
+its skin.  Then they broke the caravan to pieces, making of the fragments
+a fire, on which they threw his bedding, carpets, curtains, blankets, and
+everything which would burn.  Finally, they dashed his mirrors, china,
+and crockery to pieces, hacked his metal pots, dishes, and what not to
+bits, and flung the whole on the blazing pile. {219}  Such was the life,
+such the death, and such were the funeral obsequies of Ryley Bosvil, a
+Gipsy who will be long remembered amongst the English Romany for his
+buttons, his two wives, grand airs, and last not least, for having been
+the composer of various stanzas in the Gipsy tongue, which have plenty of
+force if nothing else to recommend them.  One of these, addressed to
+Yocky Shuri, runs as follows:--
+
+    "Beneath the bright sun there is none,
+             There is none
+    I love like my Yocky Shuri;
+    With the greatest delight in blood I would fight
+    To the knees for my Yocky Shuri."
+
+How much better and happier it would have been for this poor, hardened,
+ignorant, old Gipsy, if, instead of indulging in such rubbish as he did
+in the last hours of an idle and wasted life, he could, after a life
+spent in doing good to the Gipsies and others over whom he had influence,
+as the shades of the evening of life gathered round him, sung, from the
+bottom of his heart--fetching tears to his eyes as it did mine a Sunday
+or two ago--the following verses to the tune of "Belmont:"--
+
+    "When in the vale of lengthened years
+       My feeble feet shall tread,
+    And I survey the various scenes
+       Through which I have been led,
+
+    "How many mercies will my life
+       Before my view unfold!
+    What countless dangers will be past!
+       What tales of sorrow told!
+
+    "This scene will all my labours end,
+       This road conduct on high;
+    With comfort I'll review the past,
+       And triumph though I die."
+
+On the first Sunday in February this year I found myself surrounded by a
+black, thick London fog--almost as dense as the blackest midnight, and an
+overpowering sense of suffocation creeping over me--in the midst of an
+encampment of Gipsies at Canning Town, and, acting upon their kind
+invitation, I crept into one of their tents, and there found about a
+dozen Gipsy men of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg
+shavings.  Some of their faces looked full of intelligence and worthy of
+a better vocation, and others seemed as if they had had the "cropper" at
+work round their ears; so short was their hair that any one attempting to
+"pull it up by the roots" would have a difficult task, unless he set to
+it with his teeth.  They looked to me as if several of them had worn
+bright steel ornaments round their wrists and had danced at a county
+ball, and done more stepping upon the wheel of fortune than many people
+imagine; at any rate, they were quite happy in their way, and seemed
+prepared for another turn round when needful.  Their first salutation
+was, "Well, governor, how are you?  Sit you down and make yourself
+comfortable, and let's have a chat.  Never mind if it is Sunday, send for
+some 'fourpenny' for us."  I partly did as they bid me, but, owing to the
+darkness of the tent and the fog, I sat upon a seat that was partly
+covered with filth, consequently I had an addition to my trousers more
+than I bargained for.  I told them my object was not to come to send for
+"fourpenny," but to get a law passed to compel the Gipsy parents to send
+their children to school, and to have their tents registered and provided
+with a kind of school pass book; and, before I had well finished my
+remarks, one of the Gipsies, a good-looking fellow, said, "I say, Bill,
+that will be a capital thing, won't it?"  "God bless you, man, for it,"
+was the remark of another, and so the thing went the round among them.
+By this time there were some score or more Gipsy women and children at
+the tent door, or, I should rather say, rag coverlet, who heard what had
+passed, and they thoroughly fell in with the idea.  The question next
+turned upon religion.  They said they had heard that there were
+half-a-dozen different religions, and asked me if it was true.  One said
+he was a Roman Catholic; but did not believe there was a hell.  Another
+said he was a Methodist, but could not agree with their singing and
+praying, and so it went round till they asked me what religion was.  I
+told them in a way that seemed to satisfy them, and I also told them some
+of its results.  I could not learn that any of these Gipsies had ever
+been in a place of worship.
+
+I mentioned to them that I wanted to show, during my inquiries, both
+sides of the question, and should be glad if they would point out to me
+the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up to and consider as a good
+pattern for them to follow.  Here they began to scratch their heads, and
+said I had put them "a nightcap on."  "Upon my soul," said one, "I should
+not know where to begin to look for one," and then related to me the
+following story:--"The Devil sent word to some of his agents for them to
+send him the worst man they could find upon the face of the earth.  So
+news went about among various societies everywhere, consultations and
+meetings were held, and it was decided that a Gipsy should be sent, as
+none of the societies or agents could find one bad enough.  Accordingly a
+passport was procured, and they started the Gipsy on his way.  When he
+came to the door of hell he knocked for admittance.  The Devil shouted
+out, 'Who is there?'  The Gipsy cried out, 'A Gipsy.'  'All right,' said
+the Devil; 'you are just the man I am wanting.  I have been on the
+look-out for you some time.  Come in.  I have been told the Gipsies are
+the worst folks in all the world.'  The Gipsy had not been long in hell
+before the Devil perceived that he was too bad for his place, and the
+place began to swarm with young imps to such a degree that the Devil
+called the Gipsy to him one day, and said, 'Of all the people that have
+ever come to this place you are the worst.  You are too bad for us.  Here
+is your passport.  Be off back again!'  The Devil opened the door, and
+said, as the Gipsy was going, 'Make yourself scarce.'  So you see," said
+Lee to me, "we are too bad for the Devil.  We'll go anywhere, fight
+anybody, or do anything.  Now, lads, drink that 'fourpenny' up, and let's
+send for some more."  This is Gipsy life in England on a Sunday afternoon
+within the sound of church bells.
+
+           [Picture: A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her pipe]
+
+The proprietor of the _Weekly Times_ very readily granted permission for
+one of the principals of his staff to accompany me to one of the Gipsy
+encampments a Sunday or two ago on the outskirts of London.  Those who
+know the writer would say the article is truthful, and not in the least
+overdrawn:--"The lane was full of decent-looking houses, tenanted by
+labourers in foundries and gas and waterworks; but there were spaces
+between the rows of houses, forming yards for the deposit of garbage, and
+in these unsavoury spots the Gipsies had drawn up their caravans, and
+pitched their smoke-blackened tents.  These yards were separated from
+each other by rows of cottages, and each yard contained families related
+near or distantly, or interested in each other's welfare by long
+associations in the country during summer time, and in such places as we
+found them during the winter season.  After spending several hours with
+these people in their tents and caravans, and passing from yard to yard,
+asking the talkative ones questions, we came to the conclusion that, in
+the whole bounds of this great metropolis, it would have been impossible
+to have found any miscalling themselves Gipsies whose mode of living more
+urgently called for the remedial action of the law than the tenants of
+Lamb-lane.  In the first place, there was not a true Gipsy amongst them;
+nor one man, woman, or child who could in any degree claim relationship
+with a Gipsy.  They were, all of them, idle loafers, who had adopted the
+wandering life of the Gipsy because of the opportunities it afforded of
+combining a maximum of idle hours with a minimum of work.  The men
+exhibited this in their countenances, in the attitudes they took up, by
+the whining drawl with which they spoke; the women, by their dirtiness
+and inattention to dress; and the children, by their filthy condition.
+The men and women had fled from the restraints of house life to escape
+the daily routine which a home involved; the men had no higher ambition
+than to obtain a small sum of money on the Saturday to pay for a few
+days' food.  There was not one man amongst them who could solder a broken
+kettle; a few, however, could mend a chair bottom, but there all
+industrial ability ended; and the others got their living by shaving
+skewers from Monday morning to Friday night, which were sold to butchers
+at 10d. or 1s. the stone.  These men stayed at home, working over the
+brazier of burning coke during the week, while their wives hawked small
+wool mats or vases, but nothing of their own manufacture; and the
+grown-up lads, on market-days, added to the general industry by buying
+flowers in Covent-garden, and hawking them in the suburbs of the
+metropolis.  We were assured by Mr. Smith that this class of pseudo-Gipsy
+was largely on the increase, and to check their spread Mr. Smith suggests
+that the provisions of an Act of Parliament should be mainly directed.
+Only one of all we saw and spoke to on Sunday was 'a scholar'--that is,
+could read at all--and this was a lad of about fourteen, who had spent a
+few hours occasionally at a Board school.  With all the others the
+knowledge that comes of reading was an absolute blank.  They knew
+nothing, except that the proceeds of the previous week had been below the
+average; social events of surpassing interest had not reached them, and
+the future was limited by 'to-morrow.'  We questioned them upon their
+experiences of the past winter, and the preference they had for their
+tents over houses was emphatically marked.  'Brick houses,' said one
+woman, who was suckling a baby, 'are so full of draughts.'  Night and day
+the brazier of burning coke was never allowed to go low, and under the
+tent the ground was always dry, however wet it might be outside, because
+of the heat from the brazier; besides, they lay upon well-trodden-down
+straw, six or eight inches deep, and covered themselves with their
+clothes, their wraps, their filthy rugs, and tattered rags, and were as
+warm as possible.  The tents had many advantages over a brick house.
+Besides having no draughts, there was no accumulation of snow upon the
+tops of the tents; and so these witless people were content to endure
+poverty, hunger, cold, and dirt for the sake of minimising their
+contribution to the general good of the whole commonwealth.  The poorest
+working man in London who does an honest week's work is a hero compared
+with such men as these.  It would be impossible to nurture sentiment in
+any tent in Lamb-lane.  There was no face with a glimmer of honest
+self-reliance about it, no face bearing any trace of the strange beauty
+we had noticed in other encampments, and no form possessed of any
+distinguishing grace.  The whole of the yards were redolent of dirt; and
+the people, each and all, inexcusably foul in person.  In several yards
+little boys or girls sat on the ground in the open air, tending coke
+fires over which stood iron pots, and, as the water boiled and raised the
+lids, it was plain that the women were taking advantage of the quiet
+hours of the afternoon for a wash.  Before we came away from the last
+yard, lines had been strung across all the yards, and the hastily-washed
+linen rags were fluttering in the air.  One tent was closed to visitors.
+It was then four o'clock, and a woman told us confidentially her friend
+was washing a blanket, which she would have to dry that same afternoon,
+as it would be 'wanted' at night; but 'the friend' professed her
+readiness to take charge of anything we had to spare for the
+washerwoman--a mouthful of baccy, a 'sucker' for the baby, or 'three
+ha'pence for a cup of tea.'  Boys were there of fourteen and sixteen,
+with great rents in the knees of their corduroys, who only went out to
+hawk one day in the week--Saturday.  They started with a light truck for
+Covent-garden at four in the morning, and would have from 4s. to 6s. to
+lay out in flowers.  When questioned as to what flowers they had bought
+on the previous day, one lad said they were 'tulips, hyacinths, and
+cyclaments,' but nobody could give us an intelligible description of the
+last-named flowers.  Two lads generally took charge of the flower truck,
+and the result of the day's hawking was usually a profit of half-a-crown
+to three shillings.  These lads also assisted during the week in shaving
+skewers, and accompanied their fathers to market when they had a load to
+sell.  In one tent we found a dandy-hen sitting; she had been so occupied
+one week, and the presence of the children and adults, who shared her
+straw bed, in no way discomposed her.  We found that baccy and 'suckers'
+were the most negotiable exchanges with these people.  The women, young
+and old, small boys and the men, all smoked, and the day became historic
+with them because, of the extra smokes they were able to have.  The
+'suckers' were the largest specimen of 'bulls' eyes' we could find--not
+those dainty specimens sold at the West-end or in the Strand, but real
+whoppers, almost the size of pigeons' eggs; and yet there was no baby
+whose mouth was not found equal to the reception and the hiding of the
+largest; and we noticed as a strange psychological fact that no baby
+would consent, though earnestly entreated by its mother, to suffer the
+'sucker' to leave its mouth for the mother to look at.  The babies knew
+better, shaking their wary little heads at their mothers.  Instinct was
+stronger than obedience.  We were not sorry to get away from Lamb-lane,
+with its filthy habitations, blanket washings, ragged boys and girls,
+lazy men and women.  For the genuine Gipsy tribe, and their mysterious
+promptings to live apart from their fellows in the lanes and fields of
+the country, we have a sentimental pity; but with such as these Lamb-lane
+people, off-scourings of the lowest form of society, we have no manner of
+sympathy; and we hope that a gracious Act of Parliament may soon rid
+English social life of such a plague, and teach such people their duty to
+their children and to society at large--things they are too ignorant and
+too idle to learn for themselves."
+
+My son sends me the following account of a visit he made to a Gipsy
+encampment near London:--I visited the camp at Barking Road this
+afternoon.  Possibly you thought I might not go if you gave me a correct
+description of the route, for I certainly went through more muddy streets
+and over lock-bridges than your instructions mentioned.  Presuming I was
+near the camp, I inquired of a policeman, and was surprised with the
+reply that there used to be one, but he had not heard anything of it for
+a long while.  His mind was evidently wandering, or else he meant it as a
+joke, for we were then standing within three hundred yards of the largest
+encampment I have yet seen.  It is situated at the back of Barking Road,
+in what may be termed a field, but it certainly is not a green one, for
+the only horse and donkey that I saw were standing against boxes
+eating--perhaps corn.
+
+I am surprised that the Gipsies should choose such an exposed, damp place
+for camping-ground, as it is always partly under water, and the only
+shelter afforded being a few houses at the back and one side; the rest
+faces, and is consequently exposed to, the bleak winds blowing over the
+marsh and the river.
+
+At the entrance I was met by a poor woman taking a child to the doctor,
+her chief dread being that if she did not the law would be down upon her.
+She had put the journey off to the last minute, for the poor thing looked
+nearly dead then.
+
+Once in the camp one could not but notice the miserable appearance of the
+place.  Women and children, not one of whom could read and write, with
+scarcely any clothing, the latter without shoes or stockings.  Twenty to
+twenty-five old, ragged, and dirty tents--not canvas, but old, worn-out
+blankets--separated by the remains of old broken vans, buckets, and
+rubbish that must have taken years to accumulate.  Everything betokened
+age and poverty.  Evidently this field has been a camping-ground for some
+years.  Three old vans were all the place could boast of, and one of
+those was made out of a two-wheeled cart.
+
+I was for the first ten minutes fully occupied in trying to keep a
+respectable distance from a number of dogs of all sizes and breeds, which
+had the usual appetite for fresh meat and tweed trowsering, and, at the
+same time, endeavouring in vain to find solid ground upon which to stand,
+for the place at the entrance and all round the tents was one regular
+mass of deep "slush."  It soon became known that my pockets were
+plentifully supplied with half-ounces of tobacco and sweets.  These I
+soon disposed off, especially the latter, for there seemed no end to the
+little bare-footed children that could walk, and those that couldn't were
+brought in turn by their sisters or brothers.  I was invited to visit all
+the tents, but I could gain but little information beyond an account of
+the severe winter, bad state of trade, your visit in one of the black,
+dense fogs, &c.
+
+        [Picture: Inside a Christian Gipsy's Van--Mrs. Simpson's]
+
+The men followed the occupation of either tinkers or peg-makers, and all
+the young women will pull out their pipe and ask for tobacco as readily
+as the old ones.
+
+The camp is one of the Lees.  The majority of the men, women, and
+children are of light complexion, and, as for a dark-eyed beauty, one was
+not to be found.  I stayed most of the time under the "blanket" of the
+old man, Thomas Lee, who is a jolly old fellow about sixty, and the
+father of eleven young children.  He was evidently the life of the camp,
+for they all flock round his tent to hear his interesting snatches of
+song and story.
+
+He had heard that Her Majesty had sent 50 pounds to assist you in getting
+the children educated, and just before I left I was pleased to hear him
+give vent to his feelings with the rough but patriotic speech that "She
+was a rare good woman, and a Queen of the right sort."
+
+It must not be inferred from what I have said, or shall say, that there
+are no good Gipsies among them.  Here and there are females to be found
+ready at all hours and on all occasions to do good both to the souls and
+bodies of Gipsies and house-dwellers as they travel with their basket
+from door to door hawking their wares; and to illustrate the truth of
+this I cannot do better than refer to the case of the good and
+kind-hearted Mrs. Simpson, who is generally located with her husband and
+some grand-children in her van in the neighbourhood near Notting Hill, on
+the outskirts of London.  Mrs. Simpson tells me that she is not a
+thorough Gipsy, only a half one.  Her father was one of the rare old
+Gipsy family of Lees, of Norfolk, and her mother was a Gorgio or Gentile,
+who preferred following the "witching eye" and "black locks" to the rag
+and stick hovel--or, to be more aristocratic, "the tent"--whose roof and
+sides consisted of sticks and canvas, with an opening in the roof to
+serve as a chimney, through which the smoke arising from the hearth-stick
+fire could pass, excepting that which settled on the hands and face.
+Grass, green, decayed, or otherwise, to serve as a carpet, the brown
+trampled turf taking the place of mosaic and encaustic tile pavements,
+straw instead of a feather-bed, and a soap-box, tea-chest, and like
+things doing duty as drawing-room furniture.  Mrs. Simpson, when quite a
+child, was always reckoned most clever in the art of deception, telling
+lies and fortunes out of a small black Testament, of which she could not
+read a sentence or tell a letter; sometimes reading the planets of silly
+geese, simpletons, and fools out of it when it was upside down, and when
+detected she was always ready with a plausible excuse, which they, with
+open mouths, always swallowed as Gospel; and for more than twenty-five
+years she kept herself and family in this way with sufficient money to
+keep them in luxury, loose living, and idleness, till the year of 1859,
+when, by some unaccountable means, her conscience, which, up to this
+time, had been insensible, dull, and without feeling, became awakened,
+sharp, and alive.  Probably this quickening took place in consequence of
+her hearing a good Methodist minister in a mission-room in the
+neighbourhood.  The result was that the money she took by telling
+fortunes began to burn her fingers, and to make it sit upon her
+conscience as easy as possible she had a large pocket made in her dress
+so that she could drop it in without much handling.  It was no easy thing
+to give up such an easy way of getting a living to face the realities of
+an honest pedlar's life, in the midst of "slamming of doors,"
+"cold-shoulders," "scowls," "frowns," and insults; and a woman with less
+determination of character would never have attempted it--or, at least,
+if attempted, it would soon have been given up on account of the
+insurmountable difficulties surrounding it.  Many times she has sat by
+the wayside with her basket, after walking and toiling all day, and not
+having taken a penny with which to provide the Sunday's dinner, when at
+the last extremity Providence has opened her way and friends have
+appeared upon the scene, and she has been enabled to "go on her way
+rejoicing," and for the last twenty years she has been trying to do all
+the good she can, and to day she is not one penny the loser, but, on the
+other hand, a gainer, by following such a course.  Personally, I have
+received much encouragement and valuable information at her hands to help
+me in my work to do the Gipsy children good in one form or other.  I have
+frequently called to see the grand old Gipsy woman, sometimes
+unexpectedly, and when I have done so I have either found her reading the
+Bible or else it has been close to her elbow.  Its stains and soils
+betoken much wear and constant use.  Very different to the old woman who
+put her spectacles into her Bible as she set it upon the clock, and lost
+them for more than seven years.  She is a firm believer in prayer; in
+fact, it seems the very essence of her life, and she can relate numbers
+of instances when and where God has answered her petitions.  On her
+bed-quilt are the following texts of scripture, poetry, &c., which, as
+she says, these, with other portions of God's word, she "has learnt to
+read without any other aid except His Holy Spirit:"--"For God so loved
+the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on
+Him should not perish but have everlasting life."  "Every kingdom divided
+against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a
+house falleth."  "But whoso hath this world's goods and seeth his brother
+have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth
+the love of God in him?"  "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer
+believing ye shall receive."  "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
+He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the
+still waters."  "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
+death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff
+they comfort me."  "I am the door; by Me if any man enter in he shall be
+saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture."  "Let nothing be done
+through strife, but in lowliness of mind; let each esteem others better
+than themselves."  "Look not every man on his own things, but every man
+also on the things of others."  "Let your speech be always with grace,
+seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man."
+"Wives submit yourselves unto your husbands, as it is fit in the Lord."
+"Husbands love your own wives and be not bitter against them."  "Children
+obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the
+Lord."  "Fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be
+discouraged."  "Servants obey in all things your masters according to the
+flesh, not with eye service as man pleases, but in singleness of heart
+fearing God."  "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace,
+long-suffering, gentleness," &c.  "The wages of sin is death."  "Let us
+run the race with patience."  "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
+"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them."
+"He that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."  "Come unto Me all
+ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."  "I am the
+way, the truth, and the life."  "Whatsoever ye find to do, do it with all
+your might."  "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
+there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
+there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."  "He that
+overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall
+be My son."  "And they shall see His face and His name shall be in their
+foreheads."  "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle,
+neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they
+shall reign for ever and ever."
+
+    "Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee;
+    Let the water and the blood,
+    From Thy riven side which flowed,
+    Be of sin the double cure,
+    Save me from its guilt and power.
+
+    "While I draw this fleeting breath,
+    When mine eyes shall close in death,
+    When I soar to worlds unknown,
+    See Thee on Thy judgment throne;
+    Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
+    Let me hide myself in Thee."
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    "Just as I am, without one plea,
+    But that Thy blood was shed for me,
+    And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
+    O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
+
+    "Just as I am--Thy love unknown
+    Has broken every barrier down;
+    Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
+    O Lamb of God, I come, I come!"
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    "Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
+    The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
+    When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
+    Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
+
+    "Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
+    Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away!
+    Change and decay in all around I see;
+    O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
+
+    "I need Thy presence every passing hour;
+    What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
+    Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?
+    Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me."
+
+Upon these promises of help, comfort, warning, encouragement, and
+consolation, she has many times rested her wearied body after returning
+from her day's trudging and toil, and under these she has slept
+peacefully as in the arms of death, ready to answer the Master's summons,
+and to meet with her dear little boy who has crossed the river, when He
+shall say, "It is enough; come up hither," and "sit on My throne."
+Although she is a big, powerful woman, and has been more so in years that
+are past, when any one begins to talk about Heaven and the happiness and
+joy in reserve for those who have a hope of meeting with loved ones
+again, when the cares and anxieties of life are ended, it is not long
+before they see big, scalding, briny tears rolling down her dark,
+Gipsy-coloured face, and she will frequently edge in words during the
+conversation about her "Dear Saviour" and "Blessed Lord and Master."  I
+may mention the names of other warm-hearted Gipsies who are trying to
+improve the condition of some of the adult portion of their brethren and
+sisters--dwellers upon the turf, and clod scratchers, who feed many of
+their poor women and children upon cabbage broth and turnip sauce, and
+"bed them down," after kicks, blows, and ill-usage, upon rotten straw
+strewn upon the damp ground.  Mrs. Carey, Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, Mrs.
+Hedges, and the three Gipsy brothers Smith, Mrs. Lee, and a few others,
+have not laboured without some success, at the same time they are
+powerless to improve the condition of the future generations of Gipsy
+women and children, young mongrels and hut-dwelling Gorgios, by applying
+the civilising influences of education and sanitary measures to banish
+heathenism worse than that of Africa, idleness, immorality, thieving,
+lying, and deception of the deepest dye from our midst, as exhibited in
+the dwellings of the rag and stick hovels to be seen flitting about the
+outskirts, fringe, and scum of our own neglected ragamuffin population,
+roaming about under the cognition that the name of a Gipsy is nauseous
+and disgusting in most people's mouths on account of the damning evil
+practices they have followed and carried out for centuries upon the
+honest and industrious artisans, tradesmen, and others they have been
+brought in contact with.  A raw-boned Gipsy, with low, slanting forehead,
+deep-set eyes, large eyebrows, thick lips, wide mouth, skulkingly slow
+gait, slouched hat, and a large grizzly-coloured dog at his heels, in a
+dark, narrow lane, on a starlight night, is not a pleasant state of
+things for a timid and nervous man to grapple with; nevertheless this is
+one side of a Gipsy's life as he goes prowling about in quest of his
+prey, and as such it is seen by those who know something of Gipsy life.
+
+    "And they return at evening: they growl like a dog and compass the
+    city;
+    They--they prowl about for food.
+    If (or since) they are not satisfied they spend the night (in the
+    search)."
+
+                                                         "Sunday at Home."
+
+Even my friends, the canal-boatmen, look upon Gipsies as the lowest of
+the low, and lower down the social scale than any boatman to be met with.
+Some of them have gone so far as to try to shake my nerves by telling me
+that, now I had taken the Gipsy women and children in hand, they would
+not give sixpence for my life.  I could only reply with a smile, and tell
+them that I was in safe keeping till the work was done, as in the case of
+the canal movement.  Frowns, dogs, sticks, stones, and oaths did not
+frighten me.  The time had arrived when the vagabondish life of a
+Gipsy--so called--should be unmasked and the plain truth made known; and
+for this the Gipsies will thank me, if they take into consideration the
+object I have in view and the end I am seeking.  My object is to elevate
+them, through the instrumentality of sanitary officer and schoolmaster
+being at work among the children, into respectable citizens of society,
+earning an honest livelihood by honourable and legitimate means; far
+better to do this than to go sneaking about the country, begging,
+cadging, lying, and stealing all they can lay their hands upon, and
+training their children to put up with the scoffs, sneers, and insults of
+the Gorgios or Gentiles for the sake of pocketing a penny at the cost of
+losing their manhood.  A thousand times better live a life such as would
+enable them to look everybody straight in the face than burrowing and
+scratching their way into the ground, making skewers at one shilling per
+stone, and being considered as outlaws, having the mark of Cain upon
+their forehead, with their hands against everybody and everybody against
+them.  There is no honour in a scamp's life, credit in being a thief,
+glory surrounding a rogue, and halo over the life of a vagabond and a
+tramp.  To see a half-naked, full grown-man and his wife, with six or
+eight children, sitting on the damp ground in rag huts large enough only
+for a litter of pigs, scratching roasted potatoes out of the dying embers
+of a coke fire, as thousands are doing to-day, is enough to freeze the
+blood in one's veins, make one utter a shriek of horror and despair, and
+to bring down the wrath of God upon the country that allows such a state
+of things in her midst.
+
+    "How dark yon dwelling by the solemn grove!"
+
+
+
+
+Part V.
+The sad Condition of the Gipsies, with Suggestions for their Improvement.
+
+
+One thing that strikes me in going through the writings of those authors
+in this country who have endeavoured to deal with the Gipsy question is,
+their hesitation to tackle the Gipsy difficulty at home.  On the surface
+of the books they have written there appears a disposition to mince the
+subject, at all events, that amount of courage has not been put into
+their works that characterised Grellmann's work upon the Gipsies of his
+own country.  If an account similar to Grellmann's had appeared
+concerning our English Gipsies a century ago, and energetic action had
+been taken by our law-makers, instead of publishing an account of the
+Hungarian and other Continental Gipsies, it is impossible to calculate
+the beneficent results that would have accrued long before this, both to
+the Gipsies themselves and the country at large.
+
+     [Picture: Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller's van near Latimer Road]
+
+One writer deals principally with the Scotch Gipsies, another with the
+Spanish Gipsies, another is trying to prove the Egyptian origin of the
+Gipsies, another is tracing their language, another treats upon our
+English Gipsies in a kind of "milk-and-watery" fashion that will neither
+do them good nor harm--he pleases his readers, but leaves the Gipsies
+where he found them, viz., in the ditch.  Another went to work on the
+principle of praying and believing for them; but, I am sorry to say, in
+his circumscribed sphere his faith and works fell flat, on account, no
+doubt, of this dear, good man and his friends undertaking to do a work
+which should in that day have been undertaken by the State, at least,
+that part of it relating to the education of the Gipsy children.
+
+The Gipsy race is supposed to be the most beautiful in the world, and
+amongst the Russian Gipsies are to be found countenances, which, to do
+justice to, would require an abler pen than mine; but exposure to the
+rays of the sun, the biting of the frost, and the pelting of the pitiless
+sleet and snow destroys the beauty at a very early age, and if in infancy
+their personal advantages are remarkable, their ugliness at an advanced
+age is no less so, for then it is loathsome and appalling:--"He wanted
+but the dark and kingly crown to have represented the monster who opposed
+the progress of Lucifer whilst careering in burning arms and infernal
+glory to the outlet of his hellish prison."  In our own country a number
+of Gipsies sit as models, for which they get one shilling per hour.  They
+are not in demand as perfect specimens of the human figure from the crown
+of the head to the sole of the foot; but few of them, owing to their low,
+debasing habits, have arrived at that state of perfection.  I know one
+real, fine, old Gipsy woman who sits to artists for the back of her head
+only, on account of her black, frizzy, raven locks.  One will sit for her
+eyes, another for the nose, another for the hands and feet, another for
+the colour only.  Alfred Smith sits for his feet, and there are others
+who sit for their legs and arms.  No class of people, owing to their
+mixture with other classes, tribes, and nations, presents a greater
+variety of models for the artist than the Gipsy.  If an artist wants to
+paint a thief he can find a model among the Gipsies.  If he wants to
+paint a dark highwayman lurking behind a hedge after his prey he goes to
+the Gipsy.  If he wants to paint Ajax he goes to the Gipsy.  If he wants
+to paint a Grecian, Roman, or Spaniard he goes to the Gipsy.  Of course
+there are exceptions, but if an artist wants to paint a large, fine,
+intellectual-looking figure, with an open countenance, he keeps away from
+the Gipsies and seeks his models elsewhere.  Dregs among the Gipsies have
+produced queens for the artists.
+
+Gipsies with a mixture of English blood in their veins have produced men
+with pluck, courage, and stamina, strongly built, with plenty of muscle
+and bone.  Two "bruisers" of the Gipsy vagabond class have worn the
+champion's belt of the world; and, on the other hand, this mixture of
+English and Gipsy blood has produced some fine delicate Grecian forms of
+female beauty, dove-like, soft in eye, hand, and heart--the flashy fire
+in the eye of a Gipsy has been reduced to the modesty and innocence and
+simplicity of a child.  Our present race of Gipsies, under the influence
+of education, refinement, and religion, will, if properly and wisely
+taken in hand and dealt with according to the light of reason and truth,
+produce a class of men and women well qualified to take their share, for
+weal or for woe, in the struggle of life.
+
+Some first-rate songsters and musicians have been produced among the
+Gipsies, and whose merits have been acknowledged.  Perhaps the highest
+compliment ever paid to a singer was paid by Catalini herself to one of
+the daughters of a tanned and tawny skin.  It is well known in Russia
+that the celebrated Italian was so enchanted with the voice of a Moscow
+Gipsy (who, after the former had displayed her noble talent before a
+splendid audience in the old Russian capital, stepped forward and poured
+forth one of her national strains) that she tore from her own shoulders a
+shawl of cashmere which had been presented to her by the Pope, and,
+embracing the Gipsy, insisted on her acceptance of the splendid gift,
+saying that it was intended for the matchless songster, which she now
+perceived she herself was not.  No doubt there are many good voices among
+our Gipsies; what is required to bring them out is education and culture.
+Our best Gipsy songsters and musicians are in Wales.
+
+The following is a specimen of a Gipsy poetic effusion, which my Gipsy
+admirers will not consider an extraordinarily high-flown production--the
+outcome of nearly one million Gipsies who have wandered up and down
+Europe for more than three hundred years, as related by Borrow.
+
+
+
+TWO GIPSIES.
+
+
+    "Two Gipsy lads were transported,
+    Were sent across the great water;
+    Plato was sent for rioting,
+    And Louis for stealing the purse
+          Of a great lady.
+
+    "And when they came to the other country,
+    The country that lies across the water,
+    Plato was speedily hung,
+    But Louis was taken as a husband
+          By a great lady.
+
+    "You wish to know who was the lady:
+    'Twas the lady from whom he stole the purse;
+    The Gipsy had a black and witching eye,
+    And on account of that she followed him
+          Across the great water."
+
+Smart and Crofton, speaking poetically and romantically of Gipsy life,
+say as follows:--
+
+"With the first spring sunshine comes the old longing to be off, and soon
+is seen, issuing from his winter quarters, a little cavalcade, tilted
+cart, bag and baggage, donkeys and dogs, rom, romni, and tickni, chavis,
+and the happy family is once more under weigh for the open country.  With
+dark, restless eye and coarse, black hair fluttered by the breeze, he
+slouches along, singing as he goes, in heart, if not in precise words--
+
+    "I loiter down by thorpe and town,
+       For any job I'm willing;
+    Take here and there a dusty brown,
+       And here and there a shilling.
+
+No carpet can please him like the soft green turf, and no curtains
+compare with the snow-white blossoming hedgerow thereon.  A child of
+Nature, he loves to repose on the bare breast of the great mother.  As
+the smoke of his evening fire goes up to heaven, and the savoury odour of
+roast hotchi witchi or of canengri soup salutes his nostrils, he sits in
+the deepening twilight drinking in with unconscious delight all the
+sights and sounds which the country affords; with his keen senses alive
+to every external impression he feels that
+
+    "'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear,
+    'Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep
+          From leaf to leaf.
+
+He dreamily hears the distant bark of the prowling fox, and the
+melancholy hootings of the wood owls; he marks the shriek of the
+night-wandering weasel, and the rustle of the bushes as some startled
+forest creature darts into deep coverts; or, perchance, the faint sounds
+from a sequestered hamlet of a great city.  Cradled from infancy in such
+haunts as these 'places of nestling green for poets made,' and surely for
+Gipsies too, no wonder if, after the fitful fever of town life, he sleeps
+well, with the unforgotten and dearly-loved lullabies of his childhood
+soothing him to rest."
+
+The following is in their own Gipsy language to each other, and exhibits
+a true type of the feeling of revenge they foster to one another for
+wrongs done and injuries received, and may be considered a fair specimen
+of the disposition of thousands of Gipsies in our midst:--"Just see,
+mates, what a blackguard he is.  He has been telling wicked lies about
+us, the cursed dog.  I will murder him when I get hold of him.  That
+creature, his wife, is just as bad.  She is worse than he.  Let us thrash
+them both and drive them out of our society, and not let them come near
+us, such cut-throats and informers as they are.  They are nothing but
+murderers.  They are informers.  We shall all come to grief through their
+misdoings."  Not much poetry and romance in language and characters of
+this description.
+
+    "These Indians ne'er forget
+    Nor evermore forgive an injury."
+
+The following is a wail of their own, taken from Smart and Crofton, and
+will show that the Gipsies themselves do not think tent life is so
+delightful, happy, and free as has been pictured in the imaginative brain
+of novel writers, whose knowledge has been gained by visiting the Gipsies
+as they have basked on the grassy banks on a hot summer day, surrounded
+by the warbling songsters and rippling brooks of water, as clear as
+crystal, at their feet, sending forth dribbling sounds of enchantment to
+fall upon musical ears, touching the cords of poetic affection and lyric
+sympathy:--"Now, mates, be quick.  Put your tent up.  Much rain will come
+down, and snow, too--we shall all die to-night of cold; and bring
+something to make a good fire, too.  Put the tent down well, much wind
+will come this night.  My children will die of cold.  Put all the rods in
+the ground properly to make it stand well.  The poor children cry for
+food.  My God! what shall I do to give them food to eat?  I have nothing
+to give them.  They will die without food."
+
+My object in this part will be to deal with the Gipsy question in a hard,
+matter of fact way, both as regards their present condition and the only
+remedy by which they are to be improved.  No one believes in the power of
+the Gospel more than I do as to its being able to rescue the very dregs
+of society from misery and wretchedness; but in the case of the Gipsies
+and canal-boatmen they cannot be got together so as to be brought under
+its influence.  Their darkness, ignorance, and flitting habits, prevent
+them either reading about Jesus or being brought within the magic spell
+of the Gospel.  When once the Gipsy children have learned to read and
+write I shall then have more faith in the power of God's truth reaching
+the hearts of the Gipsies and producing better results.
+
+The following letter has been handed to me by the uncle, to show what a
+little, dark-eyed Gipsy girl of twelve years of age can do.
+Notwithstanding all its faults it is a credit to the little beauty,
+especially if it is taken into consideration that she has had no father
+to teach her, and she has chiefly been her own schoolmaster and mistress.
+She is the only one who can read and write in a large family.  Her books
+have been sign-boards, guide-posts, and mile-stones, and her light the
+red glare of a coke fire.  I give the letter to show two things; first,
+that there is a strong desire among the poor Gipsy children for
+education; second, that there is that mental calibre about the Gipsy
+children of the present generation that only requires fostering,
+handling, educating, and caring for as other children are to produce in
+the next generation a class of people of whom no country need be ashamed.
+They will be equal to stand shoulder to shoulder with other labouring
+classes.
+
+                           (Copy of envelope.)
+
+                               "JOB CLATAN
+                              "Char bottomar
+                            "at ash be hols in
+                              "Darbyshere."
+
+                            (Copy of letter.)
+
+                                                          "febury 18 1880.
+
+"Dear uncel and Aunt
+
+"I wright these few li to you hoping find you all well.
+
+"Fanny Vickers as sent you a rose father and Mother as sent there best
+love to you I think it is very strang you have never wrote it is Twenty
+year if live till may it is a strang thing you doant com to see her  She
+is stark stone blind and lives with son john at gurtain  I hope and trust
+you will send us word how you are getting  Fanny mother is not only a
+very poor crater somtimes Mother often thinks she should often like to
+see your bazy and joby you might com land see us in the summer if we had
+nothing elce I ca il find them something to eat  if mother never see you
+in this world she is hopining to see you in heaven  so no more from your
+afexenen brother and sister Vickers  good buy * * * * Kiss all on you * *
+* *"
+
+In speaking of the Gipsies in Scotland sixty years ago, Mr.
+Deputy-Sheriff Moor, of Aberdeenshire, says as follows:--"Occasionally
+vagrants, both single and in bands, appear in this part of the country,
+resorting to fairs, when they commit depredations on the unwary."  Sir
+Walter Scott, Bart., says of the Gipsies:--"A set of people possessing
+the same erratic habits, and practising the trade of tinkers, are well
+known in the Borders, and have often fallen under the cognisance of the
+law.  They are often called Gipsies, and pass through the country
+annually in small bands, with their carts and asses.  The men are
+tinkers, poachers, and thieves upon a small scale," and he goes on to say
+that "some of the more atrocious families have been extirpated."  Mr.
+Riddell, Justice of Peace for Roxburghshire, says:--"They are thorough
+desperadoes of the worst class of vagabonds.  Those who travel through
+this county give offence chiefly by poaching and small thefts.  All of
+them are perfectly ignorant of religion.  They marry and cohabit amongst
+each other, and are held in a sort of horror by the common people."  Mr.
+William Smith, the Baillie of Kelso, and a gentlemen of high position,
+says:--"Some kind of honour peculiar to themselves seems to prevail in
+their community.  They reckon it a disgrace to steal near their homes, or
+even at a distance if detected.  I must always except that petty theft of
+feeding their shilties and asses on the farmers' grass and corn, which
+they will do whether at home or abroad."  And he further says, "I am
+sorry to say, however, that when checked in their licentious
+appropriations they are much addicted both to threaten and to execute
+revenge."  Mr. Smith always visited the Gipsies upon one of the estates
+of which he had the charge, consequently he would be likely to know more
+about them than most people.  A number of other gentleman confirmed these
+statements.  By comparing these remarks with the statements of Mr.
+Harrison in a letter published in the _Standard_ last August, backing up
+my case, it will be seen that the Scotch Gipsies if anything have
+degenerated.  Mr. Harrison's letter will be found in Part II.
+
+Much has been said and written with reference to their health and age.
+For my own part I firmly believe that the great ages to which they say
+they live--of course there are many exceptions--are only myths and
+delusions, and another of their dodges to excite sympathy.  From the days
+of their debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable
+phrase for Gipsies, "old hags," they seem to jump from sixty to between
+seventy and eighty at a bound.  I was talking to one I considered an old
+woman as to her age only a day or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful
+tone, "I am a long way over seventy," and I asked her if she could tell
+me the year in which she was born, to which she replied that she "was
+sixteen when the good Queen was crowned."
+
+The following case, related to me by the tradesman himself, at
+Battersea--a sharp, quick, business gentleman, who boasted to me that he
+had never been sold before by any one--will show faintly how clever the
+Gipsy women are at lying, deception, and cheating:--Three pretty,
+well-dressed Gipsy women went into his shop one day last summer, and said
+that they had arranged to have a christening on the morrow, and as beer
+got into the heads of their men, and made them wild, which they did not
+like to see on such occasions, they had decided to have a quiet, little,
+respectable affair, and in place of beer they were going to have wine,
+cakes, and biscuits after their tea; and they ordered some currant cake,
+several bottles of wine, tea, sugar, and other things required on such
+occasions, to the amount of two pounds fourteen shillings.  The Gipsies
+asked to have the bill made out and the goods packed in a hamper.  And
+while this was being done the Gipsies said to the tradesman: "Now, as we
+have ordered so much from you, we think that you ought to buy a mat or
+two and other things of us."  Without consulting his wife, he agreed to
+buy one or two things, to the amount of eleven shillings, which the
+tradesman had thought would have been deducted from their account; but
+the Gipsies thought differently--and here was the craft--and said, "We
+don't understand figures.  You had better pay us for the mats, &c., and
+we will pay you for the wine."  The tradesman, who was thrown off his
+guard, paid them the eleven shillings.  With this they walked out of his
+shop, saying that they would take the bill with them, and send a man with
+the money and a barrow for the wine, cake, &c., in a few minutes, which
+they did not, but left the tradesman a wiser but sadder man for spending
+eleven shillings in things he did not require; and his remarks to me
+were, "No more Gipsies for me, thank you.  I've had quite plenty of
+Gipsies for my lifetime."
+
+Cases have been known when the Gipsy women have gone among the farmers'
+cattle and rubbed their nostrils with some nastiness to such an extent as
+to cause the cattle to loathe their food.  The Gipsy in the lane--who of
+course knows all about the affair--goes to the farmer and tells him he
+can cure his cattle.  This is agreed upon.  All the Gipsy does is to
+visit the cattle secretly and slyly, and rub off the nastiness he has put
+on.  The cattle immediately begin to eat their food, and the Gipsy gets
+his fee.  They kill lambs by sticking pins into their heads.
+
+Tallemant says that near Peye, in Picardy, a Gipsy offered a stolen sheep
+to a butcher for one hundred sous, or five francs; but the butcher
+declined to give more than four francs for it.  The butcher then went
+away; whereupon the Gipsy pulled the sheep from a sack into which he had
+put it, and substituted for it a child belonging to his tribe.  He then
+ran after the butcher, and said, "Give me five francs, and you shall have
+the sack into the bargain."  The butcher paid him the money, and went
+away.  When he got home he opened the sack, and was much astonished when
+he saw a little boy jump out of it, who in an instant caught up the sack
+and ran off.  "Never was a poor man so hoaxed as this butcher."  When
+they want to leave a place where they have been stopping they set out in
+an opposite direction to that in their right course.  The Gipsies have a
+thousand other tricks--so says one of the Gipsy fraternity named Pechou
+de Ruby.  Paul Lacroix says that when they take up their quarters in any
+village they steal very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the
+neighbouring parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner.  If
+they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and make a
+rapid flight from the place.  They make counterfeit money, and put it
+into circulation.  They play all sorts of games; they buy all sorts of
+horses, whether sound or unsound, provided they can manage to pay for
+them in their own base coin.  When they buy food, they pay for it in good
+money the first time, as they are held in such distrust; but when they
+are about to leave a neighbourhood they again buy something, for which
+they tender false coin, receiving the change in good money.  In harvest
+time all doors are shut against them, nevertheless they contrive, by
+means of picklocks and other instruments, to effect an entrance into
+houses, when they steal linen, clocks, silver, and any other movable
+article which they can lay their hands upon.  They give a strict account
+of everything to their captain, who takes his share.  They are very
+clever in making a good bargain.  When they know of a rich merchant
+living in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communication
+with him, and swindle him, after which they change their clothes, have
+their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft
+material, lest they should be heard, and gallop away.  Grellmann
+says:--"The miserable condition of the Gipsies may be imagined from the
+following facts: many of them, and especially the women, have been
+burned, by their own request, in order to end their miserable existence;
+and we can give the case of a Gipsy, who, having been arrested, flogged,
+and conducted to the frontier, with the threat that if he re-appeared in
+the country he would be hanged, resolutely returned after three
+successive and similar threats at three different places, and implored
+that the capital sentence might be carried out, in order that he might be
+released from a life of such misery."  And he goes on to say that "these
+unfortunate people were not even looked upon as human beings, for during
+a hunting party the huntsmen had no scruple whatever in killing a Gipsy
+woman who was suckling her child, just as they would have done any wild
+beast which came in their way."  And he further says that they received
+"into their ranks all those whose crime, the fear and punishment of an
+uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming life continually threw in
+their path; they made use of them either to find their way into countries
+of which they were ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise
+have been impracticable.  They were not slow to form an alliance with
+profligate characters, who sometimes worked in concert with them."
+
+A century ago it was somewhat romantic, and answered very well as a
+contrast to civilisation, to see a number of people moving about the
+country, dressed in beaver hats and bonnets, scarlet cloaks and hoods,
+short petticoats, velvet coats with silver buttons, and a plentiful
+supply of gold rings.  The novelty of their person, with dark skin and
+eyes, black hair, and their fortune-telling proclivities, and other odd
+curiosities and eccentricities, answered well for a time as a kind of
+eye-blinder to their little thefts and like things; but that day is over.
+Their silver buttons are all gone to pot.  Their silk velvet coats, plush
+waistcoats, and diamond rings have vanished, never more to return with
+their present course of life; patched breeches, torn coats, slouched
+hats, and washed gold rings have taken their places, and ragged garments
+in place of silk dresses for the poor Gipsy women.  The Gipsy men
+"lollock" about, the women tell fortunes, and the children gambol on the
+ditch banks with impunity, nobody caring to interfere with them in any
+way.  This kind of thing, as regards dash and show, is to a great extent
+passed, and those men who put on a show of work at all, it is as a
+general thing at tinkering, chair-mending, peg-splitting, skewer-making,
+and donkey buying.  The men make the skewers and sell them at prices
+varying from one shilling to two shillings per stone; the wood for the
+skewers they do not always buy.  A friend of mine told me a couple of
+months since that the Gipsies had broken down his fences with impunity,
+and had taken five hundred young saplings out of his plantation for this
+purpose.  Chairs are bottomed at prices ranging from one shilling and
+upwards.  Some of them do scissor-grinding, for which they charge
+exorbitant prices.  Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton Hall, told me
+very recently that one of the Boswell gang had charged him two shillings
+for grinding one knife.  Some of the women, who are not good hands at
+fortune-telling, sell artificial flowers, combs, brushes, lace, &c.  The
+women who are good at fortune-telling can make a good thing out of it,
+even at this late day, in the midst of so much light and Christianity,
+and they carry it out very adroitly and cleverly too.  Two or three
+months ago I was invited by some Gipsy friends to have tea with them on
+the outskirts of London.  They very kindly sent for twopenny worth of
+butter for me, and allowed me the honour of using the only cup and
+saucer, which they said were over one hundred years old.  The tea for the
+grown-up sons and daughters was handed round in mugs, jugs, and basins.
+The good old man cut my bread and butter with his dark coloured hands
+pretty thin, but the bread for his sons and daughters was like pieces of
+bricks, which, with pieces of bacon, he pitched at them without any
+ceremony, and as they caught it they, although men and women, kept saying
+"Thank you, pa," "Thank you, pa," and down it went without either knives
+or forks, or very little grinding.  We were all sitting upon the floor,
+my table being an undressed brick out of some old building, and it was
+with some difficulty I could keep the pigs that were running loose in the
+yard from taking a piece off my plate, but with a pretty free use of my
+toe I kept sending the little grunters squeaking away.  After tea I felt
+a little curious to know what was in the big old Gipsy dame's basket, for
+I had an idea one or two hair-brushes, combs, laces, and other small
+trifles which lay on the top of a small piece of oilcloth covering the
+inside of the basket had, by their greasy appearance, done duty for many
+a long day.  I told the old Gipsy dame that I was going home the next
+day, and should like to take a little thing or two for my little ones at
+home, as having been bought of a Gipsy woman near London.  The sharp old
+woman was not long in offering me one or two of her trifles that lay on
+the top of her basket, but these I said were not so suitable as I should
+like.  "Had she nothing more suitable lower down as a small present?"
+After a little fumbling and flustering she began to see my motive, and
+said, "Ah!  I see what you are after.  I will tell you the truth and show
+you all."  She turned the oilcloth off the basket, underneath of which
+were "shank ends" of joints, ham-bones, pieces of bacon, and crusts.
+"These," she said, "have been given to me by servant girls and others for
+telling their fortunes, really lies, and I have brought them here for my
+children to live upon, and this is how we live."
+
+       [Picture: Gipsy Fortune-tellers cooking their evening meal]
+
+Fortune-telling is a soul-crushing and deadly crying evil, and it is far
+from being stamped out.  A hawker's licence, about the size of one of
+these pages, covers a life-time of sin and iniquity in this respect.  A
+basket with half-a-dozen brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and
+a pocket Bible, is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve
+them for a year.  They generally prophecy good.  Knowing the readiest way
+to deceive, to a young lady they describe a handsome gentleman as one she
+may be assured will be her "husband."  To a youth they promise a pretty
+lady with a large fortune.  And thus suiting their deluding speeches to
+the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects of those who employ
+them, they seldom fail to please their vanity, and often gain a rich
+reward for their fraud.
+
+A young lady in Gloucestershire allowed herself to be deluded by a Gipsy
+woman, of artful and insinuating address, to a very great extent.  This
+lady admired a young gentleman, and the Gipsy promised that he would
+return her love.  The lady gave her all the plate in the house, and a
+gold chain and locket, with no other security than a vain promise that
+they should be restored at a given period.  As might be expected, the
+wicked woman was soon off with her booty, and the lady was obliged to
+expose her folly.  The property being too much to lose, the woman was
+pursued and overtaken.  She was found washing her clothes in a Gipsy
+camp, with the gold chain about her neck.  She was taken up, but on
+restoring the articles was allowed to escape.
+
+The same woman afterwards persuaded a gentleman's groom that she could
+put him in possession of a great sum of money if he would first deposit
+with her all he then had.  He gave her five pounds and his watch, and
+borrowed for her ten more of two of his friends.  She engaged to meet him
+at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and
+that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold
+covered with a clean napkin.  He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the
+appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence
+strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he
+considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was soon to receive.  Of
+course he met no Gipsy; she had fled another way with the property she
+had so wickedly obtained.  While waiting her arrival a hare started
+suddenly from its resting-place and so alarmed him that he as suddenly
+took to his heels and made no stop till he reached his master's house,
+where he awoke his fellow-servants and told to them his disaster.
+
+This woman, who made so many dupes, rode a good horse, and dressed both
+gaily and expensively.  One of her saddles cost thirty pounds.  It was
+literally studded with silver, for she carried on it the emblems of her
+profession wrought in that metal--namely, a half moon, seven stars, and
+the rising sun.  Poor woman! _her_ sun is set.  Her sins have found her
+out.  Fortune-tellers die hard without exception, so I am told by the
+Gipsies themselves.
+
+Some time ago a gentleman followed several Gipsy families.  Arriving at
+the place of their encampment his first object was to gain their
+confidence.  This was accomplished; after which, to amuse their
+unexpected visitant, they showed forth their night diversions in music
+and dancing; likewise the means by which they obtained their livelihood,
+such as tinkering, fortune-telling, and conjuring.  That the gentleman
+might be satisfied whether he had obtained their confidence or not, he
+represented his dangerous situation, in the midst of which they all with
+one voice cried, "Sir, we would kiss your feet rather than hurt you!"
+After manifesting a confidence in return, the master of this formidable
+gang, about forty in number, was challenged by the gentleman for a
+conjuring match.  The challenge was instantly accepted.  The Gipsies
+placed themselves in a circular form, and both being in the middle
+commenced with their conjuring powers to the best advantage.  At last the
+visitor proposed the making of something out of nothing.  This proposal
+was accepted.  A stone which never existed was to be created, and appear
+in a certain form in the middle of a circle made on the turf.  The master
+of the gang commenced, and after much stamping with his foot, and the
+gentleman warmly exhorting him to cry aloud, like the roaring of a lion,
+he endeavoured to call forth nonentity into existence.  Asking him if he
+could do it, he answered, "I am not strong enough."  They were all asked
+the same question, which received the same answer.  The visitor
+commenced.  Every eye was fixed upon him, eager to behold this unheard-of
+exploit; but (and not to be wondered at) he failed! telling them he
+possessed no more power to create than themselves.  Perceiving the
+thought of insufficiency pervading their minds, he thus spoke: "Now, if
+you have not power to create a poor little stone, and if 1 have not power
+either, what must that power be which made the whole world out of
+nothing?--men, women, and children! that power I call God Almighty."
+
+I have been told that the dislike they have to rule and order has led
+many of them to maim themselves by cutting off a finger, that they might
+not serve in either the army or the navy; and I believe there is one
+instance known of some Gipsies murdering a witness who was to appear
+against some of their people for horse-stealing; the persons who were
+guilty of the deed are dead, and in their last moments exclaimed with
+horror and despair, "Murder, murder."  But these circumstances do not
+stamp their race without exception as infamous monsters in wickedness.
+
+The following is a remarkable instance of the love of costly attire in a
+female Gipsy of the old school.  The woman alluded to obtained a very
+large sum of money from three maiden ladies, pledging that it should be
+doubled by her art in conjuration.  She then decamped to another
+district, where she bought a blood-horse, a black beaver hat, a new
+side-saddle and bridle, a silver-mounted whip, and figured away in her
+ill-obtained finery at the fairs.  It is not easy to imagine the
+disappointment and resentment of the covetous and credulous ladies, whom
+she had so easily duped.  With the present race of our gutter-scum
+Gipsies the last remnant of Gipsy pride is nearly dead--poverty, rags,
+and despair taking the place.
+
+Gipsies of the old type are not strangers to pawnbrokers' shops; but they
+do not visit these places for the same purposes as the vitiated poor of
+our trading towns.  A pawnshop is their bank.  When they acquire property
+illegally, as by stealing, swindling, or fortune-telling, they purchase
+valuable plate, and sometimes in the same hour pledge it for safety.
+Such property they have in store against days of adversity and trouble,
+which on account of their dishonest habits often overtake them.  Should
+one of their families stand before a judge of his country, charged with a
+crime which is likely to cost him his life, or to transport him, every
+article of value is sacrificed to save him from death or apprehended
+banishment.  In such cases they generally retain a counsel to plead for
+the brother in adversity.  Their attachment to the horse, donkey, rings,
+snuff-box, silver spoons, and all things, except the clothes, of the
+deceased relatives is very strong.  With such articles they will never
+part, except in the greatest distress, and then they only pledge some of
+them, which are redeemed as soon as they possess the means.
+
+It has been stated by some writers, that there is hardly a Gipsy in
+existence who could not, if desired, produce his ten or twenty pounds "at
+a pinch."  Some of those who work, no doubt, could; but it is entirely
+erroneous, as many other statements relating to the Gipsies, to imagine
+that the whole of them are as well off as all this.  Smith tells us that
+there is not one in twenty who can show one pound, much less twenty.  A
+Gipsy named Boswell travelled about in the Midland counties with a large
+van pretty well stocked with his wares, and everybody, especially the
+Gipsies, thought he was a rich man; but in course of time it came to pass
+that he died, which event revealed the fact that he was not worth
+half-a-crown.  No class of men and women under the sun has been more
+wicked than the Gipsies, and no class has prospered less.  By their evil
+deeds for centuries they have brought themselves under the curse of God
+and the lash of the law wherever they have been.
+
+    "To our foes we leave a shame! disgrace can never die;
+    Their sons shall blush to hear a name still blackened with a lie."
+
+Their miserable condition, the persecution, misrepresentation, and the
+treatment they are receiving are due entirely to their own
+evil-doing--lying, cheating, robbing, and murder bring their own reward.
+The Gipsies of to-day are drinking the dregs of the cups they had mixed
+for others.  The sly wink of the eye intended to touch the heart of the
+innocent and simple has proved to be the electric spark that has reached
+heaven, and brought down the vengeance of Jehovah upon their heads.  The
+lies proceeding from their bad hearts have turned out to be a swarm of
+wasps settling down upon their own pates; their stolen goods have been
+smitten with God's wrath; the horses, mules, and donkeys in their
+unlawful possession are steeds upon which the Gipsies are riding to hell;
+and the fortune-telling cards are burning the fingers of the Gipsy women;
+in one word, the curse of God is following them in every footstep on
+account of their present sins, and not on account of their past
+traditions.  Immediately they alter their course of life, and "cease to
+do evil and learn to do well"--no matter whether they are Jews or
+barbarians, bond or free--the blessing of God will follow, and they will
+begin to thrive and prosper.
+
+Smoking and eating tobacco adds another leaden weight to those already
+round their neck, and it helps to bow them down to the ground--a short
+black pipe, the ranker and oftener it has been used the more delicious
+will be the flavour, and the better they will like it.  When their
+"baccy" is getting "run out," the short pipe is handed round to the
+company of Gipsies squatting upon the ground, without any delicacy of
+feeling, for all of them to "have a pull."  Spittoons are things they
+never use.  White, scented, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs are not often
+brought into request upon their "lovely faces."  They prefer allowing the
+bottom of the dresses the honour of appearing before his worship "the
+nose."  Nothing pleases the Gipsies better than to give them some of the
+weed.  I saw a poor, dying, old Gipsy woman the other day.  Nothing
+seemed to please her so much, although she could scarcely speak, as to
+delight in referring to the sins of her youth, of a kind before referred
+to, and no present was so acceptable to her as "a nounce of baccy."  She
+said she "would rather have it than gold," and I "could not have pleased
+her better."  I doubt whether she lived to smoke it.  I think I am
+speaking within the mark when I state that fully three-fourths of the
+Gipsy women in this country are inveterate smokers.  It is a black,
+burning shame for us to have such a state of things in our midst.  In
+nine cases out of ten the children of drunken, smoking women will turn
+out to be worthless scamps and vagabonds, and a glance at the Gipsies
+will prove my statements.
+
+Eternity will reveal their deeds of darkness--murders, immorality,
+torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor slaves of women,
+beastly and murderous brutality to their poor children.  There is a
+terrible reckoning coming for the "Gipsy man," who can chuckle to his
+fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who
+can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own
+body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with
+sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow
+can find its way without let or hinderance; who can take upon his knees a
+dog and fondle it in his bosom, and, at the same time, spit in his wife's
+face with oaths and cursing, and send her out in the snow on a
+piercing-cold winter's day, half clad and worse fed, with child on her
+back and basket on her arm, to practise the art of double-dyed lying and
+deception on honest, simple people, in order to bring back her ill-gotten
+gains to her semi-clad hovel, on which to fatten her "lord and master,"
+by half-cleaned knuckle-bones, ham-shanks, and pieces of bacon that fall
+from the "rich man's table."
+
+The following is a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I
+have visited.  In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab,
+two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped
+against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place.  The
+Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in
+prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type, marked
+with small-pox, and plenty of tongue--by the way, I may say I have not
+yet seen a dumb and deaf Gipsy.  She turned up her dress sleeves and
+showed me how she had "made the blood run out of another Gipsy woman for
+hitting her child."  As she came near to me exhibiting her fisticuffing
+powers, I might have been a little nervous years ago; but dealing with
+men and things in a rough kind of fashion for so many years has taken
+some amount of nervousness of this kind out of me.
+
+It may be as well to remark here that the Gipsy women can do their share
+of fighting, and are as equally pleased to have a stand-up fight as the
+Gipsy men are.  One of these Gipsy women lives with a man who is not a
+thorough Gipsy, who spends a deal of his time under lock and key on
+account of his poaching inclinations; and other members of this large
+family are on the same kind of sliding scale, and not one of whom can
+read or write.
+
+It is not pleasant to say strong things about clergymen, for whom I have
+the highest respect; nevertheless, there are times when respect for
+Christ's church, duty to country, love for the children and anxiety for
+their eternal welfare, compels you to step out of the beaten rut to
+expose, though with pain, wrong-doing.  In a day and Sunday school-yard
+connected with the Church of England, not one hundred miles from London,
+there are to be seen--and I am informed by them, except during the
+hop-picking season, that it is their camping-ground, and has been for
+years--one van, in which there are man, wife, young woman, and a daughter
+of about fourteen years of age; the young woman and daughter sleep in a
+kind of box under the man and his wife.  In another part of the yard is a
+Gipsy tent, where God's broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a
+"batten of straw" serves as a bed.  There is a woman, two daughters, one
+of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a
+youth I should think about sixteen years of age.  I should judge that the
+mother and her two daughters sleep on one bed at one end of the tent and
+the youth at the other; there is no partition between them, and only
+about seven feet of space between each bed of litter.  In another tent
+there is man, wife, and one child.  When I was there, on the Sunday
+afternoon, they were expecting the Gipsy "to come home to his tent drunk
+and wake the baby."  In another tent there was a Gipsy with his lawful
+wife and three children.  One of the Gipsy women in the yard frequently
+came home drunk, and I have seen her smoking with a black pipe in her
+mouth three parts tipsy.  Now, I ask my countrymen if this is the way to
+either improve the habits and morals of the Gipsies themselves, or to set
+a good example to day and Sunday scholars.  Drunkenness is one of the
+evil associations of Gipsy life.  Brandy and "fourpenny," or "hell fire,"
+as it is sometimes called, are their chief drinks.  A Gipsy of the name
+of Lee boasted to me only a day or two since that he had been drunk every
+night for more than a fortnight, his language being, "Oh! it is
+delightful to get drunk, tumble into a row, and smash their peepers.
+What care we for the bobbies."  They seldom if ever use tumblers.  A
+large jug is filled with this stuff, in colour and thickness almost like
+treacle and water, leaving a kind of salty taste behind it as it passes
+out of sight; but, I am sorry to say, not out of the body, mind, or
+brain, leaving a trail upon which is written--more! more! more!  Under
+its influence they either turn saints or demons as will best serve their
+purpose.  The more drink some of the Gipsy women get the more the red
+coloured piety is observable in their faces, and when I have been talking
+to them, or otherwise, they have said, "Amen," "Bless the Lord," "Oh, it
+is nice to be 'ligious and Christany," as they have closed round me; and
+with the same breath they have begun to talk of murder, bloodshed, and
+revenge, and to say, "How nice it is to get a living by telling lies."
+Half an ounce of tobacco and a few gentle words have a most wonderful
+effect upon their spirits and nerves under such circumstances.  I have
+frequently seen drunken Gipsy women in the streets of London.  Early this
+year I met one of my old Gipsy women friends in Garrett Lane, Wandsworth,
+with evidently more than she could carry, and a weakness was observable
+in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far gone as not to know
+who I was.  She tried to make a curtsy, and in doing so very nearly lost
+her balance, and it took her some ten yards to recover her perpendicular.
+With a little struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and
+pursued her way to the tent.
+
+In December of last year four Gipsies, of Acton Green, were charged
+before the magistrates at Hammersmith with violently assaulting an
+innkeeper for refusing to allow them to go into a private part of his
+house.  A terrible struggle ensued, and a long knife was fetched out of
+their tents, and had they not been stopped the consequences might have
+been fearful.  They were sent to gaol for two months, which would give
+them time for reflection.  A few days ago two Gipsies from the East End
+of London were sent to gaol for thieving, and are now having their turn
+upon the wheel of fortune.
+
+    "Whirl fiery circles, and the moon is full:
+    Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow,
+    And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast;
+    Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns,
+    And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands;
+    Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads.
+    Here serpents dash their stings into my face,
+    All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives
+    His red-hot talons in my burning scalp.
+    Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears
+    Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down
+    Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies
+    Scorch deep like melting minerals.  Murther!  Fire!"
+
+Cries the Gipsy, as he rolls about on his bed of filthy litter, in a tent
+whose only furniture is an old tin bucket pierced with holes, a soap-box,
+and a few rags, with a poor-looking, miserable woman for a wife, and a
+lot of wretched half-starved, half-naked children crying round him for
+bread.  "Give us bread!"  "Give us bread!" is their piteous cry.
+
+The Gipsy in Hungary is a being who has puzzled the wits of the
+inhabitants for centuries, and the habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are
+abominable; their hovels, for they do not all live in tents and
+encampments, are sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is
+nothing but rags, and they live on carrion; and it is in this pitiable
+condition they go singing and dancing to hell.  Nothing gives them more
+pleasure than to be told where a dead pig, horse, or cow may be found,
+and the Gipsies, young and old, will scamper to fetch it; decomposition
+rather sharpens their ravenous appetites; at any rate, they will not
+"turn their noses up" at it in disgust; in fact, Grellmann goes so far as
+to say that human flesh is a dainty morsel, especially that of children.
+What applies to the Hungarian Gipsies will to a large extent apply to the
+Gipsies in Spain, Germany, France, Russia, and our own country.  There is
+no proof of our Gipsies eating children; but if I am to believe their own
+statements, the dead dogs, cats, and pigs that happen to be in their way
+run the risk of being potted for soup, and causing a "smacking of the
+lips" as the heathens sit round their kettle--which answers the purpose
+of a swill-tub when not needed for cooking--as it hangs over the coke
+fire, into which they dip their platters with relish and delight.  What
+becomes of the dead donkeys, mules, ponies, and horses that die during
+their trafficking is best known to themselves.  No longer since than last
+winter I was told by some Gipsies on the outskirts of London that some of
+their fraternity had been seen on more than one occasion picking up dead
+cats out of the streets of London to take home to their dark-eyed
+beauties and lovely damsels.  Only a few days since I was told by a lot
+of Gipsies upon Cherry Island, and in presence of some of the Lees, that
+some of their fraternity, and they mentioned some of their names, had
+often picked up snails, worms, &c., and put them alive into a pan over
+their coke fires, and as the life was being frizzled out of the creeping
+things they picked them out of the pan with their fingers and put them
+into their months without any further ceremony.  I cannot for the life of
+me think that human nature is at such a low ebb among them as to make
+this kind of life general.  At most I should think cases of this kind are
+exceptional.  Their food, whether it be animal or vegetable, is generally
+turned into a kind of dirty-looking, thick liquid, which they think good
+enough to be called soup.  Their principal meal is about five o'clock,
+upon the return of the mother after her hawking and cadging expeditions.
+Their bread, as a rule, is either bought, stolen, or begged.  When they
+bake, which is very seldom, they put their lumps of dough among the red
+embers of their coke fires.  Sometimes they will eat like pigs, till they
+have to loose their garments for more room, and other times they starve
+themselves to fiddle-strings.  A few weeks since, when snow was on the
+ground, I saw in the outskirts of London eight half-starved, poor,
+little, dirty, Gipsy children dining off three potatoes, and drinking the
+potato water as a relish.  They do not always use knife and fork.  Table,
+plates, and dishes are not universal among them.  Their whole kitchen and
+table requirements are an earthen pot, an iron pan, which serves as a
+dish, a knife, and a spoon.  When the meal is ready the whole family sit
+round the pot or pan, and then "fall to it" with their fingers and teeth,
+Adam's knives and forks, and the ground providing the table and plates.
+Boiled pork is, as a rule, their universal, every-day, central
+pot-boiler, and the longer it is boiled the harder it gets, like the
+Irishman who boiled his egg for an hour to get it soft, and then had to
+give it up as a bad job.  Some of these kind-hearted folks have, on more
+than one occasion, given me "a feed" of it.  It is sweet and nice, but
+awfully satisfying, and I think two meals would last me for a week very
+comfortably; all I should require would be to get a good dinner off their
+knuckle-bones, roll myself up like a hedgehog, doze off like Hubert
+Petalengro into a semi-unconscious state, and I should be all right for
+three or four days.  "Beggars must not be choosers."  They have done what
+they could to make me comfortable, and for which I have been very
+thankful.  I have had many a cup of tea with them, and hope to do so
+again.
+
+One writer observes:--"Commend me to Gipsy life and hard living.  Robust
+exercise, out-door life, and pleasant companions are sure to beget good
+dispositions both of body and mind, and would create a stomach under the
+very ribs of death capable of digesting a bar of pig-iron."  Their habits
+of uncleanliness are most disgusting.  Occasionally you will meet with
+clean people, and children with clean, red, chubby faces; but in nine
+cases out of ten they are of parents who have had a different bringing up
+than squatting about in the mud and filth.  One woman I know at Notting
+Hill, and who was born in an Oxfordshire village, is at the present time
+surrounded with filth of the most sickening kind, which she cannot help,
+and to her credit manages to keep her children tolerably clean and nice
+for a woman of her position.  There is another at Garrett Lane,
+Wandsworth; another at Sheepcot Lane, Battersea; two at Upton Park; one
+at Cherry Island; two at Hackney Wick, and several others in various
+parts on the outskirts of London.  At Hackney Wick I saw twenty tents and
+vans, connected with which there were forty men and women and about
+seventy children of all ages, entirely devoid of all sanitary
+arrangements.  A gentleman who was building some property in the
+neighbourhood told me that he had seen grown-up youths and big girls
+running about entirely nude in the morning, and squatting about the
+ground and leaving their filth behind them more like animals than human
+beings endowed with souls and reason.  When I was there it was with some
+difficulty I could put my foot in a clean place.  The same kind of thing
+occurs in a more or less degree wherever Gipsies are located, and, sad to
+relate, house-dwelling Gipsies are very little better in this respect.
+Grellmann, speaking of the German and Hungarian Gipsies many years ago,
+says:--"We may easily account for the colour of their skin.  The
+Laplanders, Samoyeds, as well as the Siberians, have bronze,
+yellow-coloured skins, in consequence of living from their childhood in
+smoke and dirt, as the Gipsies do.  These would long ago have got rid of
+their swarthy complexions if they had discontinued this Gipsy manner of
+living.  Observe only a Gipsy from his birth till he comes to man's
+estate, and one must be convinced that their colour is not so much owing
+to their descent as to the nastiness of their bodies.  In summer the
+child is exposed to the scorching sun, in winter it is shut up in a smoky
+hut.  Some mothers smear their children over with black ointment, and
+leave them to fry in the sun or near the fire.  They seldom trouble
+themselves about washing or other modes of cleaning themselves.
+Experience also shows us that it is more their manner of life than
+descent which has propagated this black colour of the Gipsies from
+generation to generation."  I am told, and I verily believe it, that many
+of the children are not washed for years together.  I have seen over and
+over again dirt peeling off the poor children's bodies and faces like a
+skin, and leaving a kind of white patch behind it, presenting a kind of a
+piebald spectacle.  Some of the children never take their clothes off
+till they drop off in shreds.  Many of the Gipsies, both old and young,
+have only one suit of clothes.  English delicacy of feeling and sentiment
+for female virtue must stand abashed with horror at this kind of
+civilisation in the nineteenth century of Christian England.  I have seen
+washing done on the Sunday afternoon among them, and while the clothes
+have been drying on the line the women and children have been roasting
+themselves before the fires in nearly a nude state.  A Sunday or two ago
+a poor Gipsy woman was washing her only smoky-looking blanket late in the
+afternoon, and upon which she would have to lay that night.  It was a
+cold, wintry, drizzling afternoon, and how it was to get dry was a puzzle
+to me.  A Gipsy woman, named Hearn, said to me a few days ago, in answer
+to some conversation relating to their dirty habits; "The reason for the
+Gipsies not washing themselves oftener was on account of their catching
+cold after each time they washed."  She "only washed herself once in a
+fortnight, and she was almost sure to catch cold after it."  In some
+things the real old Gipsies are very particular, _i.e._, they will on no
+account take their food out of cups, saucers, or basins, that have been
+washed in the same pansions in which their linen has been washed; so
+sensitive are they on this point that if they found out that by an
+accident this custom had been transgressed they would immediately break
+the vessel to pieces.  This is a custom picked up by the Gipsies among
+the Jews in their wandering from India through the Holy Land.  Another
+practice they adopt in common with the Jews is, swearing or taking oaths
+over their dead relations.  The customs, practices, and words picked up
+by them during their wanderings have added to their mystification.  While
+they will respect certain delicacy observed among the Jews, they will eat
+pork, the most detestable of all food in the eyes of the Israelites, and
+will even pay a greater price for it than for beef or mutton.  An
+Englishwoman, who had married a Gipsy named Smith, told me very recently,
+in presence of her mother-in-law and another woman, that she had seen her
+husband eat a small plate of cooked snails as a dainty.  While the
+daughter-in-law was telling me this, the old Gipsy mother-in-law, with
+one foot in the grave, not far from Mary's Place, near the Potteries,
+Notting Hill, was trying to make me believe what a choice dish there was
+in store for me if I would allow her to cook me a hedgehog.  She said I
+should "find it nicer than the finest rabbit or pheasant I had ever
+tasted."  The fine, old, Gipsy woman, as regards her appearance, although
+suffering from congestion of lungs and inflammation, and expecting every
+moment to be her last, would joke and make fun as if nothing was the
+matter with her.  When I questioned her upon the sin of lying, she said,
+"If the dear Lord spares me, I shall tell lies again.  I could not get on
+without it; how could I?  I could not sell my things without lies."  She
+was rather severe, and this was a pleasing feature in the old woman's
+character, upon a Gipsy who was pretending to "'ligious," and yet living
+upon the money gained by his wife in telling fortunes.  She said, "If I
+must be ''ligious,' I would be ''ligious.'  You might," said the old
+woman, "as well eat the devil as suck his broth.  Ah! I hate the fellow."
+After asking her, and getting her interpretation of "God bless you" in
+Romany, which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti--and she was the only Gipsy round
+London who could put the words in Romany--and some other conversation
+accompanied with "coppers and baccy," &c., and to which she replied,
+"Amen!" with as much earnestness as if she was the greatest saint outside
+heaven, we parted.
+
+Much has been said and written years ago about the chastity, fidelity,
+and faithfulness of the Gipsies towards each other.  This may have been
+the case, and in a few exceptional cases it holds good now; but if I am
+to believe these men themselves they are very isolated indeed, and what I
+have said upon this point about the brick-yard _employes_ in my "Cry of
+the Children from the Brick-yards of England," and also those living in
+canal-boats, in "Our Canal Population," holds good, but with ten times
+more force concerning the Gipsies.  Immorality abounds to a most alarming
+degree.  Incest, wantonness, lasciviousness, lechery, whoring, bigamy,
+and every other abomination low, degrading, carnal appetites, propensity,
+and lust originate and encourage they practise openly, without the least
+blush; in fact, I question if many of them know what it is to blush at
+all.
+
+I have heard a deal of disgusting, filthy language in my time among
+brick-yard and canal-boat women, but not a tithe so sickening as among
+some Gipsy women.  I pitied them, and to look upon them as charitably as
+possible I set it down to their extreme ignorance of the language they
+used.  A Gipsy at Upton Park last week named D--- gloried to my face in
+the fact that he was not married.  This same man has a brother not far
+from Mitcham Common living with two sisters in an unlawful state.
+Abraham Smith, a Gipsy at Upton Park, who is over seventy, and tells me
+that he is trying to serve God and get to heaven, mentioned a case to me
+of a Gipsy and a woman at Hackney Wick.  The man has several children by
+a woman now living with another man, and the woman has several children
+by another man.
+
+This Gipsy, S---, and his woman S---, turned both lots of their former
+own children adrift upon the wide, wide world, uncared for, unprotected,
+and abandoned, while they are living and indulging in sin to their
+hearts' content, without the least shame and remorse.  Inquire of whoever
+I may, and look whichever way Providence directs me among the various
+phases of Gipsy life, I find the same black array of facts staring me in
+the face, the same dolorous issues everywhere.  The words reason, honour,
+restraint, and fidelity are words not to be found in their vocabulary.
+My later inquiries fully confirm my previous statements as to two-thirds
+living as husband and wife being unmarried.  I have not found a Gipsy to
+contradict this statement.  Abraham Smith fully agrees with it.
+
+The marriage ceremony of the Gipsies is a very off-hand affair.  Formerly
+there used to be some kind of ceremony performed by a friend.  Now the
+ceremony is not performed by any one.  Of course there are a few who get
+married at the church, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is
+performed by the clergyman gratuitously.  As soon as a boy has arrived in
+his teens he begins to think that something more than eating and drinking
+is necessary to him, and as the children of Gipsies are under no kind of
+parental, moral, or social restraint, a connection is easily formed with
+girls of twelve, some of them of close relationship.  After a few hours,
+in many cases, of courtship, they go together, and the affair so far is
+over.  They leave their parents' tents and set up one for themselves, and
+for a short time this kind of life lasts.  In course of time children are
+born, the only attendant being, in many instances, another Gipsy woman,
+or it may be members of their own families see to the poor woman in her
+hour of need.  If they have no vessel in which to wash the newly-born
+child, they dig a hole in the ground, which is filled with cold water,
+and the Gipsy babe is washed in it.  This being over, the poor little
+thing is wrapped in some old rags.  This was the custom years ago, and I
+verily believe the Gipsies have gone backwards instead of forwards in
+matters of this kind.
+
+The following brief account of a visit--one of many I have made to Gipsy
+encampments at Hackney Marshes and other places during the present
+winter--will give some faint idea of what Gipsy life is in this country,
+as seen by me during my interviews with the Gipsies.  The morning was
+dark; the snow was falling fast; about six inches of snow and slush were
+upon the ground--my object being in this case, as in others, viz., to
+visit them at inclement seasons of the weather to find as many of the
+Gipsies in their tents as possible, and as I closed my door I said,
+"Lord, direct me," and off I started, not knowing which way to go.
+Ultimately I found my way to Holborn, and took the 'bus, and, as I
+thought, to Hackney, which turned out to be "a delusion and a snare," for
+at the terminus I found myself some two and a half miles from the
+Marshes; however, I was not going to turn back if the day was against me,
+and after laying in a stock of sweets for the Gipsy children, and "baccy"
+for the old folks, I commenced my squashy tramp till I arrived at the
+Marshes; the difficulty here was the road leading to the tents being
+covered ankle deep with snow and water, but as my feet were pretty well
+wet I could be no worse off if I paddled through it.  Consequently, after
+these little difficulties were overcome, I found myself in the midst of
+about a score of tents and vans of all sizes and descriptions, connected
+with which there were not less than thirty-five grown-up Gipsies and
+about sixty poor little Gipsies.  The first van I came to was a kind of
+one-horse cart with a cover over it; inside was a strong, hulking-looking
+fellow and a poor, sickly-looking woman with five children.  The woman
+had only been confined a few days, and looked more fit for "the box" than
+to be washing on such a cold, wintry day.  On a bed--at least, some
+rags--were three poor little children, one of whom was sick, which the
+mother tried to prevent by putting her dirty apron to the child's mouth.
+The large, piercing eyes of this poor, death-looking Gipsy child I shall
+never forget; they have looked into my innermost soul scores of times
+since then, and every time I think about this sight of misery the sickly
+child's eyes seem to cry out, "Help me!  Help me!"  The poor woman said
+it was the marshes that caused the illness, but my firm opinion is that
+it was neither more nor less than starvation.  The poor woman seemed to
+be given up to despair.  A few questions put to her in the momentary
+absence of the man elicited the fact that she was no Gipsy.  She had been
+brought up as a Sunday-school scholar and teacher, and had been beguiled
+away from her home by this "Gipsy man."  She said she could tell me a lot
+if I would come some other time.  She also said, "Gipsy life as it is at
+present carried out ought to be put a stop to, and would be if people
+knew all."  With a few coppers given to her and the children we parted.
+In another tent on the marshes there was a man, woman, and six children.
+The tent was about twelve feet long, six feet six inches wide, and an
+average height of about three feet, making a total of about two hundred
+and thirty-four cubic feet of space for man, wife, and six children.
+These were of both sexes, grown-up and in their teens.  Their bed was
+straw upon the damp ground, and their sheets, rags.  The man was
+half-drunk, and the poor children were running about half-naked and
+half-starved.  The woman had some Gipsy blood in her veins, but the man
+was an Englishman, and had, so he said, been a soldier.  With a few
+coppers and sweets among the children, and in the midst of "Good-byes!"
+and "God bless you's!" I left them, promising to pay them another visit.
+Out of these twenty families only three were properly married, and only
+two could read and write, and these were the poor woman who had been a
+Sunday-school scholar and the man who had been a soldier, and, strange to
+say, the children of these two people could not read a sentence or tell a
+letter.  No minister ever visited them, and not one ever attended a place
+of worship.  In a visit to an encampment in another part of London I came
+across a poor Irishwoman, who had been allured away from her respectable
+home at the age of sixteen by one of the Gipsy gang.  When I saw her she
+was sitting crying, with two half-starved children by her side, who,
+owing to the coke fire, had bad eyes.  Their home was an old ragged tent,
+and their bed, rotten straw.  When I saw them, and it was about one
+o'clock, they had not tasted food for twenty-four hours.  I sent for a
+loaf for them, and they set to work upon it with as much relish as if
+they had been gnawing at the leg of a Christmas fat turkey.  The poor
+Gipsy woman had been a Sunday-school scholar, and could read and write,
+but neither her husband nor children could tell a letter.  Her taking to
+Gipsy life had broken her father's heart.  Her eldest child, a fine
+little girl of about seven years of age, had been taken from her by her
+friends, and was being educated and cared for.  A few weeks since the
+little daughter was anxious to see her mother, consequently she was taken
+to her tent; but, sad to relate, instead of the daughter going to kiss
+her mother, as she would expect, she turned away from her with a shudder
+and a shriek, and for the whole day the child did nothing but cry.  It
+would not touch a morsel of anything.  The only pleasant look that came
+upon its countenance was as it was leaving.  As the poor child was
+leaving the tent she would not kiss her mother or say the usual
+"Good-bye" as she went away.  This poor woman, as in the case of the
+woman at Hackney, said she could tell me a lot of things, which she would
+some time, and said, "Gipsy life ought to be put a stop to, for there was
+something about it more than people knew," and I thoroughly believe what
+this poor woman says.  It is my firm conviction that there is much more
+in connection with Gipsy life than many people imagine, or is dreamt of
+in their philosophy.  There is a substratum of iniquity lower than any
+writers have ever touched.  There are certain things in connection with
+their dark lives, hidden and veiled by their slang language, that may not
+come out in my day, but most surely daylight will be shed upon them some
+day.  They will kill and murder each other, fight and quarrel like
+hyenas, but certain things they will not divulge, and so long as the
+well-being of society is not in danger I suppose we have no right to
+interfere.  A query arises here.  Their past actions back me up in this
+theory.  Upon Mitcham Common last week there were nearly two hundred
+tents and vans.  In one tent, which may be considered a specimen of many
+others, there were two men and their wives, and about twelve children of
+both sexes and of all ages.  In another tent there were nine children of
+both sexes and all ages, some of them men and women, and for the life of
+me I cannot tell how they are all packed when they sleep--I suppose like
+herrings in a box, pell-mell, "all of a heap."  One of these Gipsy young
+women was a model, and has her time pretty much occupied during the day.
+I have been among house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midland counties, and
+have found twelve to fifteen men, women, and children, squatting about on
+the floor, which they used as a workshop, sitting-room, drawing-room, and
+bed-room; although there was a bed-room up-stairs it was not often
+used--so I was told by the landlady.
+
+There is much more sickness among the Gipsies than is generally known,
+especially among the children.  They have strong faith in herbs; the
+principal being chicken-weed, groundsel, elder leaves, rue, wild sage,
+love-wort, agrimony, buckbean, wood-betony, and others; these they boil
+in a saucepan like they would cabbages, and then drink the decoction.
+They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last extremity.  They are
+very much like the man who tried by degrees to train his donkey to live
+and work without food, and just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and
+so it is with the poor Gipsy children.  It kills them to break them in to
+the hardships of Gipsy life.  Occasionally I have heard of Gipsies who
+act as human beings should do with their children.  A well-to-do Gipsy
+whom I know--one of the Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson--has spent over 30
+pounds in doctors' bills this winter for his children's good.  Not one
+Gipsy in a thousand would do likewise.
+
+Gipsies die like other folk, although before doing so they may have lived
+and quarrelled like the Kilkenny cats among other Gipsies; but at death
+these things are all forgotten, and a Gipsy funeral seems to be the means
+to revive all the good they knew about the person dead and a burying of
+all the bad connected with the dead Gipsy's life.  I am now referring to
+a few of the better class of Gipsies.  Gipsies, as a rule, pay special
+regard to the wishes of a dying Gipsy, and will sacrifice almost anything
+to carry them out.  I attended the funeral of a house-dwelling Gipsy,
+Mrs. Roberts, at Notting Hill, a few weeks ago.  The editor and
+proprietor of the _Suburban Press_, refers to this funeral in his edition
+under date February 28th, as follows:--"On Monday last a noteworthy event
+took place in the humble locality of the Potteries, Notting Dale.  In
+this district are congregated a miscellaneous population of the poorest
+order, who get what living they can out of the brick-fields or adjoining
+streets and lanes, or by costermongering, tinkering, &c., &c.  They dwell
+together in the poorest and most melancholy-looking cottages, some in
+sheds and outhouses, or in dilapidated vans, for it is the resort and
+_locale_ of many of the Gipsies that wander in the western suburbs.  Yet
+all these make up a kind of community and live together as friends and
+neighbours, and every now and again they show themselves amenable to good
+influences, and characters of humble mark and power arise among them.  To
+those who sympathise with the poet who sings of the
+
+    "'Short and simple annals of the poor,'
+
+we scarcely know a region that can be studied to greater advantage.  In
+the present instance it was the funeral of an old inhabitant of the Gipsy
+tribe, one of the oldest, most respected, and loved of all the nomads,
+and related in some way to many Gipsy families in London and the
+neighbouring counties.  Abutting from the Walmer Road is a good sized
+court or alley called 'Mary Place,' and in a nook of one of the small
+cottages here lived Mrs. Roberts for a number of years, who has been
+described to us by one who long enjoyed her acquaintance as 'a very
+superior woman, intelligent and happy Christian.'  So that she must
+indeed have shone in that humble and sombre spot as a 'gem of purest ray
+serene,' though not exactly as the flower
+
+       "'Born to blush unseen,
+    And waste its sweetness on the desert air.'
+
+                [Picture: Outside a Christian Gipsy's van]
+
+For the comprehensive genius of Christian sympathy and labour had found
+her out, and she was known and respected, and her influence was felt by
+all around her.  She lived for years a widow, but with five grown-up,
+strong, and thrifty children--two sons and three daughters and troops of
+friends--to cheer her latter days.  The preliminaries--a service of song
+conducted by Mr. Adams and his sons--were soon over, and the coffin being
+lifted through the window was placed on the strong shoulders which had
+been appointed to convey it to Brompton Cemetery, a distance of some
+three miles.  It was a neat coffin, covered with black cloth, and when
+the pall had been thrown over it affectionate hands placed upon it two or
+three large handsome wreaths of immortals white as snow, and so the
+procession moved off followed by weeping sons, daughters, and friends,
+and a host of sympathising neighbours, to the strains of the 'Dead March
+in Saul.'  _Requiescat in pace_.  Among those present at this interesting
+ceremony standing next to us, and sharing in part our umbrella, was a
+gentleman whose name and vocation we were not aware until afterwards.  We
+were glad, however, to learn that we were unwittingly conversing with no
+other than Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the philanthropic
+and well-known promoter of the 'Brick-maker's' and 'Canal Boatman's'
+Acts, who has specially devoted himself to the improvement of the social
+condition of these too-neglected people.  He is now giving his attention
+to the case of the Gipsies, and specially to the children, to whom he is
+anxious to see extended among other things the provisions of the School
+Board Act.  The great and good work of Mr. Smith has already attracted
+the attention of a number of charitable Christian people, and it has not
+been overlooked by Her Majesty the Queen, who, with her accustomed care
+and kindness, has expressed her special interest therein."  She was a
+good, Christian woman, and I think I am speaking within bounds when I say
+that there is not one in five hundred like she was.  Before she died she
+wished for two things to be carried out at her funeral--one was that she
+should be carried on Gipsies' shoulders all the way to Brompton Cemetery,
+a distance of some miles; and the other was that Mr. Adams, a gentleman
+in the neighbourhood, should conduct a service of song just before the
+funeral _cortege_ left the humble domicile; both requests were carried
+out, notwithstanding that it was a pouring wet day.  The service of song
+was very impressive, surrounded as we were by some two hundred Gipsies
+and others of the lowest of the low, living in one of the darkest places
+in London.  Some stood with their mouths open and appeared as if they had
+not heard of the name of Jesus before, and there were others whose
+features betokened strong emotion, and upon whose cheeks could be seen
+the trickling tears as we sung, among others:--
+
+    "Shall we gather at the river,
+    Where bright angels' feet have trod,
+    With its crystal tide for ever
+    Flowing by the throne of God?
+          Yes, we'll gather at the river,
+          The beautiful, the beautiful river,
+          That flows by the throne of God.
+
+    "Soon we'll reach the silvery river,
+    Soon our pilgrimage will cease,
+    Soon our happy hearts will quiver,
+    With the melody of peace.
+          Yes, we'll gather at the river,
+          The beautiful, the beautiful river,
+          That flows by the throne of God."
+
+It has frequently been stated that the Gipsies never allow their poor to
+go into the union workhouses; this statement is both erroneous, false,
+and misleading.  Clayton, a Gipsy, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, told me only the
+other day that he knew an old Gipsy woman who was living in the Melton
+Mowbray Union Workhouse at the present time, and mentioned some others
+who had died in the union, a few connected with his own family.  Abraham
+Smith, a respectable and an old Christian Gipsy, mentioned the names of a
+dozen or more Gipsies of his acquaintance who had died in the union
+workhouse, some in the Biggleswade Union, of the name of Shaw.  There was
+a time when there was a little repugnance to the union, but this feeling
+has died out, thus adding another proof that the Gipsies, in many
+respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more ago; and
+this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government interference as
+regards the education of the children.  Abraham Smith also further stated
+that nearly all the old people belonging to one family of S--- had died
+in the workhouse in Bedfordshire.  Another thing has forced itself upon
+my attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor unfortunate
+idiots among them.  I know, for a fact, of one family where there are two
+poor creatures, one of whom is in the asylum, and of another family where
+there is one, and a number in various parts where they are semi-idiotic,
+and only next door to the asylum.  These painful facts will plainly show
+to all Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their
+country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the Gipsies
+to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense manner by those
+at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a position as to help
+themselves to some of the blessings we are in possession of ourselves.
+During all my inquiries, when the Gipsies have not fallen in with all I
+have said with reference to Gipsy life, they have all agreed without
+exception to the plan I have sketched out for the education of their
+children and the registration of their tents, &c.
+
+In the days of Hoyland and Borrow the Gipsies were very anxious for the
+education of their children and struggled hard themselves to bring it
+about.  Sixty years ago one of the Lovells sent three of his children to
+school, at No. 5, George Street, taught by Partak Ivery, and paid
+sixpence per week each with them; but the question of religion came up
+and the children were sent home.  The schoolmaster, Ivery, said that he
+had had six Gipsy children sent to his school, and when placed among the
+other children they were reduceable to order.  It is a standing disgrace
+and a shame to us as a nation professing Christianity that at this time
+we had in our midst ten to fifteen thousand poor little heathen children
+thirsting for knowledge, and no one to hand it to them or put them in the
+way to help themselves.  The sin lays at some one's door, and I would not
+like to be in their shoes for something.  While this dense ignorance was
+manifest among the poor Gipsy children at our doors we were scattering
+the Bibles all over the world, and sending missionaries by hundreds to
+foreign lands and supporting them by hundreds of thousands of pounds
+gladly subscribed by our hard-working artisans and others.  Not that I am
+finding fault with those who take an interest in foreign missions in the
+least--would to God that more were done for every nation upon the face of
+the globe--but I do think in matters relating to the welfare of the
+children we ought to look more at home.
+
+With reference to missionary effort among the Gipsies, I must confess
+that I am not a strong advocate for a strictly sectarian missionary
+organisation to be formed with headquarters in London, and a paid staff
+of officials, to convert the Gipsies.  If the act is passed upon the
+basis I have laid down, the result will be that in course of time the
+Gipsies will be localised.  I am strongly in favour of all sections of
+Christ's Church dealing with our floating population, whether upon land
+or water, in their own localities, and in a kind of spirit of holy
+rivalry among themselves, if I may use the term.  For the life of me I
+cannot see why temporary wooden erections, something of the "penny-gaff"
+style, should not be erected upon race-courses, and in the market-places
+during fair time, in which religious services could be held free from all
+sectarian bias, and which could be called the Showman's or Gipsy's
+Church.  There are times when a short interesting service could be held
+without coming in collision with the steam whistles of the
+"round-abouts," "big drums," reports from the "rifle galleries," the
+screams and shouts of stall-keepers; and at any rate, I think it would be
+better to have a number of organisations at work rather than one, dealing
+both with our Gipsies and canal-boatmen.  In whatever form missionary
+effort is put forth, it must go further than that of a clergyman, who
+told me one Sunday afternoon last year, after he had been preaching in
+the most fashionable church in Kensington, to the effect that, if any of
+the large number of Gipsies who encamped in his parish in the country,
+and not far from the vicarage, "raised their hats to him as he passed
+them, he returned the compliment."  Poor stuff this to educate their
+children and to civilise and Christianise their parents.
+
+It is my decided opinion that if the Gipsy children had been taken hold
+of at that day, and placed side by side with the children of other
+working classes, we should not by this time have had a Gipsy wigwam
+flitting about our country; fifty years' educational influences mean, to
+a great extent, their present and eternal salvation.  A tremendous
+responsibility and sin hangs, and will hang, about the necks of those who
+have in the past, or will in the future, shut the door of the school in
+the face of the poor Gipsy child, and turn it into the streets to perish
+everlastingly.  I am confident the Gipsies will do their part if a simple
+plan for its accomplishment can be set in motion.  Harshness, cruelty,
+and insult, rigid, and extreme measures will do no good with the Gipsies.
+Fiery persecution will only frustrate my object.  God knows, they are bad
+enough, and I have no wish to mince matters, or to paint them white, as
+fiction has done.  I have tried--how far I have succeeded it is not for
+me to say--to expose the evils, and not individuals, thoroughly, in
+accordance with my duty to my God, my country, and my conscience, without
+partiality, bias, or fear, be the consequences what they may.  To write a
+book full of glowing colour, pictures, fancies, imagination, and fiction,
+is both more profitable and pleasant.  The waft of a scented
+pocket-handkerchief across one's face by the hand of a fair and lovely
+damsel is only as a fleeting shadow and a passing vapour; they quickly
+come and they quickly go, leaving no footstep behind them; a shooting
+star and a flitting comet, and all is in darkness blacker than ever.
+Somehow or other the Gipsies will, if possible, encamp near a school, but
+they lack the power to enter, and some of them, no doubt, could send
+their children to school for a few days occasionally; but the Gipsies
+have got it in their heads that their children are not wanted, and this
+is the case with the show people's children.  Last autumn I saw myself an
+encampment of Gipsies upon Turnham Green; there were about thirty Gipsy
+children playing upon the school-fence, not one of whom could either read
+or write.  The school was only half full, and the teacher was looking
+very pleasantly out of the door of the school upon the poor, ignorant
+children as they were rolling about in the mud.  In another part of
+London a Gipsy owns some cottages, with some spare land between each
+cottage; upon this land there is her own van and a number of other vans
+and tents, for which standing ground they pay the Gipsy woman a rent of
+one shilling and sixpence per week each.  Neither herself nor any of the
+Gipsies connected with the encampment could tell a letter, and there were
+some sixty to seventy men, women, and children of all ages; and the
+strange part of the thing is, the Gipsy woman's tenants in her cottages
+were compelled by the School Board officer to send their children to
+school, while the Gipsy children were running wild like colts, and
+revelling in dirt and filth in the neighbourhood.  A similar state of
+things to this exists in a more or less degree with all the other
+encampments on the outskirts of London.  At one of the large encampments
+I tried to find if there were really any who could read and write, and to
+put this to the test I took the _Christian World_ and the _Christian
+Globe_ with me.  The Gipsy lad who they said was "a clever scholard" was
+brought to me, and I put the _Christian World_ before him to see if he
+could read the large letters; sad to say, instead of _Christian World_,
+he called it "Christmas," and there he stuck and could get no further.  I
+have said some strong things, and endeavoured to lay bare some hard facts
+relating to Gipsy life in the preceding part of this book, with a view to
+enlist help and sympathy for the poor children, and not to submit the
+Gipsy fathers to insult and ridicule.
+
+ [Picture: Four little Gipsies sitting for the Artist outside their tent,
+      dressed for the occasion, and who can neither read nor write]
+
+From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the mother is often
+necessitated to leave her tent in the morning, and seldom returns to it
+before night.  Their children are then left in or about their solitary
+camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children then have
+the care of the younger ones.  Those who are old enough gather wood for
+fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime.  By the culpable neglect of the
+parents in this respect the children are often exposed to accidents by
+fire, and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to
+death are not unfrequent.  One poor woman relates that two of her
+children have thus lost their lives by fire during her absence from her
+tent at different periods, and some years ago a child was scalded to
+death at Southampton.
+
+The following account will faintly show something of the hardships of
+Gipsy children's lives:--It was winter, and the weather was unusually
+cold, there being much snow on the ground.  The tent, which was only
+covered with a ragged blanket, was pitched on the lee side of a small
+hawthorn bush.  The children had stolen a few green sticks from the
+hedges, but they would not burn.  There was no straw in the tent, and
+only one blanket to lay betwixt six children and the frozen ground, with
+nothing to cover them.  The youngest of these children was three and the
+eldest seventeen years old.  In addition to this wretchedness the smaller
+children were nearly naked.  The youngest was squatted on the ground, her
+little feet and legs bare, and gnawing a frozen turnip which had been
+stolen from an adjoining field.  None of them had tasted bread for more
+than a day.  The moment they saw their visitor, the little ones
+repeatedly shouted, "Here is the gemman come for us!"  Some money was
+given to the eldest sister to buy bread with, at which their joy was
+greatly increased.  Straw was also provided for them to sleep on, four
+were measured for clothes, and after a few days they were placed under
+proper care.  The youngest child died, however, a short time after in
+consequence of having been so neglected in infancy.
+
+During last June a Gipsy woman, of the name of Bishop, was found in one
+of the tents, on a common just outside London, with her throat cut and
+her child lying dead by her side in a pool of blood, and the man with
+whom she cohabited--true to his Gipsy character--refused to answer any
+questions concerning this horrible affair.  An impression has gone the
+round for years that the Gipsies are exceedingly kind and affectionate to
+their children, in some instances it, no doubt, is true, but they are
+rare indeed if I may judge from appearances.  I have yet to learn that
+starvation, allowing their children to grow up infinitely worse than
+barbarians, subjecting them to fearful oaths and curses, and inflicting
+upon the poor children blows with sticks, used with murderous passion, to
+within an inch of their lives, exhibits much of the lamb-like spirit,
+dove-like innocence, and childish simplicity fiction would picture to our
+minds concerning these English barbarians as they camp on the mossy banks
+on a hot summer day.  In the presence of myself and a friend one of these
+lawless fellows very recently hurled a log of wood at a poor Gipsy
+child's head for an offence which we could not learn, farther than it was
+for a trifling affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child's head, or
+death must have been the result.  In visiting an encampment last autumn I
+came across six Gipsy children having their dinner off three small boiled
+turnips, and drinking the water as broth; the eldest girl, although
+dressed in rags, was going to sit the same afternoon for a leading artist
+upon a throne as a Spanish queen.  In another part of London--Mary
+Place--I found a family of Gipsies living under sticks and rags in the
+most filthy, sickening, and disgusting backyard I have ever been into--to
+such an extent was the stench that immediately I came out of it I had to
+get a little brandy or I should have fainted--the eldest girl of whom had
+her time pretty fully taken up by sitting as an artist's model in the
+costume of a peasant girl, sometimes gathering buttercups and daisies, at
+other times gathering roses and making button-holes for gentlemen's coats
+and placing them there with gentle hands and a smiling face; occasionally
+she would be painted as a country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture;
+at other times as a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and
+gambolling with children.  What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to
+silks and satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a palace; from
+turnips and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits; from beds of rotten
+straw to crimson and gold-covered chairs; from trampling among dead cats
+to a carpet composed of wild flowers; from "Get out you wretch and fetch
+some money, no matter how," to "Come here, my dear, is there anything I
+can do for you?" from the stench of a cesspool to the fragrance of the
+honeysuckle and sweetbriar, in one word, from hell to heaven all in an
+hour--such is one side of Gipsy life among the little Gipsies, not one of
+whom can read a sentence or write one word, and it is in this way Gipsy
+girls are found exposing their bodies to keep their big, healthy brothers
+and fathers at home in idleness and sin.  Two such Gipsy girls have come
+under my own notice, and no doubt there are scores of similar cases.
+Gipsy children are fond of a great degree of heat, and sometimes lie so
+near to the coke fires as to be in danger of burning.  I have seen them
+with their faces as red as if they were upon the point of being roasted,
+and yet they can bear to travel in the severest cold bare-headed, with no
+other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over them.  The cause
+of their bodily qualities, at least some of them, arises from their
+education and hardy manner of life.  Formerly the Gipsies, when there was
+less English blood in their veins, could stand the extreme changes and
+hardships of the English climate much better than now.  An Englishman,
+notwithstanding the fact that he has let go all moral and social respect
+and restraint over his conduct and joined the Gipsies, does not, and
+cannot, thrive and look well under their manner of living, and this I see
+more and more every day.  I have been struck very forcibly lately in
+visiting some of the hordes of Gipsies with the vast number of children
+the Gipsies bring into the world and the few that are reared.  At one
+encampment there were forty men and women and only about the same number
+of children to be seen.  At another encampment I found double the
+quantity of children to adult Gipsies.
+
+    [Picture: A top bedroom in a Gipsy's van for man, wife, and three
+          children, the sons and daughters sleeping underneath]
+
+No one can deny the fact that some of the children look well, but, on the
+other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of this, pictures of
+starvation, neglect, bad blood, and cruelty.  An Englishman is born for a
+nobler purpose than to lead a vagabond's life and end his days in
+scratching among filth and vermin in a Gipsy's wigwam, consequently, upon
+those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the sin
+attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep they take.  I
+don't lay at the door of their wigwam the sin of child-stealing, but this
+I have seen, _i.e._, many strange-looking children in their tents without
+the least shadow of a similarity to the adults in either habits,
+appearance, manner, or conversation.  Some of the poor things seemed shy
+and reserved, and quite out of their element.  Sometimes the thought has
+occurred to me that they were the children of sin, and put out of the way
+to escape shame being painted upon the back of their parents.  Sometimes
+my pity for the poor things has led me to put a question or two bearing
+upon the subject to the Gipsies, and the answer has been, "The poor
+things have lost their father and mother."  When I have asked if the
+fathers and mothers were Gipsies a little hesitation was manifested, and
+the subject dropped with no satisfactory answer to my mind.  I have my
+own idea about the matter.
+
+The hardships the women have to undergo are most heartrending.  The
+mother, in order to procure a morsel of food, takes her three months' old
+child either in her arms or on her back, and wanders the streets or lanes
+in foul or fair weather--in heat or cold.  Some of them have told me that
+they walk on an average over twelves miles a day.  They are the
+bread-winners.  I have seen them on their return to their wigwams, in the
+depth of winter, with six inches of snow on the ground, and scantily
+clad, and with six little children crying round them for bread.  No fire
+in the tent, and her husband idling about in other tents.  In cases of
+confinements, the men have to do something, or they would all starve.
+For a few days they wake up out of their idle dreams.  I know of Gipsy
+women who have trudged along with their loads, and their children at
+their heels, to within the last five minutes of their confinement.  The
+children were literally born under the hedge bottom, and without any tent
+or protection whatever.  A Gipsy woman told me a week or two since that
+her mother had told her that she was born under the hedge bottom in
+Bagworth Lane, in Leicestershire.  When I questioned her on the subject,
+she rather gloried in the fact that they had not time to stick the
+tent-sticks into the ground.  This kind of disgraceful procedure is not
+far removed from that of animals.  I should think that I am speaking
+within compass when I state that two-thirds of the Gipsies travelling
+about the country have been born under what they call the "hedge bottom,"
+_i.e._, in tents and like places.  The Gipsy women use no cradles; the
+child, as a rule, sleeps on the ground.  When a boy attains three years
+of age, so says Hoyland, the rags he was wrapped in are thrown on one
+side, and he is equally exposed with the parents to the severest weather.
+He is then put to trial to see how far his legs will carry him.  Clayton
+told me that when he was a boy of about twelve, his father sent him into
+the town and among the villages--with no other covering upon him only a
+piece of an old shirt--to bring either bread or money home, no matter
+how.
+
+Among some of the State projects put forth in Hungary more than a century
+since to improve the condition of the Gipsies, the following may be
+mentioned: (1) They were prohibited from dwelling in huts and tents, from
+wandering up and down the country, from dealing in horses, from eating
+animals which died of themselves and carrion.  (2) They were to be called
+New Boors instead of Gipsies, and they were not to converse in any other
+language but that of any of the countries in which they chose to reside.
+(3) After some months from the passing of the Act, they were to quit
+their Gipsy manner of life and settle, like the other inhabitants, in
+cities or villages, and to provide themselves with suitable and proper
+clothing.  (4) No Gipsy was allowed to marry who could not prove himself
+in a condition to provide for and maintain a wife and children.  (5) That
+from such Gipsies who were married and had families, the children should
+be taken away by force, removed from their parents, relations, or
+intercourse with the Gipsy race, and to have a better education given to
+them.  At Fahlendorf, in Schutt, and in the district of Prassburg, all
+the children of the New Boors (Gipsies) above five years old were carried
+away in waggons on the night of the twenty-first of December, 1773, by
+overseers appointed for that purpose, in order, that, at a distance from
+their parents or relations, they might be more usefully educated and sent
+to work.  (6) They were to be taught the principles of religion, and
+their children educated.  Their children were prohibited running about
+their houses, streets, or roads naked, and they were not to be allowed to
+sleep promiscuously by each other without distinction of sex.  (7) They
+were enjoined to attend church regularly, and to give proof of their
+Christian disposition, and they were not to wear large cloaks, which were
+chiefly used to hide the things they had stolen.  (8) They were to be
+kept to agriculture, and were only to be permitted to amuse themselves
+with music when their day's work was finished.  (9) The magistrates at
+every place were to be very attentive to see that no Gipsy wasted his
+time in idleness, and whoever was remiss in his work was to be liable to
+corporal punishment.
+
+All these suggestions and plans of operation may not suit English life;
+be that as it may, they were suitable to the condition of the Hungarian
+Gipsies, and no doubt laid the foundation for the improvement that has
+taken place among them.  The Hungarian Gipsies are educated, and are
+tillers of the soil.  If a plan similar in some respects had been carried
+out with our Gipsies at the same period, we should not by this time have
+had a Gipsy-tent in the country, or an uneducated Gipsy in our land.
+What a different aspect would have presented itself ere this, if the
+5,000 Gipsies among us had been tilling our waste lands and commons for
+the last century.  With proper management, these 5,000 Gipsy men could
+have bought and kept under cultivation some 20,000 acres of land for the
+well-being of themselves and for the good of the country.  There is
+neglect, indifference, and apathy somewhere.  The blame will lay heavily
+upon some one when the accounts are made up.
+
+It is appalling and humiliating to think that we, as a Christian nation,
+should have had in our midst for more than three centuries 15,000 to
+20,000 poor ignorant Asiatic heathens, naturally sharp and clever, and
+next to nothing being done to reclaim them from their worse than midnight
+darkness.  A heavy sin and responsibility lays at our doors.  Take away
+John Bunyan, a few of the Smiths, Palmers, Lovells, Lees, Hearns,
+Coopers, Simpsons, Boswells, Eastwoods, Careys, Roberts, &c., and what do
+we find?--a black army of human beings who have done next to
+nothing--comparatively speaking--for the country's good.  They have
+cadged at our doors, lived on our commons, worn our roads, been fed from
+our tables, sent their paupers to our workhouses, their idiots to our
+asylums, and not contributed one farthing to their maintenance and
+support.  Rates and taxes are unknown to them.  There is only one
+instance of them paying rates for their vans, and that is at Blackpool.
+
+It is a black, burning shame and disgrace to see herds of healthy-looking
+girls and great strapping youths growing up in ignorance and idleness,
+not so much as exerting themselves to wash the filth off their bodies or
+make anything better than skewers.  Their highest ambition is to learn
+slang, roll in the ditch, spread small-pox and fevers, threaten
+vengeance, and carry out revenge upon those who attempt to frustrate
+their evil designs.  Excepting skewers, clothes-pegs, and a few other
+little things of this kind, they have not manufactured anything; the
+highest state of perfection they have arrived at is to be able to make
+and tie up a bundle of skewers, split a clothes-peg, tinker a kettle,
+mend a chair, see-saw on an old fiddle, rap their knuckles on a
+tambourine, clatter about with their feet, tickle the guitar, and make a
+squeaking noise through their teeth, that fiction and romance call
+singing.  The most that can be said in their favour is, that a few of
+them have become respectable Christians and hard-working men and women,
+and have done something for the country's good--and whose fault is it
+that there are not more?  They have been the agents of hell, working out
+Satan's designs, and we have stood by laughing and admiring their
+so-called pretty faces, scarlet cloaks, and "witching eyes."  For the
+life of me I can find no more bewitching beauty among them than can be
+found in our back slums any day, circumstances considered--and where does
+the blame lay?--upon our own shoulders for not paying more attention to
+the education and welfare of their children.  It is truly horrible to
+think that we have had 15,000 to 20,000 young and old Gipsies at work,
+carrying out the designs of the infernal regions at the tip end of the
+roots of our national life, vigour, and Christianity.
+
+Only the other day the country was much shocked, and rightly so, at a
+hundred poor Russian emigrants landing upon our shores; and yet we have
+two hundred times this quantity of Gipsies among us, and we quietly stand
+by and take no notice of their wretched condition.  The time will come,
+and that speedily, when we shall have the scales taken off our eyes, and
+the thin, flimsy veil of romance torn to shreds.  Sitting by and admiring
+their "pretty faces" and "witching eyes" will not save their souls,
+educate their children, or put them in the way of earning an honest
+livelihood.  It is not pity--whining, sycophantic pity--alone that will
+do them good.  The Rev. Mr. Cobbin's Gipsy's petition, written fifty
+years ago,
+
+    "Oh! ye who have tasted of mercy and love,
+       And shared in the blessings of pardoning grace,
+    Let us the kind fruits of your tenderness prove,
+       And pity, oh! pity, the poor Gipsy race."
+
+has been little better than beating the air, and it may be repeated a
+thousand times, but if nothing further is done more than "pity," the
+Gipsies will be worse off in fifty years hence than they are now, nor
+will presenting to them bread, cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a
+dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb did half a century ago, render them permanent
+help.  We must do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a
+little fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for
+themselves.  Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to use their own
+wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers are the agencies to do
+it.  The men are clever and can get money sufficient to keep their
+families comfortable even at skewer-making and chair-mending, &c., if
+they will only work.  All the police-officer must do will be to take
+charge of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle
+for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments.  The State has
+taken in hand a more dangerous class--perhaps the most dangerous--in
+India, viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest
+industry with most encouraging results.  Before the Government tackled
+them, they were idling, loafing, rambling, and robbing all over the
+country, alike to our Gipsies; now they have settled down and become
+useful and good citizens.  In Norway the Gipsies are put into prison, and
+there kept till they have learnt to read and write.  In Hungary the
+Government has appointed a special Minister to look after them, and see
+that they are being properly educated and brought up.  In Russia, the
+laws passed for their imprisonment has had the effect of causing them, to
+a great extent, to settle down to useful trades, and they are forming
+themselves into colonies.  And so, in like manner, in Spain, Germany,
+France, and other European countries, steps have been taken to bring
+about an improvement among them.  In these countries nearly the whole of
+the Gipsies can read and write; and we, of all others, who ought to have
+set the example a century ago in the way of educating the Gipsy children,
+have stood by with folded arms, and let them drift into ruin.  I claim it
+to be our duty--and it will be to our shame if we do not--to see to the
+welfare of the Gipsy children for four reasons.  First, that they are
+Indians, and under the rule of our noble Queen; second, that they are in
+our midst, and ought to take their share of the blessings, duties, and
+responsibilities pertaining to the rest of the community; third, that as
+a Christian nation, professing to lead the van and to set forth the
+blessings of Christianity and civilisation; and, fourth, their universal
+desire for the education of their children, and to contribute their
+quota, however small, to the country's good, and for the eternal welfare
+of their own children; and I do not think that there will be any
+objection on their part to it being brought about on the plan I have
+briefly sketched out.
+
+I fancy I can hear some of the artists who have been delighted with Gipsy
+models--the novelists who have hung many a tale upon the skirts of their
+garments--the dramatists who have trotted them before the curtain to
+please the public, and some old-fashioned croakers, who delight in
+allowing things to be as they have always been--the same yesterday,
+to-day, and for ever--saying, "let everybody look after their own
+children;" and then, in a plaintive tone, singing--
+
+    "Woodman, spare that tree!
+       Touch not a single bough;
+    In youth it sheltered me,
+       And I'll protect it now."
+
+First,--I would have all movable or temporary habitations, used as
+dwellings, registered, numbered, and the name and address of the owner or
+occupier painted in a prominent place on the outside, _i.e._, on all
+tents, Gipsy vans, auctioneers' vans, showmen's vans, and like places,
+and under proper sanitary arrangements in a manner analogous to the Canal
+Boats Act of 1877.
+
+Second,--Not less than one hundred cubic feet of space for each female
+above the age of twelve, and each male above the age of fourteen; and not
+less than fifty cubic feet of space for each female young person under
+the age of twelve, and for each male under the age of fourteen.
+
+Third,--No male above the age of fourteen, and no female above the age of
+twelve, should be allowed to sleep in the same tent or van as man and
+wife, unless separate sleeping accommodation be provided for each male of
+the age of fourteen, and for each female of the age of twelve; and also
+with proper regard for partitions and suitable ventilation.
+
+Fourth,--A registration certificate to be obtained, renewable at any of
+the offices of the Urban or Rural sanitary authorities throughout the
+country, for which the owner or occupier of the tent or van should pay
+the sum of ten shillings annually, commencing on the first of January in
+each year.
+
+Fifth,--The compulsory attendance at school of all travelling children,
+or others living in temporary or unrateable dwellings, up to the age
+required by the Elementary Education Acts, which attendance should be
+facilitated and brought about by means of a school pass-book, in which
+the children's names, ages, and grade could be entered, and which
+pass-book could be made applicable to children living and working on
+canal-boats, and also to other wandering children.  The pass-book to be
+easily procurable at any bookseller's for the sum of one shilling.
+
+Sixth,--The travelling children should be at liberty to go to either
+National, British, Board, or other schools, under the management of a
+properly-qualified schoolmaster, and which schoolmaster should sign the
+children's pass-book, showing the number of times the children had
+attended school during their temporary stay.
+
+Seventh,--The cost for the education of these wandering children should
+be paid by the guardians of the poor out of the poor rates, a proper
+account being kept by the schoolmaster and delivered to the parochial
+authorities quarterly.
+
+Eighth,--Power to be given to any properly-qualified sanitary officer,
+School Board visitor or inspector, to enter the tents, vans, canal-boats,
+or other movable or temporary habitations, at any time or in any place,
+and detain, if necessary, for the purpose of seeing that the law was
+being properly carried out; and any one obstructing such officer in his
+duty, and not carrying out the law, to be subject to a fine or
+imprisonment for each offence.
+
+Ninth,--It would be well if arrangements could be made with lords of
+manors, the Government, or others who are owners of waste lands, to grant
+those Gipsies who are without vans, and living in tents only, prior to
+the act coming into force, a long lease at a nominal rent of, say, half
+an acre or an acre of land, for ninety-nine years, on purpose to
+encourage them to settle down to the cultivation of it, and to take to
+honest industry--as many of them are prepared to do.  By this means a
+number of the Gipsies would collect together on the marshes and commons,
+and no doubt other useful and profitable occupation would be the outcome
+of the Gipsies being thus localised, and in which their children could
+and would take an important part; and in addition to these things the
+social and educational advantages to be reaped by following such a course
+would be many.
+
+I have not the least doubt in my mind but that if a law be passed
+embodying these brief, but rough, suggestions, on the one hand, and steps
+are taken to encourage them to settle down, in accordance with the idea
+thrown out in clause nine, on the other, we shall not have in fifty years
+hence an uneducated Gipsy in our midst.  Many of the Gipsies are anxious,
+I know, for some steps to be taken for the children to be brought up to
+work.  The operation of the present Hawkers' and Pedlars' Act is acting
+very detrimental to the interests of the Gipsy children, as none are
+allowed to carry a licence under the age of sixteen, consequently all
+Gipsy children, except a few who assist in making pegs and skewers, are
+neither going to school nor yet are they learning a trade or in fact work
+of any kind; they are simply living in idleness, and under the influence
+of evil training that carries mischief underneath the surface.
+
+It is truly appalling to think that over seven hundred thousand sharp,
+clever, well-formed human beings, and with plenty of muscular power,
+have, as I have said before, been roaming about Europe for many centuries
+with no object before them, and accomplishing nothing.  Something like
+ten millions of Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the
+other world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they
+done? what work have they accomplished?  Alas! alas! worse than a cipher
+might be written against them.  They have lived in the midst of beauty,
+songsters, romance, and fiction, and they have been surrounded by
+everything that would help to call forth natural energy, mechanical
+skill, and ability, but they have been in some senses like children
+playing in the street gutters.  They have the elements of success within
+them, but no one has taken them by the hand to put them upon the first
+step, at any rate, so far as England is concerned.  It is grievous to
+think that not one of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way
+of all flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any poetry,
+worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much note--at least,
+I can only hear of one or two.  They have fine voices as a rule, and
+except some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from
+their midst.  No engineer, no mechanic--in fact, no nothing.  The highest
+state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for
+the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat,
+for which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other
+people's linen, some tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a
+little light smith work, and a few have made a little money by
+horse-dealing.  There are others clever at "making shifts" and roadside
+tents, and will put up with almost anything rather than put forth much
+energy.  Since the Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred
+and fifty thousand have been born, principally, as they say, "under the
+hedge bottom," lived, and died.  They are gone "and their works do follow
+them."  Their present degraded condition in this country may be laid upon
+our backs.
+
+This book, with its many faults and few virtues, is my own as in the case
+of my others, and all may be laid upon my back; and my object in saying
+hard and unpalatable things about the poor, ignorant Gipsy wanderers in
+our midst is not to expose them to ridicule, or to cause the finger of
+scorn to be pointed at them or to any one connected with them, but to try
+to influence the hearts of my countrymen to extend the hand of practical
+sympathy, and help to rescue the poor Gipsy children from dropping into
+the vortex of ruin, as so many thousands have done before.  It is not
+unlikely but that I shall, in saying plain things about the Gipsies,
+expose myself to some inconvenience, misrepresentation, malice, and spite
+from those who would keep the Gipsies in ignorance, and also from shadow
+philanthropists, who are always on the look out for other people's
+brains; but these things, so long as God gives me strength, will not
+deter me from doing what I consider to be right in the interest of the
+children, so long as I can see the finger of Providence pointing the way,
+and it is to Him I must look for the reward, "Well done," which will more
+than repay me for all the inconvenience I have undergone, or may have
+still to undergo, in the cause of the "little ones."  That man is no real
+friend to the Gipsies who seeks to improve them by flattery and
+deception.  A Gipsy, with all his faults, likes to be dealt fairly and
+openly with--a little praise but no flattery suits him.  They can
+practise cunning, but they do not care to have any one practising it upon
+them.
+
+I dare not be sanguine enough to hope that I shall be successful, but I
+have tried thus far to show, first, the past and present condition of the
+Gipsies; second, the little we, as a nation, have done to reclaim them;
+and, third, what we ought to do to improve them in the future, so as to
+remove the stigma from our shoulders of having 20,000 to 30,000 Gipsies,
+show people, and others living in vans, &c., in our midst, fast drifting
+into heathenism and barbarism, not five per cent. of whom can read and
+write, at least, so far as the Gipsies are concerned; and those children
+travelling with "gingerbread" stalls, rifle galleries, and auctioneers
+are but little better, for all the parents tell me their children lose in
+the summer what little they learn at school in the winter, for the want
+of means being adopted whereby their children could go to school during
+the daytime as they are travelling through the country with their wares,
+_i.e._, at their halting-places.
+
+In bringing this book to a close, I would say, in the name of all that is
+just, fair, honourable, and reasonable, in the name of science, religion,
+philosophy, and humanity, and in the name of all that is Christ-like,
+God-like, and heavenly, I ask, nay I claim, the attention of our noble
+Queen--whose deep interest in the children of the labouring population is
+unbounded--statesmen, Christians, and my countrymen to the condition of
+the Gipsies and their children, whose condition is herein feebly
+described, and whose cause I have ventured to take in hand, praying them
+to adopt measures and to pass such laws that will wipe out the disgrace
+of having so many thousands of poor, ignorant, uneducated, wretched, and
+lost Gipsy children in our midst, who cannot read and write, on the
+following grounds--
+
+First.  Their Indian origin, which I venture to think has been
+satisfactorily proved, and over which country our Queen is the Empress;
+consequently, our Gipsies ought and have as much need to be taken in hand
+and their condition improved by the State as the Thugs in India have
+been, with such beneficial results, a class similar in many respects to
+our Gipsies.
+
+Second.  As the Government in 1877 passed an act, called "The Canal Boats
+Act," dealing pretty much with the same class of people as the Gipsies
+and other travelling children, they ought, in all fairness, to extend the
+principle to those living in tents and vans.
+
+Third.  As small-pox, fevers, and other infectious diseases are at times
+very prevalent among them--a medical officer being called in only under
+the rarest occasion--and as the tents and vans are not under any sanitary
+arrangements, there is, therefore, urgent need for some sort of sanitary
+supervision and control to be exercised over their wretched habitations
+to prevent the spread of disease in such a stealthy manner.
+
+Fourth.  As the Government took steps some three centuries ago to class
+the Gipsies as rogues and vagabonds, but took no steps at the same time
+to improve their condition or even to encourage them to get upon the
+right paths for leading an honourable and industrious life, the time has
+now come, I think, both in justice and equity, for the Government to
+adopt some means to catch the young hedge-bottom "Bob Rats," and to deal
+out to them measures that will Christianise and civilise them to such an
+extent that the Gipsies will not in the future be deserving of the
+epithets passed upon them by the Government for their sins of omission
+and commission.
+
+Fifth.  By passing an Act of Parliament, as I suggest, or amending the
+Canal Boats Act, in accordance with the plan I have laid down, and
+embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete
+the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws
+the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the
+cold, to grope about in the dark as their inclinations might lead them.
+
+Sixth.  The families who are seeking a living as hawkers, show people,
+&c., apart from the Gipsies, are on the increase.  By travelling up and
+down the country in this way they not only escape rates and taxes, but
+their children are going without education, as no provision is made in
+the education acts to meet cases of this kind.  By bringing the Gipsy
+children under the influence of the schoolmaster our law-makers will be
+adding the last stroke to the system of compulsory education introduced
+and carried into law through its first difficult and intricate phases by
+the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P., when he was at the head of the
+Education Department under the Liberal Government, and through its second
+stages by the Right Hon. Lord Sandon, M.P., when he was at the head of
+the Education Department under the Conservative Government.
+
+Seventh.  There is an universal desire among people of the classes I have
+before referred to for the education of their children, in fact, I have
+not met with one exception during my inquiries, and the Gipsies will be
+glad to make some sacrifices to carry it out if the Government will do
+their part in the matter.
+
+Eighth.  The Gipsies and other travellers of the same kind use our roads,
+locate on our commons, live in our lanes, and send their poor, halt,
+maimed, and blind to our workhouses, infirmaries, and asylums, towards
+the support of which they do not contribute one farthing.
+
+Ninth.  As a Christian nation professing to send the Gospel all over the
+world, to preach glad tidings, peace upon earth and good-will towards men
+everywhere, to take steps for the conversion of the Gipsies in India, the
+African, the Chinese, the South Sea Islander, the Turk, the black, the
+white, the bond, the free, in fact everywhere where an Englishman goes
+the Gospel is supposed to go too, and yet--and it is with sadness,
+sorrow, and shame I relate it--we have had on an average during the last
+three hundred and sixty-five years not less than 15,000 Gipsies moving
+among us, and not less than 150,000 have died and been buried, either
+under water, in the ditches, or on the roadside, on the commons, or in
+the cemeteries or churchyards, and we, as Christians of Christian
+England, have not spent 150,000 pence to reclaim the adult Gipsies, or to
+educate their children.
+
+Tenth.  As a civilised country we are supposed to lead the van in
+civilising the world by passing the most humane, righteous, just, and
+liberal laws, carrying them out on the plan of tempering justice with
+mercy; but in matters concerning the interests and welfare of the Gipsies
+we are, as I have shown previously, a long way in the rear.  We have
+passed laws to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer's
+child, children working in mines, children working in factories,
+performing boys, climbing boys, children working in brick-yards, children
+working and living on canal-boats, and a thousand others; but we have
+done nothing for the poor Gipsy child or its home.  In things pertaining
+to their present and eternal welfare they have asked for bread and we
+have given them a stone; and they have asked for fish and we have given
+them a serpent.  We have allowed them to wander and lose themselves in
+the dark wilds of sin and iniquity without shedding upon their path the
+light of Gospel truths or the blessings of education; and to-day the
+Gipsy children are dying, where thousands have died before, among the
+brambles and in the thicket of bad example, ignorance, and evil training,
+into which we have allowed them to stray blinded by the evil associations
+of Gipsy life.
+
+    "An aged woman walks along,
+    Her piercing scream is on the air,
+    Her head and streaming locks are bare,
+    She sadly sobs 'My child, my child!'"
+
+A faint voice is heard in the distance calling out--
+
+    "My dying daughter, where art thou?
+    Call on our gods and they shall come."
+
+                             "So mote it be."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+       London: Printed by HAUGHTON & CO., 10, Paternoster Row, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+WORKS PUBLISHED
+BY
+HAUGHTON & CO.,
+10, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Just Published_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_.
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF GEORGE SMITH,
+OF COALVILLE.
+
+
+"The name of George Smith, of Coalville, is familiar as household words,
+and the unpretending memoir just published by Messrs. Haughton & Co. of
+him, to whose deep sympathy and ceaseless effort the populations of our
+brick-yards and canals owe so much, will be read with interest by
+all."--_The Graphic_.
+
+"Readers of Mr. Smith's letters in numerous papers, and of his
+descriptive articles in the _Illustrated London News_, _Graphic_, and
+other journals and magazines, will be glad to possess this little work,
+which tells the story of his career in a brief but interesting manner.
+The book is elegantly printed on good paper, and is embellished with an
+excellent portrait and with an engraving of Mr. Smith among the Gipsy
+children."--_Capital and Labour_.
+
+"This is 'a chapter' in philanthropy, yet it contains three times as much
+in the way of practical philanthropy as would suffice to make any man a
+benefactor to his generation.  His devoted, self-denying, persistent, and
+successful endeavours on behalf of the brick-yard children, the canal
+population, and more recently the Gipsy 'arabs,' of our country and time,
+are concisely and vividly set forth in this neat volume."--_The
+Christian_.
+
+"The name of George Smith, and his noble work amongst the canal-boat folk
+and the Gipsies, have become familiar and welcome to multitudes in Great
+Britain.  This volume is an excellent sketch of Mr. Smith; it contains a
+capital likeness, and should be read by all who desire to possess
+increasing zeal in rescuing the perishing."--_Christian Age_.
+
+"A smartly written biography of a man who may be justly termed the
+Children's Friend.  It is well got up, and contains an excellent portrait
+of the great social reformer.  It is well that this fascinating sketch
+should be given to the world."--_Literary World_.
+
+"In this book we are presented with a sketch of the life and
+labours--labours which have been attended with a large measure of
+success--of one of the most devoted of living
+philanthropists."--_Scotsman_.
+
+"A fine biography, which every one should read in order to understand the
+noble character of a man who must be pronounced a great
+benefactor."--_Free Press_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+        _Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_, _with Illustrations_.
+
+
+
+OUR CANAL POPULATION:
+A CRY FROM THE BOAT CABINS, WITH REMEDY.
+
+
+                      New Edition, with Supplement.
+              By GEORGE SMITH, F.S.A., Coalville, Leicester.
+
+"A little book called 'Our Canal Population,' lately published and
+written by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, furnishes the most incredible
+details of what is going on on our silent highways."--_Morning
+Advertiser_.
+
+"The notorious state of 'Our Canal Population,' the women and children
+who live on barges, and in whose condition Mr. George Smith, of
+Coalville, has awakened public interest, is described as 'revolting and
+intolerable.'  If only a part of the statements made were true it would
+be enough to make the ears of them that hear it tingle for pity and
+shame."--_Daily News_.
+
+"Although the statements made by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, in 'Our
+Canal Population,' were doubtless, in some instances, open to the charge
+of exaggeration, in the main they were largely correct.  Mr. Smith has
+earned the thanks of the community in this philanthropic object, as he
+previously earned our thanks for his efforts to ameliorate the condition
+of children in the brick-yards."--_Standard_.
+
+"Canal Boats.--On the 1st inst. came into operation an Act (the 40 and 41
+Vic., c. 60) which is calculated to do much good.  Hitherto 'Our Canal
+Population' were left pretty much to themselves.  They were considered
+outside the pale of local and educational authorities.  They were
+permitted to live in their boats as they pleased, and to bring up their
+children without any interference from school authorities.  Mr. George
+Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts on behalf of the children employed in
+brick-fields were attended with such beneficial results, turned his
+attention to 'Our Canal Population,' and the credit likely to be won by
+the passing of the Act of last Session will be mainly his."--_The Times_.
+
+"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, who has done so much for the well-being
+of 'Our Canal Population,' is now busied in attempts to ameliorate the
+condition of juvenile Gipsies."--_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+"This gentleman represents by name, at least, a very large family, but he
+has won for himself considerable distinction among the 'Smiths' for his
+unparalleled efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of 'Our Canal
+Population' on the English canals, the women and children working in the
+brick-yards, and the Gipsy children."--_Christian Herald_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _cloth boards_, _with Portrait of Author and other
+                             Illustrations_.
+
+
+
+THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN FROM THE BRICK-YARDS OF ENGLAND, AND HOW THE CRY
+HAS BEEN HEARD,
+
+
+            With Observations on the Carrying-out of the Act.
+
+                By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville, Leicester.
+                              SIXTH EDITION.
+
+"We heartily commend to our readers' notice a new edition of a work which
+is full of thrilling interest to those who sympathise with childhood,
+whose hearts bleed at the story of its wrongs and leap for joy at any
+humane or beneficial measures on its behalf."--_Sunday School Chronicle_.
+
+"This book, now in its sixth edition, has many capital illustrations, and
+is a monument to the patient self-denial and unwearying zeal brought to
+bear in favour of the poor children by the author."--_Weekly Times_.
+
+"His cry for the protection for the helpless little ones is one that must
+assuredly command attention."--_Daily Chronicle_.
+
+"This book is the record of a splendid service nobly done.  The author is
+likewise the hero of it.  The value of the book is enhanced by the
+careful and tasteful manner in which Messrs. Haughton have fulfilled
+their share of the undertaking."--_Derby Reporter_.
+
+"This is a title of an interesting work.  The whole forms a most
+interesting record of a noble-hearted work.  We hope the book will meet,
+as it deserves, with an increasingly large circulation."--_Derbyshire
+Advertiser_.
+
+"'The Cry of the Children' and 'Our Canal Population' are unique in many
+ways.  They have brought prominently before public attention two
+unsuspected blots upon our civilisation.  We wish any word of our's could
+give still wider publicity to his self-denying labours."--_Live Stock
+Journal_.
+
+"Mr. Smith writes with vehement energy, which he puts into everything he
+does.  Some will perhaps think that his language is occasionally too
+little measured, but then it is probable that a man of more delicacy of
+feeling and expression would have never undertaken, and we think it is
+certain that he would never have carried through, the work which Mr.
+George Smith has accomplished.  That work is of no small
+value."--_Staffordshire Sentinel_.
+
+"A good deal of new matter is inserted in this edition, including an
+interesting account of the history and progress of the movement. . . .
+The volume is certainly worthy of a careful perusal."--_Birmingham
+Gazette_.
+
+"In it is written the author's account of his single-handed struggle for
+the emancipation of the poor children of the brick-yards--a struggle long
+and patiently sustained, and which at last, in 1872, met with its past
+merited reward in freeing 10,000 of these little ones from their dark
+slavery."--_The Graphic_.
+
+"This is a deeply interesting book, both from the facts which it sets
+forth and the cause it advocates."--_Christian Age_.
+
+"Every true philanthropist will read with deep interest Mr. Smith's
+account of the history and the passing of the Act, which marks one of the
+brightest victories yet won over prejudice and self-interest in the
+United Kingdom."--_Derby Mercury_.
+
+"This excellently got-up work will strike a cord of sympathy in the
+bosoms of all who are interested in the works of Christianity and
+philanthropy. . . .  Should find a place upon every book-shelf because
+its contents are of thrilling interest. . . .  The book is essentially a
+statement of facts, and no one can peruse its pages without feeling the
+impulse of the living spirit which breathes in this 'Cry of the
+Children.'"--_Potteries Examiner_.
+
+"Mr. George Smith has, in his 'Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards
+of England,' raised issues too serious, and advanced pleas too
+passionate, to be treated with indifference."--_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+"In the present volume, which contains a number of excellent woodcuts, we
+have gathered up the full story of the evils which used to prevail, which
+in the hands of a person of less moral courage and perseverance than Mr.
+Smith would have failed."--_Leicester Daily Post_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Crown_ 8_vo_, 216 _pages_.  _Price_, _paper covers_, 1_s._; _post free_,
+    1_s._ 2_d._  _Cloth binding_, _with Portrait_, 2_s._, _post free_.
+
+
+
+Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.
+
+
+"A carefully prepared story of the public life of Mr. Gladstone in the
+several spheres of politics and literature.  It would be well if similar
+books to this were as sensibly compiled.  It is a handy and useful little
+book, honestly worth its price."--_Christian World_.
+
+"Written with great fairness and impartiality, as well as with
+considerable literary ability.  It furnishes the reader with a key to the
+study of that which is undoubtedly one of the greatest characters of
+modern times.  We can hardly conceive of a more useful political
+publication at the present moment.  It is clear, pains-taking, and
+dispassionate.  We commend it to the favourable attention of
+all."--_Leads Mercury_.
+
+"Those who desire to know what Mr. Gladstone's life has been, and what
+are the objects to which he has devoted himself, what have been the
+growth of his political mind and the tendency of his political conduct,
+will do well to get this book.  It is neatly and simply written, and
+contains a great many facts which have a bearing even beyond the life of
+its subject."--_Scotsman_.
+
+"No one can read this book without advantage.  The author has presented
+Mr. Gladstone in a manner easily recognisable by friends and foes alike.
+The volume forms an important chapter in Parliamentary history, extending
+over half a century."--_Literary World_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+     _Bound in cloth_, _with four Illustrations_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+The Life of the Great African Traveller, Dr. LIVINGSTONE.  By J. M.
+MCGILCHRIST.
+
+
+"The appearance of this little work is very seasonable, and to young
+readers especially it will be very acceptable."--_North British Daily
+Mail_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth binding_, _post free_, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Methodism in 1879: Impressions of the Wesleyan CHURCH AND ITS MINISTERS.
+
+
+"A new contribution to an important chapter of church history, and
+promises to be of much interest."--_Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone_.
+
+"The remarks in this work on the general relations of the Methodists to
+the tendencies of the age are full of instruction."--_Dean Stanley_.
+
+"We have read this book with considerable interest and pleasure, feelings
+which any reader who approaches it from the Church of England point of
+view can scarcely fail to share."--_Spectator_.
+
+"Bearing, as it does throughout, the impress of thought and calm
+judgment, as well as of an intimate knowledge of the varied aspects of
+the subject dealt with, it should be of universal interest."--_Morning
+Post_.
+
+"The author has rendered a splendid service to Methodism.  Much that the
+writer tells us with respect to the various agencies of Methodism is
+extremely interesting."--_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+HAUGHTON'S POPULAR ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES.
+
+
+                          PRICE ONE PENNY EACH.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+Life of Her Majesty the Queen.
+
+
+"Written with great ability, and is full of interest.  It contains a
+complete review of the principal events of Her Majesty's reign.  This
+biography should be circulated by thousands among the masses of the
+people."--_Review_.
+
+
+Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort.
+
+
+"A grand biography of a grand man, and replete with sterling interest.
+It is as fascinating as a work of fiction."--_Review_.
+
+
+Life of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
+
+
+"Very full, just, and interesting, and very brilliant is this account of
+the Prince of Wales.  His visits to the United States and to India are
+well and fully described."--_Review_.
+
+
+Life of the Right, Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
+
+
+"The penny 'Gladstone' has a mass of facts in small bulk."--_Liverpool
+Courier_.
+
+"Contains the leading events of Mr. Gladstone's life in a small
+compass."--_Echo_.
+
+"We can hardly conceive of a more useful political publication at the
+present moment.  It is clear, pains-taking, and dispassionate.  We
+commend it to the favourable attention of all."--_Leeds Mercury_.
+
+"An admirably drawn sketch."--_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+
+Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.
+
+
+"These penny biographies have a laudable spirit in common.  They are free
+from party bias."--_Liverpool Courier_.
+
+
+Life of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.
+
+
+"Sets forth the principal events in the career of this remarkable
+man."--_Review_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Recently Published_, _beautifully bound in cloth_, _bevelled boards_,
+                              _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+From the Curate to the Convent.
+
+
+"This comely volume is intended to open the eyes of Englishmen to the
+Romanising influence of the High Church, and to the wiles of the Jesuits,
+who are using the Establishment to their own ends."--_Rev. C. H. Spurgeon
+in_ "_Sword and Trowel_."
+
+"In this work the natural, logical, and most mischievous results of the
+confessional in our Church, are portrayed with fidelity and power."--_The
+Standard_.
+
+"The book is the product of a master-mind, and ought to be in every
+Protestant family as well as in the school or parochial library of every
+parish.  We cannot speak of the work in too high terms."  _The Gospel
+Magazine_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Now Ready_, _post free_, 3_s._ 6_d._, _handsomely bound_, _new edition_,
+                           _with Frontispiece_.
+
+
+
+Vestina's Martyrdom: A Story of the Catacombs.  By MRS. EMMA RAYMOND
+PITMAN.
+
+
+"This Story of the Catacombs is readable and well-written.  The
+historical portion does not occupy any undue position, and the moral is
+good and sound.  The book is very suitable for Sunday-school
+libraries."--_Christian World_.
+
+"One of the best stories of the kind we ever read--the very best, we
+think, of this particular era.  The volume abounds in deeply interesting
+matter, while the religious teaching is of the very simplest and
+purest."--_Literary World_.
+
+"The description of Vestina's martyrdom, or rather of her timely release
+from martyrdom, is simple and touching.  The present story will revive
+many interesting associations."--_Athenaeum_.
+
+"It is told in language of beauty and power."--_Rock_.
+
+"Many of the descriptions are far beyond the common range of
+tale-writing.  The book is remarkably well-written."--_Watchman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   _Now ready_, _handsomely bound in gilt cloth_, _crown_ 8_vo_, _with
+ full-page Illustrations and Medallion on cover_, 4_s._; _or_, _with gilt
+          edges_, _extra gilt cloth_, _for presentation_, 5_s._
+
+
+
+Profit and Loss: A Tale of Modern Life, for
+YOUNG PEOPLE.  By Mrs. EMMA RAYMOND PITMAN, Authoress of "Vestina's
+Martyrdom," "Margaret Mervyn's Cross," "Olive Chauncey's Trust," &c., &c.
+
+
+"This is evidently a tale in favour of Sunday-schools, but written with a
+freshness, a vivacity, and truthfulness, which must render it eminently
+calculated for usefulness, and must touch every heart."--_Literary
+World_.
+
+"The story is interesting and well told."--_Evangelical Magazine_.
+
+"The incidents are by no means of a commonplace character, and the
+heroine will certainly win the reader's admiration, so that the book is
+likely to prove attractive and useful."--_The Rock_.
+
+"The book is sure to have many readers."--_Methodist Recorder_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+             _Beautifully bound_, _price_ 2_s._, _post free_.
+
+
+
+Sheen from my Thought-Waves.  By Rev. W. OSBORNE LILLEY.
+
+
+"The author walks on solid ground, and looks at men and things with the
+eye of a close observer and a thoughtful man."--_U. M. F. Church
+Magazine_.
+
+"We think the author has done well to collect and re-issue these
+papers."--_Christian Age_.
+
+"Nearly three hundred paragraphs, varying in length from a couple of
+lines to two or three pages, afford as many striking thoughts.  The
+points are pithy and taking.  Our advice is, 'Buy the book and make free
+use of it.'"--_The Lay Preacher_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Just Published_.  _Price_ 1_s._ 6_d._, _in cloth_, _bevelled boards_.
+
+
+
+Comforting Words for the Weary, and Words
+OF COUNSEL AND WARNING, with Original Hymns.  By F. M. M.  With an
+Introduction, by the Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Price_, _cloth boards_, 2_s._ 6_d._; _handsome binding_, 3_s._ 6_d._,
+                               _post free_.
+
+
+
+Leisure Hours with London Divines.  Second Edition.
+
+
+"The features of the London Divines in all denominations have been caught
+by an observant eye and reproduced by a faithful hand.  We cordially
+commend the book to those who desire to learn what the intellectual
+ecclesiastical life of London really means."--_Standard_.
+
+"Theological portraits of very considerable value."--_Leeds Mercury_.
+
+"There is a brilliancy about this book which only a scholar could
+impart."--_Literary World_.
+
+"Written from an elevated standpoint.  In his eminently careful essays
+the author has furnished material for study such as might be vainly
+looked for in a more pretentious book."--_Morning Post_.
+
+"Only a man naturally liberal-minded, and brought into frequent contact
+with intellects of the most diverse order, could have written such a
+work."--_Edinburgh Daily Review_.
+
+"A series of studies of eminent preachers in which the author deals with
+the nature and causes of the influence they exercise, and the distinctive
+principles which they advocate.  This work has been performed
+appreciatively and intelligently."--_Scotsman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+Hanani: A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM SMITH, Father of GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.
+A Local Preacher.  By the Rev. Dr. GROSART, St. George's, Blackburn,
+Lancashire.  Best Edition, Crown 8vo, toned paper, cloth, with Portrait,
+price 1s. 6d.; small Edition, cloth, with Portrait, price 1s.; cloth,
+flush, without Portrait, 8d.; paper cover, 6d.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   _Elegantly bound and illustrated_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 3_s._ _6d._
+
+
+
+From out the Deeps: A TALE OF CORNISH LIFE.
+By an Old Cornish Boy.  With Introduction by Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+"A vein of deep religious feeling runs throughout it, or, rather,
+religion pervades its every page.  The volume is tastefully 'got up,' and
+its matter excellent."--_The Christian Miscellany_.
+
+"This is an admirable story, which we heartily commend for presents,
+school prizes, &c."--_The Christian_.
+
+"The lessons taught by Mr. Christophers are excellent; his spirit is
+always admirable. . . .  Our readers had better get the
+book."--_Spurgeon_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+     _Illustrated and beautifully bound_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+The Poets of Methodism.  By the Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+"This is a charming book.  Its exquisite getting-up is not inappropriate
+to its contents."--_City Road Magazine_.
+
+"This is a thoroughly good book.  It is filled with life-like sketches of
+the men who are amongst the most endeared to the Methodist people.  It
+would be difficult to name any more acceptable gift-book than this work,
+for which we heartily thank Mr. Christophers."--_Rev. Mark Guy Pearse_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                     _Bound in cloth_, _price_ 5_s._
+
+
+
+The Voyage of Life: HOMEWARD BOUND.  By a SEA CAPTAIN.
+
+
+This is intended as a companion-book for the "Pilgrim's Progress," and
+therefore something new for the reading world.  Its originality will make
+it interesting to all classes of readers.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _In very large type_, _price_ 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+An Illustrated Edition of Precious Truths.
+By S. M. HAUGHTON.
+
+
+"We wish that a copy of this 'PRECIOUS' book could be placed in the hands
+of every one who is able to read, as it contains the very marrow of the
+'GLORIOUS GOSPEL.'"
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Cloth_, _boards_, _illustrated_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Annals of the Poor.  By LEGH RICHMOND.
+
+
+These short and simple annals have been translated into more than 50
+languages and blessed to hundreds of souls.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Remarkable Conversions.  By the Rev. JAMES FLEMING.
+
+
+"In each of these chapters a number of remarkable cases of conversion is
+given.  Some of them do indeed afford extraordinary proof of the
+long-suffering and infinite mercy of our God.  We are here shown a number
+of examples which should stimulate our hope and zeal to the utmost.  Well
+may the author call his book 'Remarkable Conversions,' and well may every
+reader have greater faith than ever in the Divine Word, 'He is able to
+save to the uttermost.'"--_Living Waters_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+  _Elegantly bound_, _cloth_, _boards_, _with Portrait_, _price_ 2_s._;
+                           _limp cloth_, 1_s._
+
+
+
+The Autobiography of Foolish Dick (RICHARD HAMPTON) THE CORNISH PILGRIM
+PREACHER; with Introduction and Notes by Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS.
+
+
+"We hope this deeply interesting book will obtain a wide
+circulation."--_Christian Age_.
+
+"This singular book is quite a little curiosity in its way.  The whole of
+the little volume combines instruction with interest in a very high
+degree, so that we can heartily commend it."--_Spurgeon_.
+
+"A man of one talent, he put it out to usury, and it multiplied under the
+mighty hand of God, so that during his long itinerant ministry,
+multitudes were led to the Saviour. . . .  Those who would be fishers of
+men will find their souls kindled by the weird narrative of this strange,
+yet saintly man."--_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+God's way of Electing Souls; or, GLAD TIDINGS FOR EVERY ONE.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _with four full-page Illustrations_, _price_
+                                  2_s._
+
+
+
+The Glory-Land.  By J. P. HUTCHINSON, Author of "Footmarks of Jesus,"
+"The Singer in the Skies," &c.
+
+
+"This is in every sense a beautiful volume.  To the spiritually-minded
+and the careworn, and, indeed, to the earnest inquirer, we commend it as
+a precious help."--_Watchman_.
+
+"It will cheer many a mourner, and stimulate their aspirations after
+things unseen and eternal."--_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Seeking after Peace.  A book for Inquirers after True Religion.  By M. M.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  _Cloth_, _boards_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Pioneer Experiences in the Holy Life.  With Expository Chapters.  Edited
+by T. BOWMAN STEPHENSON, B.A., Hon. Director of the Children's Home.
+
+
+"'Pioneer Experiences' consist of personal testimonies by eminent
+Christians of Europe and America, respecting the attainment of 'The
+Higher Christian Life.'"
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+         _Handsomely bound_, _with Illustrations_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Brave Seth.  By SARAH DOUDNEY.
+
+
+"We know of no better book than this to place in the hands of our young
+people to inculcate the importance of truthfulness, courage, and reliance
+upon God.  The incidents are thrilling, the lessons are unexceptionable,
+and the language and style are beautiful.  It reminds us, in its pathos
+and deeply interesting character, of 'Jessica's First Prayer.'"--_Living
+Waters_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Cloth_, _bevelled boards_, _price_ 2_s._
+
+
+
+Misunderstood Texts.  BY DR. MAHAN.
+
+
+"All who wish to have clear views of the doctrine taught by those who
+believe in _entire consecration_ should peruse this able, decided, and
+unanswerable volume."--_Living Waters_.
+
+"This is an able book, and the teaching it embodies is that of the
+Wesleys, Fletcher, Clarke, Benson, Watson, and many others. . . .  We
+recommend young ministers to read the book."--_The Watchman_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Handsomely bound_, _gilt edges_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+The Children's Treasury Text Book, interleaved with Writing-paper for
+Collecting the Autographs of Friends and Acquaintances.  It contains a
+Text of Scripture for Every Day in the Year, with an appropriate Verse of
+Poetry.
+
+
+The Rev. C. DUKES says of the "CHILDREN'S TREASURY TEXT BOOK:"--"I admire
+it very much, and were it left to my option, every young person in my
+circle and beyond it should have a copy."
+
+A. L. O. E. writes:--"Accept my thanks for your truly beautiful and
+valuable book.  It appears to be a 'Treasury' indeed."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+      _Cloth_, _elegant binding_, _Illustrated_, _price_ 1_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+By the Still Waters.  Meditations and Hymns on the 23rd Psalm.  By the
+Rev. S. W. CHRISTOPHERS and B. GOUGH.
+
+
+"The prose meditations of this excellent volume have all the sweetness
+and grace of poetry; and the poems contain the true spirit of devotional
+piety, with great power of poetic expression.  Every reader of this
+precious book must be greatly refreshed and blessed."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 2_s._ 6_d._  Printed on toned paper,
+illustrated, beautifully bound, red edges, 400 pages.
+
+
+"This is undoubtedly the cheapest edition of this marvellous book ever
+published."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+              _Uniform with the above_, _price_ 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Bunyan's Holy War.  348 pages, with frontispiece, printed on toned paper,
+red edges.
+
+
+"Every one should read this most instructive volume."
+
+"If the 'Pilgrim's Progress' did not exist, the 'Holy War' would be the
+best allegory that ever was written."--LORD MACAULAY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+              _Uniform with the above_, _price_, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+Foxe's Book of Martyrs.  352 pages, well illustrated, printed on toned
+paper, red edges.
+
+
+"The arguments in this book are such as the plainest man can understand,
+and the facts should be constantly kept in remembrance by every
+Protestant."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+ _Cloth_, _elegantly bound_, _with_ 150 _striking Illustrations_, _price_
+                                  2_s._
+
+
+
+Calisthenics, Drilling, and Deportment Simplified.  By DUNCAN CUNNINGHAM.
+
+
+This book is highly recommended by eminent medical gentlemen.  It is
+intended more especially for female teachers and parents, who are
+desirous that children under their care should possess a strong mind in a
+healthy body.
+
+The engravings are beautifully executed, the explanations extremely
+simple, and the words and music specially adapted to instruct and attract
+the young.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               _Crown_ 8_vo_, _cloth_, _gilt edges_, 3_s._
+
+
+
+From Egypt to Canaan; OR, FROM BONDAGE TO REST.  BY T. J. HUGHES.
+
+
+"This delightful book really drops pearls of thought from almost every
+page."--_The Christian's Pathway of Power_.
+
+"There are some books on which a special blessing rests, even beyond
+their apparent excellence, because they have been steeped in prayer, and
+we think that this is one of them.  We heartily commend it to the
+numerous young converts who are now being gathered into the Church of
+Christ."--_The Christian_.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               HAUGHTON & CO., 10, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{8}  Since writing the foregoing concerning Mahmood or Mahmud, I came
+across the enclosed, taken from an article in the _Daily News_, January
+11, 1880, which confirms my statements as regards one of the main causes
+why the Gipsies or Indians left their native country:--"Ghuznee was the
+capital of Mahmud of Ghuznee, or Mahmud the Destroyer, as he is known in
+Eastern story, the first of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, and the
+only one who had his home in Afghanistan, though he was himself of Turki
+or Mongol nationality.  Seventeen times did he issue forth from his
+native mountains, spreading fire and sword over the plains of Hindustan,
+westward as far as the Ganges Valley, and southward to the shore of
+Gujerat.  Seventeen times did he return to Ghuznee laden with the spoil
+of Rajput kings and the shrines of Hindu pilgrimage.  In one of these
+expeditions his goal was the far-famed temple of Somnauth or Somnauth
+Patan in Gujerat.  Resistance was vain, and equally useless were the
+tears of the Brahmins, who besought him to take their treasures, but at
+least spare their idol.  With his own hand, and with the mace which is
+the counterpart of Excalibar in Oriental legend, he smote the face of the
+idol, and a torrent of precious stones gushed out.  When Keane's army
+took Ghuznee in 1839, this mace was still to be seen hanging up over the
+sarcophagus of Mahmud, and the tomb was then entered through folding
+gates, which tradition asserted to be those of the Temple of Somnauth.
+Lord Ellenborough gave instructions to General Nott to bring back with
+him to India both the mace and the gates.  The latter, as is well-known,
+now lie mouldering in the lumber-room of the fort at Agra, for their
+authenticity is absolutely indefensible; but the mace could nowhere be
+found by the British plunderer.  Mahmud reigned from 997 to 1030 A.D.,
+and in his days Ghuznee was probably the first city in Asia.  The
+extensive ruins of his city stretch northwards along the Cabul road for
+more than two miles from the present town; but all that now remains
+standing are two lofty pillars or minarets, 400 yards apart, one bearing
+the name of Mahmud, the other that of his son Masaud.  Beyond these ruins
+again is the Roza or Garden, which surrounds the mausoleum of Mahmud.
+The building itself is a poor structure, and can hardly date back for
+eight centuries.  The great conqueror is said to rest beneath a marble
+slab, which bears an inscription in Cufic characters, thus interpreted by
+Major (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson: 'May there be forgiveness of God upon
+him, who is the great lord, the noble Nizam-ud-din (Ruler of the Faith)
+Abul Kasim Mahmud, the son of Sabaktagin!  May God have mercy upon him!'
+The Ghuznevide dynasty founded by Mahmud lasted for more than a century
+after his death, though with greatly restricted dominions.  Finally, it
+was extinguished in 1152 by one of those awful acts of atrocity which are
+fortunately recorded only in the East.  Allah-ud-din, Prince of Ghore, a
+town in the north-western hills of Afghanistan, marched upon Ghuznee to
+avenge the death of two of his brothers.  The king was slain in battle,
+and the city given up to be sacked.  The common orders of the people were
+all massacred upon the spot; the nobles were taken to Ghore, and there
+put to death, and their blood used to cement the rising walls of the
+capital."
+
+{176}  The "Czardas" is a solitary public-house, an institution which
+plays a considerable part in all romantic poems or romantic novels whose
+scene is laid in Hungary, as a fitting haunt for brigands, horse-thieves,
+Gipsies, Jews, political refugees, strolling players, vagabond poets, and
+other melodramatic personages.
+
+{218a}  A Black Govel.
+
+{218b}  Going a tinkering.
+
+{218c}  I'll show you about, brother; I'm selling skewers.
+
+{219}  The fact of Ryley having at his death a caravan, pony, carpets,
+curtains, blankets, mirrors, china, crockery, metal pots and dishes, &c.,
+seems hardly, in my mind, to be in accord with his doing no work for
+years, smoking under railroad arches and loitering about beershops.  I
+expect, if the truth were known, the whole of his furniture and
+stock-in-trade could have been placed upon a wheelbarrow.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIPSY LIFE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 28548.txt or 28548.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/5/4/28548
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/28548.zip b/28548.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b5dbc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/28548.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ff3ab1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #28548 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28548)