sweet darling child.  You are so much like your dear aunt; she was one of
the prettiest and best ladies I ever knew, and it would be a thousand
pities for you not to have a good husband.  Bring the two rings, and the
guinea or sovereign, and it shall be all right.  Good-bye.”  “But,” said
the young lady, “I have not got any diamond rings and sovereigns.  They
are my father’s and mother’s.”  “Never mind.  Hear what I say; you must
bring them if you want to be happy.  I’ll influence the planets to send
your father and mother,” said the old hag, closing her fist, and with
fire in her eyes, and a devil’s anger in heart, and frowns upon her face,
“more in their places of greater value to them.  The planets will not be
ruled, my dear young lady, except by the rings that your father and
mother have worn; and the sovereign would be all the better if taken out
of either your father’s or mother’s pocket.  The gold and rings of your
mother have the most influence with the planets.”

After the young ladies had gone, the woman winked at me with a twinkle,
and said, with her arm raised, “Don’t you spoil my game, and I will bless
you.  If all goes on right we shall have lots of money the whole of the
winter.  If you do spoil my game, I—I—I will curse you to death; to death
will I curse you, and shall call you a vile wretch for ever; to death you
shall be sent.”

While this was going on, a little bird was singing in the trees overhead,
which caused the old gipsy woman to look up at it and me, and in a
softened voice said, “What does it say?”  I said, “If you could but read
it rightly, it says, ‘Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’”  This seemed to startle the old
gipsy, and she vanished into the crowd.

Among the crowd of gipsies I noticed several gipsy men clustered
together.  In the centre of the group there was a dead sheep.  Sticker
said to Nobbler, “How did you come by it?”  “Never mind,” said Nobbler.
“I’ve got it and that’s enough, but I may as well tell you a little.  I
went round the villages a few miles away selling some pegs and skewers,
and just outside one of the villages there was a large lot of sheep in
one of the fields in prime condition, belonging to a farmer who, they
say, is a sleepy sort of a chap, and will never put any of the bobbies
upon your track.  I conceived a liking for one of the sheep.  I knew
Goggle Fletcher would be passing by the end of the field in which the
sheep were with his cart; and so I hung about in the public-house in the
village till it was dark.  I entered the field through a gap, and drove
them into a dry corner.  I kept upon the tufts of grass as much as I
could, so that I could not be traced.  I was not long before I made short
work with one of them.  After this I dragged him to the ditch by the side
of the road by which Goggles was to pass.  I lay in the ditch for a long
time.  It seemed as if he never would come.  At last about eleven o’clock
he came.  I could tell the sound of his trap.  On coming up to me I
bawled out in a soft voice, ‘Goggles, Goggles, step down.  I’ve got
something for you.  It will be a treat for Sunday’s dinner.’  ‘Is that
you, Nobbler?  What!  You’ve been up to it again, have you?  You will
have the “long wools,” if they are to be got, without either love or
money.’”  Goggles jumped down and helped Nobbler to lift the sheep into
the cart, and off they bowled, arriving in the meadow about one o’clock
in the morning.  Gipsies always take their plunder far away.  The skin
was buried, and they set to work dividing the carcase among their kith
and kin.

        [Picture: A scissor-grinding gipsy.  “Scissors to grind”]

Another gang had been out on a poaching expedition with their lurcher
dogs, and brought to their tents and vans some hares, rabbits, and
pheasants; these were also divided.  Among this vast gipsy encampment,
numbering some hundred men, women, and children, I saw an aged couple of
gipsies with some of their grandchildren round them.  The old woman had
learned to read the Bible a little, and she was telling the children to
be good and love God.  She was the only one who could read among the
gipsies, except a few riffraff Gorgios, who were studying gipsying with a
view to leading an idle vagabond’s life, free from parental restraint and
elevating social influences.

In the camp I noticed a _posh_ gipsy “scissor-grinder” from one of our
alleys, and his gipsy wife; every few minutes he bawled out, “Scissors to
grind!” “Scissors to grind!”  While he was grinding away at his knives
and scissors, his wife was stitching umbrellas and “minding her baby.”

I found that the man had had a good education at a high-class school, but
had taken the “wrong turning,” and now spent part of his time in
“scissor-grinding,” singing gipsy “slap-dash songs,” and during the short
days of winter “dotted down” gipsy love tales, &c.  He had smudged
thickly over the soul saving golden letters embedded in his memory in the
days of childhood—as all young men and maidens do who take to
gipsying—the fifth commandment: “_Honour thy father and thy mother_;
_that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee_.”  Poor follow!  I felt sorry to see his dirty knees through the
rents in his breeches.  In his childhood he had been taught by his
Christian parents to lisp as he knelt with his head bent low against his
mother’s knees—

    “Teach me to live that I may dread
    The grave as little as my bed.”

    “I lay my body down to sleep,
          Let angels guard my bed.”

Now he could sing out with his wife’s assistance—more jovially, of
course, than Hubert Smith sung it on his tramp to Norway—

    “My father’s the king of the gipsies—that’s true,
    My mother, she learned me some camping to do.
    With a packet on my back, and they all wish me well,
    I started up to London, some fortunes for to tell.”

Or more touchingly than Esmeralda sung

          “Shul, Shul, gang along with me;
    Gang along with me, I’ll gang along with you.”

How much better it would have been for this scissor-grinding _posh_ gipsy
if he had followed the advice that had been given to him, and endeavoured
to lead the poor lost wanderer upon right paths to heaven instead of to
hell.

A gipsy’s charges for “grinding” and “setting” a pair of scissors vary
from twopence to two shillings and sixpence; all depends upon
circumstance and who owns them.

_Posh_ gipsies and others who encourage gipsy wrongdoing know it to be
misleading and evilsome; but it does not answer their purpose to speak
faithfully and truthfully about gipsy wrong-doing.  Gipsy idleness, gipsy
frauds, gipsy cruelty, gipsy filth, gipsy lies, gipsy thefts, gipsy
cheating, gipsy fornication, and gipsy adultery, are looked upon by all
enlightened Englishmen and Christians as sins to be avoided and not to be
encouraged.  And he who encourages the gipsies in this wrongdoing is an
enemy to the State, an enemy to God, an enemy to Christianity, and an
enemy to himself, for which he will be made to smart some day.  Their
ill-gotten coin will burn their pockets and singe the hair of their head
with terrible vengeance.

To come again to the things I saw with my eyes shut while lying under the
shade.

Among the hundreds of gipsy children in this vast camp who were going to
ruin there were a few fast-goers, fools and fops, fraternizing with the
“gipsy beauties,” but no hand was put out to help to save the children
from woe.  The “_gentlemen_” were too busy to soil their hands with the
poor-ragged, forlorn, neglected, forgotten, and forsaken gipsy children.
They might live like heathen and die like dogs.  A thousand things must
be attended to, and the souls and bodies of the gipsy children might go
to hell for aught they cared.

Occasionally a gipsy child in this camp would begin to sing; but, as
Elton Summers in the _Christian World_ Magazine for 1877, says—

    “More plaintive and low is its melody,
    Till, faint with its own sad reverie,
    It sinks to a whisper and dies.”

As I lay, I noticed a man, apparently about sixty years of age, with grey
hair, round features, and a load upon his back, coming through the gate
into the meadow.  The nimbleness and elasticity of his step had well-nigh
gone.  His clothes were ragged and worn.  He staggered along, and as he
began to move among the gipsies they began to add to his load.  Sorrow
had furrowed his cheeks and a paleness was upon his countenance.  Every
few minutes he seemed to hesitate and stop, as if going to put his load
upon the ground, in order to move more quickly among them, and into a
resting tent at the edge of the meadow.

During one of his standstills I heard him with tears in his eyes saying
to himself, “Shall I put the load down?  Yes, I think I will;” and then
he summoned up strength and courage and said, “No! no!  I won’t put it
down till I’ve either carried it to where I want to carry it or die in
the attempt.”

Presently he staggered and fell heavily with his burden upon the sod.  He
lay for a few minutes without any one noticing him.  After he had lain
for some time a crowd began to gather round him.  Some said, with a
chuckle and a grin, “He’s dead, thank God!  We’ve done with him, thank
God! and hope he has got into a warm place.”  Three or four gentlemen
pressed through the crowd to look at the old man; and as they were going
among the bystanders I heard them say to each other, “If he shows signs
of life we will give him a lift, but if he is going to die we will have
nothing to do with him.  Let those see to him who like, we will leave him
to his fate, be it rough or smooth.”  Like the priests and Levites of
old, they went on the other side.

Among the crowds in the ditches I noticed an old _posh_ gipsy woman from
South Carolina Street, with basket in hand picking up wasps, newts, and
weasels.  One of the gentlemen noticed what she was doing, and questioned
her as to her movements and intentions.  She replied as follows, “You
will see what I am going to do with them when I have gathered my
basketful.  I hold in my pocket a bottle containing some mixture that
when once it is applied to the basket will cause them to buzz, sting, and
poison fearfully.  For the matter of that a few others will help to do
the same thing; and when this is done I am going to empty them upon the
poor devil’s head to either poison or sting him to death.  Several here
tried to do it before, but they were fools and did not go the right way
to work.”  One gentleman said, “Has the poor fellow ever done you any
harm or wronged you in any way?”  “Well, I don’t know that he has, but I
and a few others want to see the end of him.”

She filled her basket, and applied the mixture to the wasps, newts, and
weasels, and just as she was going to empty them upon the head of the
poor fellow, about dying, they turned and settled upon her own pate, and
away she went out of the crowd, and I have not seen her since.  By the
side of the poor fellow lay a small bag of seeds which were to grow
bread, clothes, and comfort, which a few friends had collected to help
the old man on his journey.  It was not long by the side of the old
pilgrim before up stepped a little dodger who had taken to gipsying,
named Philip Lamb, from Russia, who seized the small bag and off he
scampered.  The last I saw of him was that he was tramping the country
with patches upon his breeches.

While this was taking place, three or four other gentlemen—real and not
shams—appeared upon the scene.  For a few minutes they looked and stared
at each other, as if at a loss to know what it all meant, and what the
old man had done wrong.  “Oh!” said one and another and another, “it will
never do to let the poor fellow die in this way;” and they at once set to
work to lighten his load, and to give him some nourishment.  After
treatment of this kind for a little time, he began to come round again,
and smiles were to be seen upon his face and the faces of his friends.

Through one of the gates leading into this gipsy encampment I saw running
post haste a number of well-dressed young men and women of respectable
appearance, who were making their way to three or four men from the
Ionian Isles, who had disappointed society and society had disappointed
them.  One man stood upon a little hillock, piping forth, in slap-dash
gipsy songs, backwood novels, boshy stories, and gipsy lore, the
beauties, delights, and loveliness of gipsy life in a way that caused a
shivering, aching pang to run through my system from the crown of my head
to the soles of my feet.  He continued to tell of the pleasure of white
lies, and taking things that were not your own; and also in feeding upon
things, whether birds, beasts, fish, or game, that lived in the water
that God gave us, or upon the grass that He sent us.  “God,” said these
gipsy sensualists, “knew nothing of gates, fences, locks, keys, bars, and
bolts.”  These poor misguided young folks listened with open mouths, and
in the end they went into the gipsy tents.  They doffed their cloth, put
on gipsy garbs, tanned and washed their faces in walnut water, and
sallied forth into the crowd cadging and begging, lying and stealing—as
only gipsies can.

Among the crowd of gipsies farther away there were two or three real
Romanys who had “begun to serve God,” and were distributing tracts among
the gipsy children, at which the scissor-grinding _push_ gipsy turned up
his nose.

On a little mound stood a little man with a _posh_ gipsy woman by his
side, telling those round him that gipsies were angels who had been
wafted from India to our midst by the heavenly breezes of the Celestial
City, and that their ragged and tattered garments were the robes of
Paradise, and whatever they did, however dark and evil, was done under
the influences of the good spirit of gipsydom.  One little sharp-eyed
gipsy fellow, named Deliverance Smith, from Kaulo-gav (Birmingham),
called out to the _push_ gipsy, “Sir _posh_ Gorgio, do you mean to say
that these old rags I’ve got on have been made and put upon my back by
angels; and that when I swears, tells lies, fights, and steals, a good
spirit has told me to do so? because if you do, I say it is a lie, and
know better than believe your tale.”  The _push_ gipsy called the little
fellow to him and said in a whisper, “I don’t mean what I say, but I must
say something to fill people’s mouths.  These girls round me are fond of
a ‘lark,’ and I like them.  I know nothing about the other gipsies.  Keep
your mouth shut, and here’s sixpence for you.”

In some of the tents diseased _bálamo-mas_ (pork) was being cooked; in
others, _hotchi-witchi_ (hedgehogs), _kané-gros_ (hares), and _bouris_
(snails).

Some of the poor children had never been washed for weeks, except in
walnut-water, which, by continual using, gives them the artificial olive
hue amateur gipsies admire.  Those who are sunfreckled are the hardest to
tan.  For a time the sunfreckles are seen through the artificial sickly
yellow colour on their faces and hands.  Some of the children told me
that they never undressed.  The healthy appearance of former day gipsies
is fast passing away, and now, as a rule, they are pale, thin, and
sickly-looking.  Many of the adults and children were much pitted with
the smallpox scars.  They wore their clothes till they dropped off.

Outside the encampment stood a number of my friends looking on the scene,
a list of whom will be found in my “Canal Adventures by Moonlight” (p.
125), with recent additions since of a number of warm-hearted friends to
the cause of the canal and gipsy children.

Some few of the gipsies in this encampment had been married, and that was
the only time that they had ever been inside a church; not one gipsy,
young or old, had ever been inside a school of any kind.  Schoolmasters
and ministers were almost unknown to them.  They had more acquaintance
with policemen and jails than churches and chapels.

Connected with one of the gipsy camps of ragamuffins, I noticed in the
distance a tall, thin, unwashed, and emaciated girl of about fourteen
winters—it had been nearly all winter with her.  The upper part of her
thin frame of skin and bones was dressed in a few shreds of rags, and
these were not sufficient to cover her bare, dirty bosom, which almost
looked the bosom of a skeleton; and on her feet were odd and worn-out,
cast-off drawing-room shoes, quite equal to the sad emergency of letting
as much mud and water upon her soles as they were to keep the poor lost
creature “high and dry” out of the muddy surroundings.  She moved among
the gipsies with a “trash, trash,” and a most downcast and haggard look
of despair upon her face.  “Despair” seemed to come with terrible
vengeance and prominence out of every word, form, movement, and gesture;
except when occasional relapses stole over her, and then the tear-drawing
sympathy shone and darted like darts of fire that pierced into the marrow
of my soul, bringing the flush and blush to my face, and tears to my
eyes, whether I would have them or no.  No amount of “screwing up,” or
“bottling,” prevented this appearance upon my cheek.  The poor girl had
fine Grecian features, with long, black, flowing hair, but it was matted
together with dirt and filth.  With her arms uplifted, and her hands
buried scratchingly deep in her hair, she turned to look in the direction
where I lay.  This was no sooner done than, a flash of hope lighting up
her thin face with smiles through her tears, she started to run towards
me as fast as she could, calling out, “My father! my father! my father!”
Before I had time to turn round she was at my side, and had planted a
kiss upon my check.  For a moment I was dumbfounded.  I said to the lost
_posh_ gipsy child, “What is it you want, my dear?  I am not your
father.”  At this reply she looked wild and almost like a maniac, and
said, with her face buried in her hands, “I thought you was my father who
had come to fetch me out from among the gipsies.”  And then she looked
again into my face and said, “Arn’t you my father? my father was so much
like you.  He had white hair like you.  Arn’t you my father?  I wish I
could see my mother.  Will she come for me?”  I asked her to sit down by
my side, and to tell me who she was.  She came a little nearer, and began
to tell me how it was she came to be among the gipsies.  I will give her
tale as she related it to me:—

“When I was a little girl about four years old, I remember my mother
sending me for some milk to a house near to the old General Baptist
Chapel, Church Street, Deptford, {215} and while I was going down the
street some dark ragged women—the same you saw me with—asked me to go
down to the bottom of the street to look at some fine things, and on the
way they gave me a penny and some apples and a little doll.  After
walking a long way we did not get to the bottom of the street, but we got
among a lot of children living under a cart cover by the side of the
hedge.  They asked me to sit by the fire that was on the ground.  I said
I wanted to go to my mother.  It was getting dark, and I began to cry.
They kept saying that they would take me to my mother, and at night they
all got into a cart, and said they were taking me home to see my mother,
father, brothers, and sisters.  We went a long way, and the way they took
me was not like Deptford, and I have not seen my mother and father
since.”  The girl began to cry, and said, “I should like to see father,
mother, Polly, and Jim.  It is a long time since I saw them.  We used to
go to school together, Jimmy, Polly, and myself.  My father used to take
me by the hand to school and chapel on Sundays, and they did sing such
nice hymns.  I have seen father and mother cry lots of times.  Father
used to say his prayers every night and morning.  They don’t say prayers
where I live now.  Will you take me to my father and mother?  When will
you take me?  Take me now, and I will give you everything I have in the
world.  Please don’t go and leave me, and I will give you twenty, thirty,
forty, and fifty kisses.  I will give you hundreds if you will take me to
my mother and father.  I hope they are not dead.  I hope Polly and Jim
are alive.  Will you take me, please, sir?”

I told the poor little creature that I could not take her, but that I
would send three or four gentlemen for her shortly.  At this she began to
sob out loudly, “Take me! take me! don’t leave me here!”  I directed her
to pray to God for deliverance, for there seemed to be none from earth;
and with her eyes turned up to heaven she said with Sir John Davis:

    “Lord! hear my prayer and listen to my cries,
    Let not Thy gracious eye my tears despise.”

To which I said, Amen!

Large numbers of them had been in jail.  Their short cropped hair and
other symptoms told the black tale.

All the vans, tents, &c., were not to be reckoned as teeming with human
wretchedness, squalor, dirt, filth, and sin.  Some ditch and mossy bank
abodes were as clean as the circumstances would admit of, and the tent
and van dwellers were healthy-looking, plump, and clean.

A terrible row commenced among the gipsies over a dog, which ended in
bloodshed and murder.  Right up at the far corner two men were digging a
hole about two feet six inches long, and twelve inches wide, and two feet
deep.  After it was dug a woman stole stealthily along with a heavy
parcel in her arms, covered with a cloth, which might or might not have
been a dead dog.  As the gipsy woman carrying the mysterious bundle
approached, one of the men withdrew to act as a kind of spy guard.  For a
few minutes he looked about, and then called out crouchingly, and in a
loud whisper, “The skies are clear.”  The woman ran with death in her
arms, the devil in her heart, and a hellish glare upon her features, and
deposited her load in the cold, cold ground without a tear or a sigh.  No
mournful _cortége_ or funeral knell told the tale of what was going on.
Within three minutes all was levelled up, and the three departed—where I
don’t know; at any rate, I have not seen them since.

Immediately after this sad event I saw coming down the by-lane a School
Board officer, a sanitary officer, and a Christian minister.  I watched
with longing eyes to see what they were going to do.  They came nearer
and nearer, till they arrived at the gate leading into the meadow.  For a
few minutes they stood at the gate, which was locked.  I liked the looks
of them.  They looked like brothers of mercy.  Their countenances were
heavenly.  I felt that I could have shouted “Glory.”  I hastened to
unlock the gate, and the brothers of mercy walked in to lift the children
upon the path leading to heaven.  Just at this juncture a thunderstorm
came on, and the dripping from the leaves overhead woke me up.  For a few
minutes I did not know where I was, whether in the body or out of it.
Feeling as Anna Shipton felt when she wrote in the _Sword and Travel_ for
1871:—

    “Thou knowest my way—how lone, how dark, how cheerless,
       If Thy dear hand I fail in all to see;
    Bright with Thy smile of love my heart is fearless
       When in my weakness I can lean on Thee.”

I pulled myself together to deal with sad, terribly sad, facts, and
continued my walk to Long Buckby, my midday reverie in the land of
shadows, lying between dreams and visions, being over.  On mounting the
hill leading into the town I met with a tall old man dressed in a
pauper’s garb, and with a “few slates off.”  He said he had lived in a
cottage with the windows nailed up for seventy years.  I asked him how
old he was.  He answered, “Over seventy.”  He next turned the compliment
upon myself, and said, “How old are you?”  I said, “Fifty-one.”  “Oh,”
said the old man, after looking at my once black hair, which my friends
tell me is now growing snowy white in the cause of the children, hastened
by the bleaching of hard struggles, conflicts, and fightings, “you are
older than me; I thought so.”  I said “I did not think so.”

There are some quaint, ancient-looking houses in the town, evidently of
the time of the Commonwealth.  These are built of stone at the bottom,
mud in the middle, and brick at the top, and they are thatched with straw
and end in smoke.  In the centre of this “radical town,” peopled with
good-hearted folks, stands a very strong, tall, oak pole, some eighty
feet high, with a crown upon the top of it, which pole was taken many
years ago out of Earl Spencer’s park at Althorp.  It is known by the name
of “the coronation pole.”  The original “coronation pole” was put up when
George III. was crowned, and was cut down in William IV.’s time, owing,
as one of the very old townsmen said, “to his turning Conservative.”  A
man named Hare, whom I had a chat with, helped to saw it down with a
“cross-cut” saw.  It was sold publicly for two pounds, and the money
spent in drink in a public-house opposite.  The present pole stands some
twenty yards from where the former one stood.  The massive crown upon the
top of the pole is similar to the one worn by our blessed and noble
Queen, and long may it remain.

In the square, and beneath the shadow of the “coronation pole,” were some
six vans, &c.  In three of the vans there were eighteen children of all
ages and sizes, seven men and women.  None of the children could tell a
letter, but three of the men and women could read and write.  One of the
travellers, the father of six of the children, had received his education
at the Bedford Grammar School.  With these good-hearted people I had some
tea, and they gave me a cocoa-nut to take home for my family.  I gave the
children some pictures and a few articles of clothing for one or two or
three of them, and then wended my way among the feasters and fair-goers.
In the “feast” there was a woman with a “rock stall,” who had been a
Sunday-school scholar, but was now gipsying the country with her two
sons.  They slept under their stall at night.  She said she thought that
God did, and believed he would, answer the prayers of backsliders before
any others, to which I said, “Amen; He does and will.”  I left her with
tears in her eyes for a gossip with Mr. “Flash” and his dark-eyed, sharp,
business wife, who with steam horses and shooting galleries are making
money fast, so that they may “retire in their old age.”  Mr. Flash’s
life, struggles, and various vicissitudes present plenty of material for
a backwood gipsy novel of the blunder-bosh kind.

Flash and his wife were just having a ham tea, and they invited me to
join them, which of course I did, and rubbed my hands quickly with
delight.  It was a prime cut, the frizzling and frying of which brought
water to my teeth and a smacking of my lips.  I was served with tea out
of one of their best old china cups, which was a treat every one had not
the pleasure of enjoying.  After my gipsy rambles I thoroughly enjoyed
the late tea.  They showed me their beautiful feather bed at the end of
the van, and unbosomed some of their successes and some of their trials
and hardships.  I gave them a few pictures, which they said they should
have framed.  They then filled my bag with “prize onions,” and I shook
hands with them, to meet again some day, perhaps at Bagworth or
Barleston, in Leicestershire, where Flash first saw daylight.

Not one of this batch of _posh_ gipsy travellers raised a murmur against
my plan for bringing about a free education for the gipsy and other
travelling children, and the registration of their vans.

Just under the glittering crown and “coronation pole” stood what, so far
as the underworks indicated, had been once an old fish cart, over the top
of which had been placed some half-barrel hoops, covered with old
tarpauling sheets.  The outside woodwork consisted of pieces of orange
boxes, packing cases, &c., and was daubed over with paint little better
than a child would daub a pigstye door.  The dirty patches and blotches
of glaring colours were laid on in an infinitely more zigzag fashion than
the trailmarks of snails and worms.  The creaking _door_ was hung with
pieces of leather; in fact, the whole outside, together with the pieces
of old leather straps, and string-tied-together harness, old rags,
buckets, and boxes underneath, presented a sight that I shall never
forget.  All this family of Y—ks wanted to make them perfect gipsies was
that they should pick up some gipsy slang, Romany, learn how to eat
hedgehogs, snails, and diseased pork, tell lies, gabble out fortunes,
poison fowls, choke pigs, throttle sheep, take all, by hook or by crook,
they could lay their hands upon, wash their faces in walnut water, roll
about in mud and filth, smoke and eat “black jack,” and adopt the gipsy
names of Smith, Lee, Boswell, Hearn, Lovell, Fletcher, Simpson, Draper.
With these gipsy traits brought out they would be enabled to live a
roving, lively, idle time of it to their hearts’ content.  So say some
gipsy writers.  What a contrast, I thought, as I saw some young ladies
standing at the window of a large house looking upon the scene only a few
yards away.  There a piano, played by gentle, nimble fingers, was sending
forth sweet notes of heavenly, charming music sometimes at a galloping
pace, and at other times as the gentle murmuring of clear rippling waters
over bright and glossy pebbles, echoing love upon earth and peace and
goodwill in the air, turning the widow’s sorrowful tears, the business
parent’s troubles and care drops, into silver stepping-stones leading
onward and upward to heaven.  For the life of me I could not help showing
my weakness by lifting up my eyelids to make room for the scalding tears
that wanted to force their way down my cheeks.  The wide chasm there is
between human happiness and heaven and human woe and hell is something
horrifying and horrible.  Would to God that our sensual, sensational, and
degrading backwood gipsy writers could be brought to see the mischief
they are doing by dragging the poor lost gipsies and other travellers
down to utter ruin, body and soul, for all time and throughout eternity,
by their damning, poisonous writings.

Inside the van, on the doorsteps, and upon the shafts of their old
tumbledown cart, there were man, woman, and five children.  The father
and mother could read and write well, but not one of the children could
tell a letter, although of school age.  The eldest girl of fourteen was
the picture of beauty, though terribly thin from the crown of her head to
the soles of her feet; but alas, alas! a few rags, ignorance, exposure,
poverty, dirt, and wretchedness were trying to do their best to spoil it.
The other children, so far as I was able to judge, were equally pretty.
Owing to my not being an amateur gipsy, a backwood gipsy slang and book
writer, of course I do not set myself up as a connoisseur in these
matters.  The father was inside the old van stirring the boiling “rock,”
which was in an old saucepan upon a little six-inch square stove similar
to what I have seen in cobblers’ shops before now.  He was a big strong
man, apparently capable of any amount of work.  The rags of bedding were
grimy, greasy, and dirty to the last degree; in fact, soap and water did
not appear to have been brought to bear upon anything in the wretched
hole.  How man, woman, and five children could sleep in such a place is a
mystery.  God grant that it may be soon solved by the hand of our
legislators, philanthropists, and Christians of every grade.

The owner of this travelling van was an engineer and “fitter,” and could,
if he followed his employment, earn over two pounds per week.  One
hundred and seventy pounds was paid by his parents as an apprenticeship
premium for him to learn the trade; but, sad to relate, it was ending in
his boiling “rock” upon the top of a stove in the midst of dirt and
filth.  This precious dainty, composed of flour, sugar, treacle, and
grease, was to be dealt out by his wife and children by halfpennyworths
to little successful popgun firers.  What an occupation and ending for a
tradesman in possession of strength, sense, and reason!  He had been well
brought up by Christian parents, but got among loose company, whose chief
desire is to be unshackled and free.

The little gleam of light in favour of his future reform was that he
seemed to be ashamed of putting his head outside the van.  His conscience
was not quite dead.  May the thundering voice of heaven ring in his ears
till he cries out as the poor prodigal did, and once more settles down
again in the neighbourhood of Thirsk.

The woman had been a parlour-maid for three years in the family of R—, at
Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire, where this family hails from.  She seemed a
hard-working woman, and one who tried hard to make her way, but possessed
with an idea that she should like to see some of the London gipsies.  No
doubt by this time she is making her way there.

The hardships this poor woman and children had to pass through during the
last year are most heartrending.

During the whole of one month, with occasional assistance of the father,
they had pushed their van about Lincolnshire in the depths of dark, cold,
cold winter.  They had no horse, and they presented a too wretched
spectacle for daylight travelling.

After their day’s work of popgun-firing and “rock”-selling at fairs,
feasts, and races they put one or two of the little children who could
not toddle alongside their van to _bed_—and bed it was—and commenced
crying, pulling and hauling their van up hill and down dale till they got
stuck fast at one of the Lincolnshire towns.  By begging, cadging, and
starvation the woman managed to scrape two pounds and some three or four
shillings together, and off she started by rail from Heckington to
Spilsby fair to buy a horse.  She had left the children without a morsel
of anything to eat.  Every penny had been screwed and scraped together to
make up the two pounds.  She wandered about the fair all day, but could
not succeed in buying a horse for two pounds.  The horses were being
gradually driven off the ground, the poor woman had had only a dry crust
to eat, sat down and began to cry; in fact, while she was telling me her
sorrowful tale of hardship and suffering, tears rolled freely down her
face, and she kept breaking out in sobs and “The Lord love you” many and
very many times over, with such an effect upon my poor self that I had
but little rest that night.  I was quite unnerved, and emptied my pockets
of what little money I had among the poor little _posh_ gipsy children.
While the woman was sitting in her sorrowful fix a man came up to her and
asked her what was the matter with her.  The poor creature unbosomed
herself, and told him.  They both there and then began to hunt up the old
horses left in the fair; finally they met with one for two pounds—the
grey old pony they had with them standing by the side of the cart when I
saw them—and an animal it was, such as one does not see every day for
bruises, humps, and hunches.

At four o’clock, with darkness creeping on, and a halter upon the pony’s
head, she commenced to tramp, dressed in rags and trashes, and almost an
empty craw, from Spilsby back to Heckington, a distance of between thirty
and forty miles.  Fortunately there was a little moonlight for a good
part of the night, which enabled her to get upon the pony’s back to see
the guide-posts.  Several times she took the wrong turning where there
was no guide-post to direct her, but by perseverance righted herself
again.  The pony was a little lame, and she could not ride, and on they
tramped together, occasionally resting by the road side as the silent
hours of the cold winterly night quietly and leisurely passed into the
future unseen and unknown, except such of it as has been revealed to us
by the Great Creator Himself.  About two o’clock the next day she arrived
at the van door with her old grey pony, and since then they have
travelled hundreds of miles together, sometimes pushing, and sometimes
pulling along the lanes of life.  I asked her if she was not afraid to
travel along the lonely lanes and roads leading to Spilsby at the
midnight hour.  She answered, “The Lord love you, I should at other
times, but I did not feel a bit afraid on this night.  I wanted to get
home with the pony and to see my children, and this kept me a-going
forward.  Since then,” said the poor woman, “we’ve had a hard time of it;
in fact, for the last two years we’ve had only six pennyworth of meat,
and six pennyworth of bacon in the van.  We live on what we can pick up,
but chiefly on dry bread and tea.”  She told me herself that for more
than a fortnight together she had on only an old dress, a chemise in
shreds, and a pair of old boots to move among the fashionable and gay at
the fairs, races, and feasts.  Thank God for the hope that dwells within
the breasts of these at the bottom of the social scale that brighter days
will come.  Her little girls had not been undressed and washed for weeks,
as they had nothing else to put on while they were being washed; and in
this way many thousands of English men, women, and children are drifting
into damning English gipsy customs, sins, and degrading and depraving
habits, beneath, and encouraged by, the smiles, winks, and gabble of our
backwood gipsy, gem collectors, and sentimental and sensational writers,
who do not care a straw for those whom they are enticing on to ruin, so
long as the gold and silver bits drop into their pockets.

It is time we roused ourselves, and, with Mr. Ellis in the _Quiver_ for
1878, cried out at the top of our voices, and in prayer from the depths
of our whole souls—

    “Oh, help them, then, if ye are men,
    Stretch out thine hand to save.
    Let them not sink beneath the brink
    O’ the surging ocean wave.”

Rambles among the Gipsies.  Upon Bulwell Forest.  At the Social Science
Congress, Nottingham.

    “Not all in vain good seed I sow,
    As up and down the world I go;
    Scattering in faith the precious grain,
    And waiting till the sun and rain
    Of heavenly influence bid it grow.”

                                                 Rev. RICHARD WILTON, M.A.
                                    _Christian Miscellany_, October, 1882.

SUNDAY morning, September the 24th, was most lovely and delightful.  The
buzzing and darting bats were not to be seen.  They had retired among the
ruins of old tumbledown walls, creaking doors, and thatch.  The horrible
sneaking rats had crept into their holes, ashamed of daylight.  The owl
had retired to a dark, dusky nook among the perishing barn stone walls,
to sleep and fatten upon its ill-gotten carrion and the tender bones of
the sweet chirping, variegated songsters that had been unfortunate enough
to come beneath its ravenous clutches.  The bright sun was shedding its
light, tinged with a little of the autumnal golden hue, upon our rough,
rugged, and antiquated dwelling.  The robin seemed more proud than ever
to show its beautiful red breast, and to get ready to pipe forth the
praises of Jehovah from the branches of the old yew trees near the
orchard.  The swallows were darting by our windows, as if nervous about
their long flight, and anxious to have as many peeps at us as possible
before bidding us good-bye for their long journey far, far away.  Our
fowls had, according to their usual custom on Sunday mornings, gathered
themselves together under the shed in the yard to listen to the
intonation of their friend “Tom.”  The sheep and cattle were grazing in
the meadows, and sheaves of golden corn stood upright in the fields,
inviting the farmers to carry them home to fill the barns of the rich,
the coffers of the banker, the empty bellies of the poor widow, toilers
in the field and brickyard, dwellers in canal-boat cabins, and gipsy
tents, vans, and wigwams.  Our village church bells had begun to ring,
and my wife was, of necessity, breaking the Sabbath by restoring with her
bodkin and thread some of my habiliments while I stood bolt upright, so
as to make me presentable at court, which process caused a twitter among
our “olive branches.”  I now scraped together all the money I could, and
with my “Gladstone bag” in hand, containing among other things my
Sunday’s dinner, consisting of a slice of bread and butter and an apple,
and my seedy-looking overcoat, turned the best side towards London, I
started to the station.  The bells were chiming and pealing soft and low,
and our little folks were tripping off to church with their curls
dangling down their backs, and dressed in their best “bib and tucker.”
On the way I came upon an Irishman sitting upon a stone minding some
sheep that were munching grass by the roadside.  For his companion he
had, as the Rev. Mr. Vine says in the _Wesleyan Methodist Magazine_,
February, 1877,

    “Naught but the sky, the rough hewn rocks,
    Green belts of grass, and fleecy flocks.”

To me it seemed as if he had a small crucifix in his hand, and was
counting beads; if so, I interrupted him by calling out “Good morning,”
to which Pat responded, “Good morning, yer honour; an’ it is a fine
morning, yer honour.”  I left him in his devotion, and next came upon a
couple of dirty shoemakers from Daventry, with as much watercress in
their arms as they could carry, stolen from the water-brook close by
while the farmers were in church and the dogs tied up.

I now ran against a youth from the station who was gathering
blackberries.  At his feet, in the hedge-bottom, a hare was quietly
nestling.  Poor fellow! he let his blackberries fall to grasp the hare,
which allowed him the moment’s pleasure of catching its tail, but, much
to the chagrin of the youth, did not leave it behind, forcibly
illustrating the case of the dog in Æsop’s Fables crossing a plank with a
piece of meat in its mouth, which it let fall to grasp the shadow.  “Oh!”
said the flushed youth, “I nearly caught it.”

In the train there were several gentlemen.  One was reading the
_Christian World_, and another was reading a sporting paper.  At Nuneaton
I had two hours to wait for the next train to Leicester.  The interval
was spent in pacing backwards and forwards upon the platform, and in
eating with a thankful heart my Sunday’s dinner, which, not to say the
least of, was not too rich for my digestive organs.

I fared better than an old gipsy woman, Boswell, who, with her
daughter-in-law—a gipsy Smith from London—and their five poor
half-starved gipsy children, came to our door recently.  The old woman,
Boswell, had only an outer old frock upon her, with two or three old rags
underneath.  She had no “shift” on, as she said.  This family of
travelling gipsies consisted of two men, mother and daughter-in-law, and
five children, the whole of whom “slept under their tilted barrow” at
Buckby wharf in a hedge-bottom.  Not one of this lot could tell a letter.

At Nuneaton I conversed with a gentleman who gave me a little of his
history, some of which was remarkable, especially that part relating to
his courtship and marriage.  “Ah!” said my friend with a tone of sadness,
“I had the misfortune to lose my wife by cruel death, and was left with
four little children to get through the world as best we could.  It was a
sad blow, sir.  I don’t know whether you have ever undergone such a
trial, but my experience of it is that it is one of the greatest
misfortunes that can ever befall mortal man, and I’ve nothing but pity
for the man who has had to undergo the sad loss.  Oh! it’s terrible, sir.
After you have been toiling hard all day in the cold rain, frost, and
snow, and then to go home to find no one to warm your slippers, or to
speak a kind, soothing, and cheering word to you, was more than I could
bear.  To sit and eat your bread and butter and drink your tea alone,
while the servants and the children were playing in the streets, was
enough to turn any man into a wild animal.”  I said to him, “Certainly it
is a terrible ordeal, and one that I should not like to pass through.”
“Yes it is,” said my friend, almost in whimpering tones.  “Well, how did
you get out of your sad difficulty?” I said.  “Well, sir, things went on
for some months in a path in which there seemed nothing but vexation.
The servants were quarrelling, the children were neglected, and bills
seemed to be coming in without end; and while I was brooding over these
things one afternoon, in came a minister from Derby, and he saw the fix I
was in, and that I could not get him as nice a cup of tea as formerly;
and, to help me out of my difficulty, he said, ‘My dear brother, when the
proper time comes, I know where there’s a wife that will suit you.’  ‘Do
you?’ I said to my ministerial friend.  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’  At this
I pricked up my ears, and he said, ‘I am going to their house for tea
next week, and if you like you shall go with me.’  ‘All right,’ I said.
Nothing more passed that evening on the subject.  During the week he
wrote to me, asking me to meet him at Derby station.  Of course I thought
I would go; they could not take anything of me, and I went.  In going to
the house I began to get into a nervous stew.  On the way my friend said,
‘Now there are two sisters in the house living with their mother.  It
will be the one with a blue ribbon round her waist who I think will suit
you.  After they have been in their room to dress for the afternoon she
generally comes out the first.’  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll keep my eyes
open.’  At the door the mother met us, and gave us a hearty welcome.  The
young ladies were in their room, and I was playing with my fingers upon
the arm of the sofa.  Presently a young lady came downstairs.  Of course
I had my eyes upon the waistband, to see whether it was a blue one; but,
to my astonishment, it was green.  In a few minutes the other young lady
came downstairs with the blue ribbon round her waist.  I concluded that
this was the one my friend the parson had selected for me.  Tea was got
ready, and instead of entering freely into the general conversation, I
kept looking first at one and the other of the young ladies at tea, and
playing with my fingers between time.  When tea was over and the service
ended, on the way home my friend the parson said, ‘Well, which of the two
do you like best?’  ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I’m not particular; I’ll take to
either of them; but as the eldest is nearer to my age, I think I will
make love to her,’ taking it all as a joke.  Nothing more was said.
During the next week I was a long way from home on business, and I
ventured to write to Deborah, telling her who I was, and what little game
I was up to, and asking her to meet me at the station to have a chat
together on the subject about which I wrote.  The young lady was, so I’ve
been told since, dumbfounded, and said to her sister, ‘Of all the men in
the world I will not have him; I don’t like him a bit.  He did not at all
seem to make himself comfortable at tea.  I shall not go to meet him.’
‘Well,’ said the other sister with the green waistband, ‘If you don’t go
I shall.  He will suit me.’  ‘Well,’ said the one with the blue
waistband, ‘if he will suit you he will suit me, and I will go to meet
him at the station.’  Accordingly I got out of the train, so that she
might know me again, and on we went to Derby and made matters square;
and—would you believe me, sir?—in three weeks from that time we were
married.”  I said, “Well, bless me!”  The rapidity of his courting
expedition almost took the wind out of me.  The station bell now rang.  I
jumped into the train, and as I was moving off towards Leicester I bade
my new friend good-bye; and he, in return, waving his hand, said, “I will
tell you the rest another day, and what we saw on our wedding tour in
London, Antwerp, Brussels, Mastricht, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam.”  “All
right,” I said, and we puffed away, leaving quite a pother behind.

In the train were two young female “school teachers,” who had been a
“gipsying” to Coventry by the “special” from Leicester on the Saturday
afternoon, and, whether by accident or design, they had been left behind.
I questioned them about the suspicious circumstance attached to such a
course, to which they replied, “As soon as we arrived at the station, and
found that the train had been gone five minutes, we nearly cried our eyes
out.  Fortunately we had friends in Coventry with whom we stayed all
night.”

I told them to be good girls and do better for the future, to which they
replied, “We will,” and I left them to make my way down Belgrave Gate to
my sister-in-law’s.  After tea we went to St. Mark’s church, and heard a
smiling young curate, the Rev. A. F. Maskew, preach a good, practical,
telling sermon, on the occasion of returning thanks to Almighty God for
the success that has attended our army and navy and the termination of
the war in Egypt.  The Rev. C. B. — was away on his holiday.  After the
service the congregation stood up and heartily joined the choir in
singing, “God save the Queen.”  To which I responded with all my heart,
“Amen!  God bless our blessed Queen.”

Right always comes right.  After service I took a walk, with “a young
lady” of some forty-five gentle summers and hard winters at my left side,
to visit the new park in the abbey meadows.  The sight was most
enchanting.  Few lovers were on the walks with their arms entwined round
each other’s waists.  The artificial lakes, hills, and rockeries were
seen with solemn grandeur by the aid of distant lamps.  The moving
murmuringly forward of the “soar” waters beneath our feet, as we stood on
the bridge, lighted up with silver streaks of distant lamps, and the
pealing forth of the soft, heavenly, riveting, and mesmerizing hymns and
chimes of the evening bells of St. Mark’s and St. Saviour’s, made me feel
that all the troubles, trials, opposition, misrepresentation, and
hardship I had passed through were suddenly transformed into pleasures,
leading up to the indescribable panoramic views that appeared before my
vision.  As it passed away—or, I should say, I passed from it—another one
opened up which led me on and on in spirit to the heavenly rest and
everlasting beauty in store.  The Rev. Richard Wilton says—

    “Let Nature’s music still the ear delight,
    And gracious echoes mortal cares allay,
    Till “wood-notes” ’mid angelic warbling cease,
    And “church bells” ring us to eternal peace.”

In a few minutes after this I was between the sheets, and I could have
said with John Harris, as sleep stole gently into my room—

    “Hark!  What is that?  The spirit of the vale?
    Or is it some bright angel by the lake?”

And the last I remember was, I was muttering over “by” “by” “the” “lake,”
“by” “by” “the” “the” “lake,” “la—la,” and I was bound fast to the bed.

A quondam friend bade me “good morning,” and then jumped into a “first
class” to recite his “R’s” and “S’s” so as to give them the finishing
touch correctly the next Sunday morning, while I enjoyed the honour and
pleasure of a “third.”  We arrived together at Nottingham, and I made my
way to a “temperance hotel,” not half a mile from the station, with
“first-class” appearances outside, but with “third-class” bedroom
accommodation.  My room was a “top back,” overlooking well-known old
friends, viz., bricks, tiles, terra-cotta, sanitary pipes, encaustic
tiles, &c, with a board in the corner covered with oilcloth for a washing
stand, and a tea saucer for a “soap tray.”  The bed was hard, and the
blind was of a material that needed no washing; in fact, the room was
bare, cheerless, comfortless, and cold.  I strolled into the
market-place, and was soon talking to some old-fashioned Staffordshire
gipsies with short skirts, and apparently, thick legs, heavy boots, with
plenty of colour about their “head-gear,” who, taking all things into
consideration, were not bad specimens of gipsies of the present day.

After this I spent a short time with my old friend, Mr. William Bradshaw,
a name which has been well known in the midland counties for many long
years.  Writing and gossiping consumed the remainder of the day; and at
ten o’clock I mounted and climbed nearer heaven to rub my eyes again at
peep o’ day.  Between four and five o’clock I was in and out of my hard
bed a dozen times, guessing the time and groping in the dark, for fear I
might miss the train to Bulwell Forest.  At last I got so fidgety that I
was determined to get up, “hit or miss.”  I dressed, and then went
downstairs to find my way out into the street; but, not having an angel,
like Peter, to open the doors for me, I had to ring and ring and shout
sufficient to awaken all in the house; if they had been as deaf as posts,
I could not have had a greater difficulty to awaken them.  At last the
landlord made his appearance with his shirt on, and his hair on an end
like a frightened ghost.  Owing to my early movements, and being a
suspicious-looking customer, I had to pay my bill, and out I went about
half-past five.  My train started for Bulwell at six o’clock, and at six
thirty I was among the gipsies upon the forest.  There were four vans
full of gipsies of all sorts and sizes, just turning out of their “bed;”
so dirty were they that I should not have been surprised if the “beds”
had run away with them.  “Smiths” and “Winters” were the two prominent
names.  “Bless me,” I said, there are “gipsy Smiths here, there, and
everywhere.”  “Yes, you are right, my good mon,” said Mrs. Gipsy Winter
in a Staffordshire twang.  In the four vans there would be twelve adults
and eighteen poor, rough, dirty, neglected little gipsy children, not one
of whom could read or write.  The policeman said to me, “The gipsies that
come on this forest and about these parts are a rough, dirty, bad lot,
and no mistake.  Nowt comes amiss that they can lay their hands upon, I
can assure you.”  I had a chat with Mrs. Gipsy Winter, and told her what
my object was, viz., to bring their vans under registration, and also to
give their children a free education; to which she replied with delight,
“Lor, bless you, my good mon, I’m reight glad you big fokes are going to
do sommat in the way o’ givin’ our childer a bit o’ eddication, for
they’re nowt as it is.  They are growin’ up as ignorant as osses; they
conner tell a ‘b’ from a bull’s foot.  I conner read mysen, but I should
like our childer to be able to read and write.  Han you got one o’ your
eddication pass books wi’ yer? cause if yer han, I’ll ha’ one.”  I told
her that the Act was not passed authorizing the use of them; at which she
held down her head, and said, “I suppose we mun wait a long time fust.”
“Yes,” I said, “it will not be this year.”

Mrs. Gipsy Winter had upon her finger a Masonic ring—_i.e._, a ring with
the “square” and “compasses” engraved upon it.  Of course I felt sure she
was not a Freemason, and did not proceed to put her to the test.  There
never was but one woman a Freemason, and the reason was that she secreted
herself in an old clock case while the ceremonies were being performed in
the Lodge “close tiled.”  The only way out of the awkward difficulty was
to make her a Mason forthwith on the spot, and this—so Masonic squib and
report has it—was done.  This report of “our Masonic sister” is to be
taken with a pinch of snuff.

I called to see a family of gipsy Woodwards who have taken a house and
are settling down the same as other folk.  Those of their children that
are able to work are working at the coalpits close by, and the children
of school age are sent to school.  In the course of time they will become
as other workers, helping on the welfare of the country, and at the same
time securing their own comfort and happiness.  The house did not present
the appearance of a fidgety old maid’s drawing-room, but they are up the
first steps towards it.  Time and encouragement will bring it round in
the sweet “good time coming.”  “Wait a little longer, boys; wait a little
longer.”

It is complete bosh, nonsense, wickedness, and misleading folly for
frothy novelists to say that it is impossible for gipsies to settle down
to industrious habits and a regular life.  I know full well they can, and
are willing, many of them, to settle down, if means be taken to bring it
about.  I will only mention one case, to illustrate many others, viz., a
gipsy I know well, who is as pure a gipsy as it is possible to find at
this late day.  The good old man has had a settled home for forty years,
and goes to hard work night and morning amongst the farmers, the same as
other labourers do.  Aye, and many times he works late and early, dining
at times off a crust and a cup of cold water with a thankful heart in the
week-day, and sings God’s praises on Sundays.

To come back again to Bulwell Forest.  After I had visited the Woodwards
I turned into a small coffee-shop to get a cup of tea; and while I was
enjoying the penny cup of tea with a halfpenny’s-worth of bread and
butter for my breakfast, the landlord said: “One of the young gipsy
rascals of the forest came into my shop last week, and made himself too
friendly and free with some things that lay upon the table, for which I
could have put him into jail; but I did not like to follow it up, and the
lot of them have made themselves scarce since.”  Another old woman, a
seller of the _Nottingham Daily Journal_, _Nottingham Daily Guardian_,
_Express_, _&c._, said, “The gipsies often come into my house and want to
tell me my fortune; but I always tell them that I know it better than
they can tell me, and will have no cotter with them.”

I next came upon a gipsy named L—, who told me of a case of gipsy
kidnapping which took place at Macclesfield a year ago, viz., that of a
gipsy woman stealing a pretty little girl of tender years out of the
streets, belonging to a fairly well-to-do tradesman living in the town.
Although the child was advertised for a long time, and large rewards
offered, it was not to be found, till one day a gipsy girl went to one of
the shops in Macclesfield to sell some gipsy “clothes pegs.”  The good
woman of the house came to the door.  Although five long years had passed
away, tears had been dried up again and again, and hundreds of prayers
had gone upward to Him who hears prayers and sighs, and the child had
grown big and brown, and was dressed in rags and filth, the mother
recognized the poor gipsy child standing at her door hawking “pegs” as
her own dear little darling “Polly.”  Without waiting for the lost child
to be washed, dressed, and its hair combed, she embraced her darling
little lost daughter covered in rags with fond kisses, which told a tale
through the gipsy dirt upon the child’s face, as only a tender-hearted,
loving mother can, and straightway called in her friends and neighbours,
and said, “Rejoice with me, for I have found this day my long-lost little
darling Polly.”  A policeman was sent for, the kidnapping gipsy woman was
traced, and was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour in jail for her
wrong-doing.

I was also told of gipsies who are undergoing long terms of penal
servitude for horse-stealing, their favourite game—sheep stand second on
the list.  Donkeys are very low down upon their list, as they are not
worth “shot and powder.”  “If a gipsy should get ‘nabbed’ for stealing a
donkey, it would be looked upon in the eyes of the bobbies,” said my
gipsy friend, “like stealing a horse.”

A whirl, twirl, puff, and a whiz landed me upon the platform in the
“Health Department” at the University College, Nottingham, September 26,
1882, with my bags, books, and papers, among the large gathering of
Social Science magnates and doctors, to discuss—firstly, the Canal Boats
Act Amendment Bill of 1881, which I am humbly promoting; and secondly,
“The Conditions of our Gipsies and their Children, with Remedies.”  Among
others upon the platform there were Mr. Arnold Morley, M.P., Mr. W. H.
Wills, M.P., Mr. Whately Cook Taylor, Chairman, one of Her Majesty’s
Chief Inspectors of Factories; Mr. H. H. Collins, Hon. Secretary of the
Health Department; Mr. J. Clifford Smith, Secretary to the Social Science
Association; and in the body of the hall there were Dr. Hill, the Medical
Officer of Health for Birmingham; Mr. Walter Hazell, Mr. Russell of
Dublin, and a large gathering of ladies, “too numerous to mention.”

I had expected to find a large opposition force confronting me,
consisting of those who would keep the canal and gipsy children in their
present degraded condition; but, like the Midianitish host, the breaking
of my cracked pitcher had frightened them out of their wits, and they had
scampered off to the hedges and ditches to skulk in front of me again
another day.  No doubt with my papers, Gladstone bag, spectacles, &c., I
presented very much the appearance of “Mrs. Gamp” at her speechifying
table.

These are my papers with all their faults and living seeds, sown and
planted at the Master’s bidding, in the midst of much toil, hardship, and
persecution; which seeds will bring forth a little eternal fruit some
day—maybe, when my work is done, and I have been called home to rest with
the little ones.

_The Condition of our Gipsies and their Children_, _with Remedies_.

In the year 1514 the gipsies landed in Scotland from the Continent, and
from that date to the present time we have had in our midst over 30,000
men, women, and children with increasing numbers, going to and from our
villages, towns, lanes, and fairs, and mixing with the simple, wise, gay,
and foolish, leading the lives of vagabonds, demoralizing all they have
been brought in contact with, by their lying, plundering, dirty, filthy,
cheating, and crafty habits.  In one word, the gipsies have been, and
still are, a disgrace to Christian civilization.  Of course there are
exceptions among them, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that there
were more.

They live huddled together regardless of either sex, age, or decency,
under hedges, in tents, barns, or on the roadside, with but little regard
for marriage ceremonies.

Their food, in many instances, is little better than garbage and refuse,
and the most riff-raff of them bed themselves upon rotten straw.

We have also, at this late day, with sunny education gleaming on every
hand, over 30,000 poor gipsy children of school age growing up as
vagabonds, and not two per cent. of the whole able to read or write a
sentence.

If our present-day gipsies had been of the romantic type of some two or
three centuries ago, as pictured to us so beautifully by fascinating
novelists, we might have wandered down the country green lanes, and by
the side of rivulets, to admire their witchery, colours, and gipsy
traits, exhibited with much refined skill, artistic touch, and feeling by
gipsy writers; but the fact is, to state it plainly, the romantic gipsy
of novels and romance has been dead long ago, and neither the stage,
romance, nor imagination will ever bring him to life again in this
country.

Our gipsies of to-day are neither more nor less than ignorant, idle
tramps, scamps, and vagabonds.  This I know full well, for I have found
it out over and over again, not by hearsay, but by mixing and eating with
them in their wretched abodes often during the last five years.

My sorrowful experience of them forty years ago, with casual
acquaintances since, and onward to 1878, has not brought any traits of
their character, as practised by them, that any sane-thinking, loyal, or
observing man can admire, and the sooner our legislators deal with our
gipsy vagabonds the better it will be for us as a nation.

Many of the gipsies have large hearts, and are most kindly, and they are
also clever and musical.  These features of gipsy life I have witnessed
myself many times.  The cause of their degraded position may be laid at
the door of our Christian apathy, legislative indifference, social
deadness, and philanthropic neglect.

The flickering and uncertain efforts of missionary agency will do
something towards reclaiming our poor lost wandering little brothers and
sisters, but not a tithe of what the social, sanitary, and educational
laws of the country can do.

In the paper I had the honour to read before this Congress at Manchester,
in 1879, I dealt more especially with the evils of gipsy life, only
referring briefly to my remedy, the substance of which I have published
in my “Gipsy Life,” and in various forms since 1878, and onward to this
date, which, with additional suggestions, are as follow:—

1.  I would have all movable or temporary habitations registered and
numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements in a manner analogous to
that provided under the Canal Boats Act of 1877.

2.  Not less than 100 cubic feet of space for each female above the age
of twelve, and each male above the age of fourteen; and not less than 50
cubic feet of space for each female under the age of twelve, and for each
male under the age of fourteen.

3.  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 and suitable ventilation be
provided.

4.  A registration certificate to be obtained, and renewable annually at
any of the urban or rural sanitary authorities in the country, for which
the owner of the tent, or van, shall pay a sum of 10s., commencing on the
first of January in each year.

5.  The compulsory attendance at day schools a given number of times of
all travelling children, or others, living in temporary or unrateable
dwellings up to the age required by the Education Code, which attendance
should be facilitated and brought about by means of a free educational
pass book, procurable at any bookseller’s, for the sum of one shilling,
as I have suggested to meet the case of canal children.

6.  The children to be at liberty to attend any National, British, Board,
or other day schools under the management of properly qualified
schoolmasters.

7.  No child under thirteen years of age to be engaged in any capacity
for either hire or profit, unless such child shall have passed the “third
standard” of the Education Code.

8.  No child or young person to work for either hire or profit on Sundays
under the age of sixteen.

9.  Power to be given to any properly qualified sanitary officer, School
Board visitor, inspector, or Government official, to enter the tents,
vans, shows, or other temporary or movable dwelling, at any time, or in
any place, and detain them if necessary, for the purpose of seeing that
the law is properly carried out.

10.  The Local Government Board to have power to appoint one, or two, or
more officials to see that the local authorities enforce and carry out
the Act; and also to report to Parliament annually.

11.  All fines to be paid over to those authorities who enforce the Act
and the regulations of the Local Government Board.

12.  As an encouragement to those gipsy wanderers who cannot afford to
have healthy and suitable travelling vans and other abodes, and who
desire to settle down from their wandering and degrading existence to
industrious habits the Government should purchase common or waste lands,
or allot lands of their own to the gipsies in small parcels upon a long
lease—say for ninety-nine years—at a nominal rent.

With these features embodied in an Act of Parliament, and properly
carried out by the local authorities, under the supervision and control
of the Local Government Board and Education Department, gleams of a
brighter day might be said to manifest themselves upon our social
horizon, which will elevate our gipsies and their children into a
position that will reflect a credit instead of a disgrace to us as a
civilized nation.

    “And shall he be left in the streets to room,
       An outcast live and wild?
    ‘God forbid!’ you say.  Then help, I pray.
          To provide for the [gipsy child].”

                           Rev. I. CHARLESWORTH, _Sword and Trowel_, 1671.

_The Canal Boats Act of_ 1877, _and the Amending Bills of_ 1881 _and_
1882.  By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.

In 1877 an Act was passed entitled “The Canal Boats Act of 1877,” on the
basis sketched out by me in a paper I had the honour to read before this
Congress, held at Liverpool in 1876; and also in my letters, articles,
&c., which have appeared in the lending journals, and in my works since
the passing of the Act and onward from 1872 to this date.

After the Bill was drawn up, and during its progress through committee in
1877, several features were foreshadowed in the measure which led me to
fear that when passed it would not accomplish all we so much desired, and
these I pointed out to the late Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Right Hon.
W. E. Forster, Mr. Salt, Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government
Board; Mr. John Corbett, M.P., Mr. Pell, M.P., Mr. P. Rylands, M.P., Mr.
Sampson Lloyd, MP., Mr. W. E. Price, M.P., and many others; but rather
than yield to the opposition of the Canal Association, and the loss of
the Bill, I suggested that it should be passed, notwithstanding the
drawbacks that were in sight.

When Lord Frederick Cavendish, Mr. Price, and others, at the fag end of
the session of 1877, put the question seriously to me, as to whether the
Bill should not be massacred along with the other innocents, I replied as
follows: “Push the Bill through Committee by all means.  A piece of a
loaf is better than none.  It has its defects, but if we do not get the
Bill passed this year we shall not be likely to do so next year.  Let us
get the thin end of the wedge in.  The operation of the Act will be to
bring about the registration of the canal boats, to give power to the
sanitary officers to enter the cabins, to secure the education of the
40,000 canal children, and also to prevent overcrowding in the cabins.”

The first step towards carrying out the Act, after five years’ continued
agitation and visits to various parts of the country, has been fairly
accomplished; and the sanitary officers, by the power given to them under
the Act, have done good by preventing, in some degree, the spread of
infectious diseases; but the main features of the Act, viz., the
education of the canal children, the prohibition of overcrowding in the
cabins, and the annual registration of the boats, are almost entirely
neglected.

The following are the failing points of the Act of 1877:

1.  The Act to a great extent is permissive.  2.  Proceedings cannot be
taken against the boatmen and boatowners for evading the regulations of
the Local Government Board—the most important of all.  Breakers of this
Act can be brought under the lash of the law, but breakers of the
regulations cannot.  3. The Act of 1877 is placed in the hands of the
local registration authorities to carry out, consequently the expenses
fall upon the ratepayers, and the result is that the local sanitary
inspectors, or registration officers, have had but little added to their
salaries—in many instances nothing—and with strict orders not to go
beyond their town or city boundaries.  Thus it will be seen that boats
plying between the registration districts, which are as a rule between
twenty and fifty miles apart, are left to themselves.  4. Another
oversight in the Act is the non-annual registration of the boats, and
consequently there have been no fees to meet the expenses.  It was
intended from the first that there should be an annual registration of
the boats.  5. The want of power in the Act to enable the Local
Government Board to appoint officers to supervise, control, inspect,
enforce, and report to Parliament upon the working of the Act and the
regulations.  6. Another cause of failure in the Act has been owing to
power not having been given to inspectors to enter the cabins or inspect
the boats at any other time than “by day.”  Boats are more or less on the
move by day, and it is only when they are tied up—which generally happens
after six o’clock—or when they are being loaded or unloaded, that the
local registration officer has an opportunity to see or to form any idea
as to what number of men, women, and children are sleeping and huddling
together in the cabins.  7. The Act does not give the School Board
officer power to enter a boat cabin.  The education clauses of the Act
have, I might almost say, entirely failed: (_a_) owing to the
indifference manifested by the school authorities at which places the
boats are registered as belonging to; (_b_) the extra trouble they give
to the school attendance officers; (_c_) the facilities given and the
chances seized by the boatmen to get outside the town or city boundaries
with their children so as to elude the grasp or shun the eye of the
School Board officer.  8. The payment of a week’s school fees demanded
from the children who can only attend one or two days in the week.  It is
not either fair, honest, or just to compel a boatman to pay more for the
education of his children than others have to pay.  9. Many boats in the
coal districts, with women and children on board, travelling short
distances, have escaped registration and inspection under the plea that
their boats are not used as dwellings.  10. Another very important reason
advanced by the registration authorities why the boatmen and boatowners
have not been prosecuted for breaches of the Act is that all the trouble
and expense attending prosecutions have had to be borne by the local
ratepayers, while the fines, in accordance with the Act of 1877, have
been paid over to the county fund, instead of the borough or local fund.

The Bill I am humbly promoting, and which has been before Parliament
during the last two sessions, supported by Lord Aberdare, Earl Stanhope,
Earl Shaftesbury, the Marquis of Tweeddale, Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Mr.
Albert Pell, M.P., Mr. John Corbett, M.P., Mr. Thos. Salt, M.P., Mr.
Thos. Burt, M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst, M.P., provides a remedy for
these faulty places.  1. I would do away with the permissive features of
the Act of 1872.  2. Fines to be inflicted for breaches of the
regulations, as well as for breaches of the Act.  3. I give under the Act
the local registration authorities part of the registration fees.  I
propose that the annual registration fee should be 5s. for each boat, one
half of this amount to go to the Government, and the other half to the
local authorities.  4. The registration of the boats to be annual.  This
will be a very simple and inexpensive affair, no matter in what
registration district the boat happens to be at the time of the renewal.
5. I give under the Bill the Local Government Board power to appoint one,
two, or more officials to visit the canals in various parts of the
country, and to see to the proper enforcement of the Act, and to report
annually to Parliament.  6. I propose that the inspectors should have
power to enter a canal boat at any “reasonable hour.”  7. No child shall
be employed on a canal boat unless such child shall have passed the
“third standard.”  8. I propose that children, whom the regulations allow
to live in the cabins, should have a free educational pass book, which
would enable them to attend any day school while the boats are being
loaded and unloaded.  9. No child under the age of sixteen to work on a
canal boat on Sundays.  10. All boats upon which there is accommodation
for cooking or sleeping to be deemed to be used as dwellings.  11. All
fines to be paid over to those authorities who enforce the Act.

When the Canal Boats Act of 1877 is amended in accordance with the lines
I have laid down in the Bill, the stigma that has been resting upon the
country and our canal population, numbering nearly 100,000 men, women,
and children, during the last 125 years, will be in an easy way for
removal, without inconvenience or costing the country one farthing, and
the boatowners and captains not more than 2s. 6d. each per annum.

With the proper carrying out of the Act the 40,000 boat children of
school age, not ten per cent. of whom can read and write, will be
educated, and the boatmen’s homes made more healthy and happy;
industrious habits will be encouraged, and the country will also be made
richer by increasing the happiness of her water toilers upon our rivers
and canals.

    “Oh, help them, then, if ye are men,
    And, when thy race is run,
    Turn not aside, nor think with pride
    Thy work in life is done.”

                                                          ELLIS, _Quiver_.

My papers passed off in the midst of smiles and kindly and lengthy _press
notices_.  Editors have always been more kind to me than I have deserved,
much more than I had anticipated.  The fact is, I had expected some rough
handling, and armed myself with a few little rough, awkward facts.
Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the majority of my hearers were of
the gentler sex.  Bless their dear hearts!  Their encouraging smiles and
words have helped me through many a difficulty in pushing on with the
cause of the children.  May God reward them a thousandfold.

The act was ended, and the curtain dropped.  I therefore “picked up my
crumbs,” and bade my friends goodbye till—D.V. and if all’s well—we meet
again next year at Huddersfield.  I then made my way to the station, and
home.  Upon Leicester platform I met with a few old friends, who had
pleasant greetings for me, including Mr. Thompson, Mr. Fox, and a
literary friend, the Rev. W. L. Lang, F.R.G.S., who has given myself and
the cause I have in hand many lifts—bless him for it.  Onward and upward
may he travel to the time when it shall be said, “It is enough.”  And to
my many other friends who have helped me by their influence and with
their pens, I repeat the same thing over and over again.

My little stock of the “one thing needful” had begun to turn quite
modest, and crept into the corners of my pocket, so as to be scarcely
felt among the keys of boxes, drawers, cupboards, and lockers, knives,
and other pocket trifles.  I took my ticket to Rugby, which left me with
one shilling.  I had not gone far before my ticket was missing out of my
hand.  I was in a minute “all of a stew.”  Cold perspiration crept over
me.  In a twinkle, before any one could say “Jack Robinson,” my hands
were at the bottom of my pockets using their force to persuade Mr.
“Ticket” to turn up; but no! it was not to be found.  Fortunately a
porter came panting after me and asked if I had not lost my ticket.  He
had lifted a ton weight off my shoulders, and I thanked him very much.
At Rugby I spent my last coin in copies of the _Times_, _Standard_,
_Daily News_, _Telegraph_, _Daily Chronicle_, _and Morning Post_.  In
nearing our old antiquated village along the lovely green lanes, little
village children were to be seen gathering blackberries.  The sun was
shining most beautifully in my face.  The autumnal tints and hues were to
be seen upon the trees.  The gentle rustling wind brought the decaying
and useless leaves hesitatingly and in a zigzag fashion to the ground, as
if they were loath to leave the trees which had given them birth, before
settling among the mud to be trampled upon by tramps and gipsies.  While
climbing the last hill, with a heavy heart and light pocket, weighed on
all sides with nervous hope, trembling doubts, and anxious fears, I never
more fully realized the force of John Wesley’s hymn, as I tried to hum it
over.  In soft but faltering accents I might have been heard by the
village children singing—

    “No foot of land do I possess,
    No cottage in this wilderness.
          A poor wayfaring man,
    I lodge awhile in tents below,
    Or gladly wander to and fro,
          Till I my Canaan gain.”

The first thing that caught my eye upon my library table was a letter
from Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., in which was enclosed a cheque to aid in
building a Good Templar hall at Northampton, about which I had written.
This was duly sent to Mr. Hollowell, the secretary.  Underneath Mr.
Morley’s letter lay one from a friend, Mr. Frank A. Bevan, of 54, Lombard
Street, enclosing a small cheque on behalf of himself, Lord Aberdare, and
a number of friends, to help me in my work, and to provide for the daily
wants of my little ones, till we arrived at the next stile on our rough,
steep, and somewhat zigzag journey.  The sight of his cheque sent a
thrill of joy through my soul, and I could not help shouting out,
“Thanks! a thousand times.”

Light again dawned at eventide, and we were enabled to retire to rest
singing God’s praises as the candle flickered in the socket.

In my “Gipsy Life” I have shown, among other things which have never been
mentioned by any gipsy writer before, the following particulars.  First,
the cause and probable date of the gipsies leaving India; second, the
route by which they travelled to Europe; and third, the cause of their
persecution after their arrival in England from the continent.

My gipsy paper did not give universal satisfaction to everybody outside
the congress.  My plain matter-of-fact statements raised the ire of a few
little narrow-souled mortals, who had not the courage to appear in their
own dress, and borrowed other people’s clothes—_shooba Rye_, &c.—to
crouch in while they fired their popguns at me.  Just as they were trying
to swallow my papers, an article appeared in the _Morning Post_, stating
that I “knew more than any man in England about the gipsies.”  This was
more than _O Bongo_, _ho_, _no tïckno chavo_ could stand.  Editors are
not like most mortals, they have a perfect right to say what they please
about anybody and everybody.  They and other literary friends have been
more than kind to the cause of the children and my unworthy self, for
which I thank them from the bottom of my heart.  Without their help I
could not have got along.  I sent the following letter to the _Morning
Post_, bearing date October 11, 1882, relating to “_Shooba Rye_,” _O
Bongo_, _hó_, _no tïckno chavo_:

“Your correspondent complains that I do not know sufficient of the
gipsies.  My congress papers and my ‘Gipsy Life’ show that I know a
little.  It is evident I know more than is pleasant to him, or he would
not have hastily snatched up some one else’s badly-fitting night-dress to
sally forth with his farthing candle in hand to put a ‘sprag’ into my
wheel.  Such backward movements are too late in the day to stop the sun
of civilization and Christianity shedding its rays upon the path of the
poor gipsy child and its home.

“I do not pretend to know more than forty years everyday practical
observation and insight into the real hard facts of the conditions of the
women and children employed in the brickyards and canal boats, and the
dwellers in gipsy tents and vans can give me.

“Two days ago I came upon a family of gipsy ‘muggers,’ father, mother,
and four children, travelling in a cart.  The poor little children, whose
ages ranged from four to twelve years, were stived up in a box on the
cart, which box was 5 ft. long by 2 ft. 9 in. wide by 3 ft high, or about
eleven cubic feet of space for each poor child.  The children were all
down with a highly infectious disease, carrying it from a village, where
it had been raging, to Daventry and Northampton.  I gave the children
some apples, but the poor things said, ‘We are all ill and cannot eat
them.’  None of these children could tell a letter.  These are facts and
not fiction; inartistically dressed, I admit, and without the flowers of
poetical imagination to adorn them.  Knowledge gained under the
circumstances in which I have been placed, will, I think, be found nearly
as valuable in improving the condition of neglected and suffering
children as imaginative, unhealthy backwood fiction spun by the yard
under drawing-room influences and by the side of drawing-room fires can
be.  At any rate, I have tried for many long years in my rough way to
look at the sad condition of the women and children whose cause I have
ventured to take in hand with both eyes open, one to their faults, and
the other to their virtues; and also with a heart to feel and a hand to
help, as my letters, papers, and books will show to those who have the
patience to read them.

“I have not been content to sit upon mossy banks by the side of rippling
rivulets, with a lovely sun shining overhead, and beneath the witching
looks and mesmeric smiles of lovely damsels, swallowing love and other
tales as gospel.

“It is time the hard facts and lot of our gipsies and their
children—_i.e._, those travelling in vans, shows, and tents—were
realized.  It is time we asked ourselves the question, ‘What are the vast
increasing numbers—over 30,000—of children tramping the country being
trained for?’

“The fact is this: Parliament, Christians, moralists, and philanthropists
have been content for generations to look at the gipsies and other
travellers of the class through glasses tinted and prismed with the seven
colours of the rainbow, handed to us by those who would keep the children
in ignorance and sin, instead of taking them by the hand to help them out
of their degrading position.  My plan would improve their condition,
without interfering with their liberty to any amount worth naming,
considering the blessed advantages to be derived by the gipsies and
others from it.

“No amount of misleading sentiment will stop me till the case of the poor
children is remedied by the civilizing measures of the country—viz.,
education, sanitation, and moral precepts—extended to them by an Act of
Parliament, as I have described in other places, which could be carried
out, and a system of free education established, by means of a pass book,
without any inconvenience or cost worth mention.  Why should our
present-day canal and gipsy children be left out in the cold?”

    “’Tis not the work of force, but skill,
    To find the way into man’s will:
    ’Tis love alone can hearts unlock;
    Who knows the Word he needs not knock.”

                                     RICHARD CRASHAW, “_Fuller Worthies_.”

Rambles Among the Gipsies at Daventry and Banbury Fairs.

THE eleventh of October, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two dawned
upon “Old England” while rain was coming down too drearily, drizzly, and
freely for either man or beast to be comfortable.  Foggy, cold, and murky
November seemed desirous of making its advent earlier than usual.  Not a
songster was to be seen nor an autumnal chirp heard round our dwelling.
Long dark nights had begun to creep over nature.  “The last rose of
summer,” the Queen of English flowers, was drooping its head and
withering up, and the leaves were dwindling down to nothingness.  The
lanes were strewn with dying leaves which had done their duty nobly and
well.

Through the low and heavy clouds the voice and footsteps of children, as
they trotted off with their milk tins, seemed to echo in my ears, and
other sounds to hover round me, carrying with them a kind of hollow
sepulchral sensation, telling me that summer was dead and autumn was
preparing nature for the winter shroud, which was undergoing the process
of weaving by angelic hands.

The sound of the thresher’s flail was heard in the barn, calling out
“Clank,” “Clank,” “Clank,” “Thud,” as it struck the corn and barn floor,
causing the precious grain to fly like a shower of small pellets against
the doors.  Not a gleam of sunshine was to be seen.  Summer and winter
seemed during the last fortnight to have been struggling with each other,
in the death-throes of nature for the mastery.  Genial summer had to give
way to savage winter, and little robins piped forth the victory.
Everywhere seemed cold, damp, and covered with melancholy.  As we
meditated upon the surroundings, our carrier drove to our door with his
van, into which I got, and seated myself in one of the corners almost out
of sight.  A patent “four-wheeler” of this kind I had not been used to,
and our little folks did their best to try to persuade me not to try the
experiment.  We had not gone many yards before eggs, boxes, whiskey
bottles, butter, and onions were handed to our carrier for carriage and
safe custody to Daventry fair.  Fat and thin women were closely packed
round me.  Welton is a noted village for fat women, which may be the
result of the excellent water.  While our village blacksmith was putting
some of his handiwork into the carrier’s van, the scene brought vividly
to my mind Longfellow’s poem.  He might have seen the very spot.

    “Under a spreading chestnut tree
       The village smithy stands;
    The smith a mighty man is he,
       With large and sinewy hands;
    And the muscles of his brawny arms
       Are strong as iron bands.”

I mumbled the verse over to myself as we jogged along.  To have repeated
or bawled it out in such “close quarters” would have been worse than
putting one’s head into a hatbox.

After the usual “picking up” and “calling” we began to slowly trot off
with our load.  We had not got far before our village dames, damsels, and
companions began to indulge more or less in the usual village gossip and
jokes.  Big heavy old women could indulge in sprightly conversation as
freely as if they were “four-year-olds.”  Pleasantry was exchanged as to
who was to sit next to our driver, so as to keep his back warm.  Village
parsons and squires were the first upon the programme.  Then came a long
rigmarole about the old maids and maidens, poachers, slovens, slatterns,
fashions, Jacks, Jims, and Pollies.  Everybody knew everybody’s business,
ranging from the death of Polly Jones’s cat to Squire Brown’s fine horse.
Good masters were passed over with “He’s not a bad sort of man to work
for, and he’d be better if he had more to do with.”  Bad masters were
mentioned with a curl of the lip, a scowl and a shake of the head, ending
with “He’s a bad ’un; my man shouldn’t work for him at any price, if I
could help it.”  Mrs. So-and-So, and Miss So-and-So were “snappy old
things,” “niggardly, mean, and miserable;” “nobody has a moment’s comfort
near them.”  “Oh!” said one, on the road, “did you see Miss Jenny Starch
on Sunday with her new bonnet on?  Didn’t she look mighty fine?  Wasn’t
she a stuck-up thing?  Nobody could come near her with a fork.”  “Did you
see,” said another, “the three poor little children running about the
streets this morning, almost naked, in rags and dirt?  The mother is
idle, and the father drinks.  They both want horsewhipping, and if I
could have my own way I would give it them.”  “Yes,” said another, “and
serve them right.”  “Did you see,” said another, “the Misses So-and-So in
church on Sunday?  They looked quite pretty.  When you can just catch
them in the right temper, they are so nice and pleasant.  What a thing
this money is, isn’t it?  Money buys fine feathers, and fine feathers
make fine birds.”  “Anybody can be made pretty, nowadays, if they have
only the money,” said a stout dame, who had a big red face under a little
bonnet, and must have weighed little short of eighteen stone.  We were
passed on the road by two “screwy” old maids from Bonnybrook, “trotting
off to market” in a green pony carriage, sitting like Jack and Jill, one
before and the other behind, bolt upright and as still as posts, looking
out of the corner of their eyes.  As we were mounting the hill going into
Daventry the question of “leaving” was brought upon the carpet, and it
came out that all of them were satisfied with their “old masters,” and
were going to “stop again at the old wages.”  I am afraid their “old
masters”—husbands—will have a little difficulty in getting rid of them.
They like the “old shop” too well to budge.  The process of riddance, “My
dear husband,” and a stream of tears would have to be faced before they
“cleared out.”

I had not been long in the “mop” before I was face to face with a
good-looking, but somewhat eccentric, and good-natured popgun owner,
named Mott, at one of the stalls.  One passage of Scripture after another
he repeated in rapid succession with breathless speech, until quite a
crowd gathered round us in the drizzling rain.  After my friend—who has
been on the road attending fairs for forty years—had finished his speech,
his wife handed to him a newspaper, out of which he read my letter as it
appeared in the _Daily News_, bearing date September 5th, 1882, which
will also be found in page 161.  The newspaper had been given to them by
a dirty, wretched, filthy-looking family of travelling show folks from
London, whose corns and consciences had been touched to the quick.  After
he had read it, and had given it to his wife again, I expected a “rather
hot reception,” especially after a paragraph which has been going the
round of a few of the papers, to the effect that I must look out for
trouble from “light and dark gentlemen.”  As the paper passed from his
hands I looked rather anxiously into his face to see what the effect
would be.  To my surprise, the index of his soul showed pleasure, and not
anger; and in unmistakable tones he said, “You are quite right, sir, and
I thank you for it.  It is rather warm, but your object is right—there is
no mistaking that.  I quite agree with your plans, and so does every
right-thinking man.  The traveller’s and other gipsy children ought to be
educated.  God bless you, sir, I know what religion is; I am an old
backslider.  I was once a leading member among the Baptists, but I
chipped out over a little thing, and now me and my old woman are
travelling the country in our van, and doing this sort of thing.  There
is one thing I should like to say, sir; I never creep into my bed in the
van without saying my prayers to my heavenly Father.  I feel to sleep
better after it.  It soothes me a little.”  Tears were making their way
down the grey-haired traveller’s face; and I think it would have been a
blessed thing for him if I could have introduced him into a Methodist
prayer-meeting, as a stepping stone that would lead him out and on to the
paths he trod in the days of yore, crying out from the depths of his
soul, in the language of a writer in the _Christian Life_ for October
14th, 1882—

    “Thou art a rock, to which I flee;
    With all my sins I come to Thee,
    And lay them down, Lord, at Thy feet,
    Before the shining mercy-seat.
    Thou art a fortress strong and high,
    To which for shelter all may fly,
    Sure there to find a safe retreat,
    Beneath the sacred mercy-seat.”

After shaking hands with this couple I bade them goodbye, and gave them
something to read during the dark hours of winter, something in which are
buried seeds of a bright spring-time for them both, if they will only
follow out the directions given.  I then strolled into the fair.  I had
not gone far before I came upon an old brickmaker, and from him I gleaned
some facts showing how wretchedly the Brickyard Act of 1871 is being
carried out.  After chatting with him for some minutes he apparently took
stock of my hair, which has, thank God, grown almost white in the cause
of suffering children.  Mr. Brickmaker turned quite poetical, and in
parting said—

    “Take stock, Mr. Knock,
    That’s what I have to say, Mr. Grey,”

and he then sidled and smiled away into the crowd.

I had not been long moving to and fro among the gipsies before I learned
that two gipsies, whose head-quarters were a few miles from Daventry,
were undergoing transportation, one for sheep-stealing, and the other for
horse-stealing.  The horse-stealing gipsy was caught in his own trap,
owing to his being too clever and daring.  It came about as follows: A
publican and farmer a few miles from here had a fine, beautiful, young
black horse, to which the gipsy took a fancy; and it so happened with
this gipsy, as with other gipsies of this class, that he had not too much
money to spare for purchasing purposes.  An old idea ran fresh through
his brain, which was, that he could with but little trouble make the
horse his own, without money and the bother and trouble of giving back
the “shilling for luck” on the completion of the purchase.  Accordingly
he sallied forth one dark night and took the beautiful animal out of the
field, not far from Daventry, and kept it “in close confinement” for
three days to undergo doctoring, at the end of which time the stolen
horse was quite a different looking animal.  The horse now had a white
star upon its forehead, and two white fetlocks.  Its tail and mane were
shortened, and, with the assistance of “ginger,” it put on quite a sharp,
frisky appearance.  In the meantime he heard that the owner of the horse
was much in want of one.  “Now,” thought the gipsy, “here’s a fine chance
for turning money over quickly, and getting rid of an animal that would
turn ‘a tell-tale’ if kept too long.”  Consequently the gipsy mounted his
steed, and off he trotted to the publican.  On arriving at the door he
called the innkeeper out to look at a horse that he had for sale, “good,
quiet in harness, sound in wind and limb, a good worker, without a
blemish, and cheap.”  The publican liked the looks of the horse very
much, and he asked the gipsy to trot him up and down the road; and off
the horse bounded, frisked, and danced about quite lively.  The action of
the horse was all that was desirable, and the price “right.”  In the end
the horse was sold, glasses round given, the “luck shilling” returned,
the horse was put into the stable, and the gipsy became scarce.

Three days after the “white star” and “white fetlocks” were not to be
seen, and the horse began to look “quite different.”

It was brought plainly home to the publican that he had bought back his
stolen horse.  The gipsy was “hunted up,” tried, and sentenced to a “long
term,” where horses are not to be had.

In the fair, or “mop,” there were eight vans, in which there would be
about sixteen men and women and thirty children living and sleeping; and,
so far as I could gather, only about four could read and write, and these
were adults, none of whom were teaching their children anything that
would be helpful to them in after life.

Connected with one of the “Aunt Sally” establishments there were man,
woman, and three little neglected children, with no other sleeping
accommodation than a “bottom” of straw spread under the stall, covered
with an old sheet, and warmed in the winter by an oil lamp.  The poor
woman was the picture of poverty, despair, degradation, and misery.
Their stall and “Aunt Sally” were pushed through the country on a small
“hand cart.”  The family hailed from Leicester, and were in a most
wretched, dirty, and ignorant condition.  As soon as I saw the man I
thought I could recognize his features as those of a _posh_ gipsy I had
seen before; and it turned out to be true, for he was no other than a
“fishman” who had more than once carried my fish to the station.

In the “mop” I came across a man and woman with four children who hailed
from a village a few miles from Daventry, and who had taken to gipsying
and were singing in the streets in the midst of mud and drenching rain—

    “Beautiful Zion, built above,
    Beautiful city that I love,
    Beautiful gates of pearly white,
    Beautiful temple, God its light.”

Three of these children were of school age, but could not read or write a
letter.

When I questioned the man about putting the children into the union
workhouse, and the wrong he was doing to them in bringing them up as
tramps, he said “he could not help that; they must look out for
themselves as they got bigger, and help to do a little for him.”  By
singing about the streets they got him some “baccer and a little
vittles.”  In 1882 at the “mop” I met with a showman, named S—, and his
wife and six children, living in a wretched tumbledown van; the small
windows were broken, and rags, dirt, and filth abounded in every nook and
corner.  The father had had a religious “bringing-up” by Christian
parents in Cornwall, and for many years earned a good living in Wales as
a miner, and was a member of a Christian Church.  The sharp, good-looking
woman, although dirty and dejected enough to banish looks and spirits to
the winds, waves, and realities of eternity, bore up fairly well under
the wretched surroundings.  She had, previous to her marriage, for many
years been a “lady’s maid” in a good “religious family,” and was well
educated.  The man was ingenious and clever, and had during his spare
moments and hours in Wales made the working model of a coal-mine, which,
at the instigation of “_religious friends_,” he began to exhibit in
public.  The success that attended him in the first instance led him to
think that he was on the high way to a fortune.  He acted upon the advice
of his “_Christian friend_” and others, instead of his own common sense,
and bought a van in which to place his handiwork, and “took to the road.”
A downhill one for himself and his large family it has been ever since,
and they are now gipsying, and cursing the day upon which he took and
followed the advice of a shortsighted—to say the least—“_Christian
friend_.”

In giving advice, God-fearing Christian men and women above all others
should look well ahead, and to all the surroundings of the case, before
deciding the fate of a family.  Advising a parent to break up a settled
home and comfortable livelihood to tramp the country among gipsy
vagabonds and tramps, I consider little less than murder.

In making their way one Sunday from a village to attend the “mop,” they
got stuck fast at the bottom of a hill with an old bony emaciated horse
that would not draw “a man’s hat off his head.”  The poor little children
dressed in dirt and rags, and scarcely able to toddle, had to set to work
to drag and carry the old boards, rags, and other things belonging to
their “show” to the top of the hill.  After hours of toil, interrupted by
the constant striking and chiming of church bells on the bright autumn
Sunday morning, they were able to make another move.

Their show consisted of the working model of the mine, one of their
youngest children, nearly naked, with a Scotch plaid over its shoulder
being exhibited as a “prize baby.”  In addition it included a boxing
establishment.  The man had not the build and stamina to lead the “ring,”
and they had to wait for the “millers” to pair themselves before a boxing
exhibition could take place.

They had not been in Daventry long before this backsliding showman, who
had taken to gipsying, was wanted by _Shórokno gáiro Garéngro_ for
cruelty to his horses.  The result was that he had to “do a month” in
Northampton gaol.  No doubt the poor misguided showman would feel in his
cell as John Harris puts it—

    “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 mineral.  Murther! save!
    What shall a sinner do?”

To which I would have answered—

          “Pray to thy God
    To help thee in thy trouble.”

A week or two after I saw the woman and her six children in a most
destitute condition.  I gave the poor little things a good tea and cake
in my house, and subscribed my mite towards buying them another horse,
and advised them to make their way to Aberdare, in Wales, and take to
mining again, to send their children to school, for none of them could
tell a letter, and they were growing up worse than heathens.

Their first venture at a showman’s life was to exhibit the model and
paintings, and they hired a donkey-cart and set off to Aberdare.  When
they got there the showman wrote to me, “I am sure you would have been
amused if you had been there to have seen us; for when we had our
establishment erected—which, by the way, was very small—we were too shy
at first to make an appearance outside; at last we made a resolution, and
began to shout.  So we found out after we had broken the ice that we were
landed.  On the first night we took enough to pay our month’s rent.  This
gave us encouragement.  We made a good many friends, and I became
notorious among my fellow workmen.  They thought me an extraordinary man.
In three years I painted in oil colours thirteen pictures, three feet
square, of the interior of a coal-mine and different other subjects. . .
.  The waxwork show owners we had accompanied left Wales for London.
Afterwards my wife went to Bristol and bought a barrel organ, and I had
what we thought a very nice little show, and a nice van and horse.  But
alas! we did not know what travelling in the winter meant.  We found very
soon that we could not show every night on account of the weather, and
also found that we could not get any credit.  If we had no money there
was no bread.  I shall never forget the first night we got ‘hard up.’
Dear sir, just fancy yourself going into a large town about eight o’clock
at night, and the rain coming down in torrents in the cold January month;
the houses shining with wet, and a horse to be fed and stabled—for we
kept it in a stable then—and six children to get a supper for, let alone
yourself, and not a penny in your pocket, and not a friend in the world
to speak to or to give you counsel.  Well, that is just how we were
situated in the first January that we travelled.  Dear sir, perhaps you
would say, ‘Why did you not make for your home?’  That would have been
the wisest plan, but we thought we would endure anything rather than go
back to be laughed at.  Well, after my good wife had had a good cry, we
went to the pawnbroker’s and pledged my watch, thinking that we should be
able to redeem it again in a few weeks.  We borrowed fifteen shillings,
so that with opening the show we could be helped on for a few weeks,
instead of which we met with a worse misfortune than ever.  We lost our
horse at Pontypool.  We pledged our organ for £2, and then trailed our
van to Swansea for Llanefni fair, thinking we should get money enough to
buy another.  More next week.  The children all send their love to you,
wishing you a merry Christmas.”

This man was at one time earning nearly £2 per week, and had a good home.
It will be found on close inquiry that nearly all our present-day showmen
have been in better circumstances, and rather than be laughed at for
their silly adventures by their friends, they are content to wander up
and down the world little better than vagabonds, and to train their
children for a tramp’s life.  By travelling in vans, carts, and tents
they escape the school boards, sanitary officers, rent and rate
collectors; and to-day they are—unthinkingly, no doubt—undermining all
our social privileges, civil rights, and religious advantages, and will,
if encouraged by us, bring decay to the roots.  I speak that which I do
know, from what I have seen and heard.

I had heard of a gipsy Smith who had settled down, and was now residing
in one of the “courts” of Daventry.  I hunted him up, and found him in a
little cottage residing by himself.  The cottage was nice and clean.
When I went in I was invited to sit upon a chair.  The old gipsy had just
come home with some work.  He was lighting the fire, and I said to him,
“I suppose you could do very well with a _Hotchi-witchi_ just now, could
you not, Mr. Smith?”  The old man turned up his bronzed face, and with a
laugh said, “I just could, my dear good gentleman.  I was looking for one
this morning, but could not find one.”  I said, “Could you do with a
_Kanéngro_?”  The old man replied, “I could if I had one; but I never
goes after them now.  I don’t much care for them.  I would rather have
_Hotchi-witchi_.”  After a general conversation for a few minutes, I
said, “How long have you given up travelling?”  He replied, “Nearly
thirty years.  I like it better now.”  “How long have you lived by
yourself?”  The old man’s lips began to pucker and tears came into his
eyes.  After wiping his face, he said falteringly, “It is nearly four
years since I lost my dear good bedfellow.  We had lived together over
forty years.  She was a good creature, and I mean to meet her in heaven,
bless the Lord.  I’ve been a bad one in my time, but I’ve given up all
bad ways, and have attended the Wesleyan chapel and the Salvation Army
nearly two years, bless the Lord; it was the best day’s work that ever I
did when I found Him.”  The old gipsy now gave me a little of his
history.  “My grandfather was a Welsh gipsy, and used to attend
Northampton and Daventry market and fairs with horses and ponies, and in
course of time my father and grandfather began to travel round the
midland counties and the Staffordshire Potteries.  I was born under the
hedge in Gayton Lane, between Kingsthorpe and Boughton Green.  The
gipsy’s lot is a hard one, I can assure you, my good gentleman.  I’ve
seen a deal in my time.  I attended Boughton Green fair for thirty years,
and for eighteen years of this time in succession I never knew two of my
cousins to leave the fair without fighting.  I’ve seen murder upon the
‘Green’ more than once.  It will never be known in this world how many
murders have been committed upon the ‘Green.’  There has been some
fearful bloodshed and rows done, I can assure you.  The gipsies are very
vengeful and spiteful, if they ever take it in their heads to be so.  Two
of my cousins, D— and N—, quarrelled, when they were children down
‘Spectacle Lane,’ over a few sticks.

“They parted, and never met each other again for twenty years, and then
it was at a Boughton Green fair.  When the fair was over they went into a
field to have their old grievance out in blows.  They had not been
fighting long before D— was put senseless upon the ground.  N— went to
his tent, and after a few minutes I followed him, and said to my cousin,
‘N—, you have killed D—; you had better be off.’  He went then and there,
and has never been took.  We buried my cousin, and the day I shall never
forget.  It was a day, I can assure you.  I don’t know where my cousin is
now, but I have seen him lots of times since then.  The past is a blank,
but I mean to get to heaven to meet my dear good old creature.  I wish I
could read; what a great pity it is that none of us poor gipsies can
read.  Bless the Lord, although I cannot read I prize the Bible, God’s
book; it’s the best book in the world.”  The old man now took down a
small pocket Bible off his kitchen shelf, and clasped it to his breast
and said, “Although I cannot read I puts it in my chair when I says my
prayers, and the dear Lord blesses it to my soul and makes me feel
happy.”

After partaking of a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter in the
humble “British Workman” in High Street, I made my way to the Byfield
carrier, Mr. W—, to secure my “berth” in his cart, which was pretty
closely packed with groceries, servants’ boxes and trunks, nails, balms,
and paraffin, “chaps,” girls, and their mothers.  There seemed to be no
“cousins” in our party.  I was pretty well wet through from head to foot,
and it was perhaps fortunate that we were closely packed, as by which
means I was, in all probability, prevented taking a severe cold.  At a
jog-trot rate we began to move out of Daventry at the heels of a grey
horse, whose sides stuck out with fatness and with a “coat” as sleek as a
mole.  Mr. W— looked well to his steed, while Mrs. W— chatted, joked, and
chaffed with her company inside.  Up hills and down dales lay our course.
Parsons and squires, as usual, were the theme, in the first instance, for
conversation and gossip.  The Rev. Mr. So-and-So was a very good man in
the pulpit but a bad one out of it, and a worse landlord.  And they began
to enumerate cases of hardship inflicted by him.  I must confess that I
should not like to be a clergyman with a large family in a small poor
parish with a small stipend, and with “charity money” to deal out to a
number of dissatisfied, idle, grumbling poor people.  A clergyman
nowadays has to mix up with the grand and fashionable, to visit the poor,
dispense charity with smiles, write any number of letters for the
parishioners, assist the sexton, take a lead in the choir, preach his own
sermons, superintend the bell-ringers, keep the parish accounts, blow up
the roadmen, visit “new comers,” allay scandal, hush gossip, settle
squabbles, be liberal, stand insults, know everybody’s business, and know
nobody’s business.  Must not pay too much attention to young ladies for
fear of trouble at home.  He must be handsome, lovely, and charming, with
a rich melodious voice; hide the faults of evil-doers occupying big pews,
lecture evil-doers in little pews; never enter a “dissenting” chapel,
give Methodists the “cold shoulder” privately, fraternize with them
publicly; take wine with the rich, be teetotal among the poor; give the
“tip-top” price for his goods; and above all things, and under all
circumstances, the parson must never look cross.  If at any time he feels
angry he must “keep it to himself inwardly and never show it.”  These are
the qualifications for a minister of the gospel according to the ideas
and motives of Church dwarfs and Sunday saints.

Parsons were now dispensed with, and darkness was creeping over us as we
passed by Sir Charles Knightly, Baronet’s, beautiful estate at Fawsly.
The next leading topic of our dames and damsels was, as might be
expected, the appearance of certain ladies at the usual maidenhood ages.
We had not gone far before I knew most of the ages of the “young” dames
in the cart, who were much surprised to find that I was younger than they
were.  “Lor bless me!” said one, “there is no accounting for looks
nowadays, for I was talking to a lady the other day, and telling her how
young she looked, and that I wished I had as good a black head of hair as
she had; but lor and behold you, when I went home with her, I found out
that the black hair was a wig, and her own hair was as white as mine.  I
never was more astonished and surprised in all my life.  I could not help
but stare at her, she did not look like the same woman, Mrs. W—; I should
not have known her if I had not known her so well, and what had made the
change.  Since then I have guessed but little at women’s ages.”  We now
pulled up to allow one or two of our party to get out.  Our legs had been
so crushed and mixed up with each other’s that we were almost left in
doubt as to whose legs we were standing upon, Mrs. W— naïvely remarking,
as the young damsels were stepping down, “Now mind and see that you got
out upon your own legs; don’t run away with some one else’s.”

We were now seated, and off we began to jog again.  We had not got far
before the company began to ask each other if they were “saved.”  The
word “saved” is a word well known to me from childhood, and at its sound
I pricked up my ears, and began to ask questions about it.  And the
answers I received were as follows: “Why, bless you, dear sir, have you
not heard of the great stir that has been going on among the children
connected with the Methodist and Congregational chapels in Byfield?  We
are woke up at eleven o’clock at night by the children singing about the
streets Moody and Sankey’s and Salvation hymns—

    “‘Only an armour-bearer, firmly I stand,
    Waiting to follow at the King’s command,’ &c.

    “‘I love to tell the story
    Of unseen things above,’ &c.

    “‘Who are these beside the chilly wave,
    Just on the borders of the silent grave?’ &c.—

and away they go all round the village disturbing everybody.  The young
things ought to be in bed.  The girls have got so excited that they go
about shouting and singing in the daytime.  One girl I knew went into the
garden to get some cabbages, and while she was getting them up, the devil
came to her, and told her that she was not ‘saved,’ and the girl knelt
down in the middle of the garden at dinner-time, and there and then began
to pray, cry, sing, and shout.  After a time she jumped up and said she
was saved.  ‘Then,’ said the girl, ‘Master Devil, I am saved.’  Another
girl went into the garden to get some potatoes, and the good, or some
other spirit, came to her, and said that unless she was saved all the
potatoes in the garden would go rotten.  She there and then stuck the
fork into the ground, and began to pray to God to save her.  She had not
prayed long before she got up and shouted out, ‘I am saved! bless the
Lord!’”

I asked how all this was brought about, and the answer I got was, that
“The children began to sing in the streets some hymns, and to hold
children’s prayer-meetings, under the direction of nobody but themselves;
and the movement began to spread about, and bigger folks attended the
meetings, and now the place is almost in an uproar; everybody is asking
each other, or nearly so, if they are saved.”—I kept putting in a word
for the children, bless their little hearts!—“Tea-meetings and
prayer-meetings are held, the chapels are filled, and it is all through
the children.  I don’t like so much shouting and going on in this way.”
I hope the good work is still going on, notwithstanding the old woman’s
cold water.

It was now pitch dark, and we were winding our way down the narrow lanes
in Byfield to the carrier’s home, with whom and his good wife I was to
stay for the night, where we arrived “safe and sound,” but cold and damp.

On the hearth there were six beautiful cats, named after her husband’s
friends.  A month before this they had eight cats; and Mrs. W— says next
year she hopes to keep a dozen.  The big-hearted, genial woman is an
ardent admirer of animals.  She said she never had but one valentine in
her life, inside of which were pictures of cats, dogs, rabbits, and
birds; and it was addressed to her as “Mrs. W—, Cat and Dog Fancier.”

After a good warming and an excellent supper, “the good woman of the
house,” Mrs. W—, began to tell me a little of their family history, while
her good husband was seeing to his horses, which were petted like
children.  My hostess related her story as follows: “My father lived to
be ninety-four years of age, and my mother died last August at the age of
ninety-two.  I have had fifteen brothers and sisters, all of whom are
dead but three.  I have not been out of mourning for sixteen years.”  She
now fetched the photographs, walking-sticks, and other things of her
parents, for me to look at, and then continued her sorrowful story.  “My
mother,” she said, “was a great sufferer for some years, but she bore it
all so meekly.  She never murmured once during her illness, and was
always talking about heaven.  Once she said to me, ‘Why don’t you kiss
your father?  He is in the room and wants to shake hands with you; why
don’t you kiss him?’  Just before she died she called me to her and said,
‘I am going to die, my child.  I am going to your father.’  And then she
said, faintly, ‘“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.”  “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”
My girl, trust in Jesus.  Come a little nearer to me.’  And she then
whispered in my ear, ‘Meet me in heaven,’ and passed away like a child
going to sleep.”

    “What is this that steals upon my frame?
          Is it death?  Is it death?”

Tears were now forcing their way down the good woman’s face, and in the
midst of sobs and sighs a tremulousness was manifest, and she quietly
stole upstairs to pray, and to ask Jesus to dry her tears.

After she had left me I was upon the hearthstone alone.  The ring-dove,
nineteen years old, perched in its cage by the fireside, began to
“coo—coo—coo;” the cats began to “pur—pur—pur;” the dog to snore; the
kettle to sing; and the lamp shed a cheerful light upon the whole.  I
stole away to rest my weary bones upon a snowy-white feather bed, and
under an extra lot of blankets and fine linen sheets.  How different, I
thought, as I wandered into dreamland, from the lot of the poor gipsy
child, whose sheets are old rags, and whose feathers are damp and almost
rotten straw, with mother earth for a bedstead, and the canopy of heaven
for curtains.

At seven o’clock I turned out and got my breakfast, and with the morning
dawn and a lovely sun shining in my face, I took a stroll through the
ancient village to stare at the loitering villagers, gaze at the thatched
roofs, eye over the tradesmen, to peep at a very ancient, curious,
antiquated stone upon the green, which the roots of a huge tree were
toppling over, enjoy the feast of some beautiful scenery, and make some
inquiries about the empty house pleasantly situated in the village.  I
paid my bill—two shillings—and gave the little servant and mine hostess
some picture-cards and little books, and then seated myself in the
carrier’s cart to be drawn round the village before we trotted off to
Banbury fair.  Out in the way, the nurse-girls, mothers, and children
shrieked out with laughter as they tossed upon their knees the
round-faced, chubby, live, kicking, squeaking balls of love, embodiments
of pleasure and trouble, singing and shouting—

    “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
    To see a fine lady get on a white horse,
    With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
    And she shall have music wherever she goes.”

On the way and in carts there were crowds of human beings, pretty and
plain, big and little, tall and thin, short and stout, some dressed in
silks and black cloth, some in rags and tatters; some were smiling all
over their faces, and others looked as cross and sour as if they lived on
nothing but vinegar and crabs and slept on thorns and thistles.  Lovers
and haters, pleasure-seekers and thieves, labourers, farmers, tradesmen,
and gentlemen, were hurrying helter-skelter to Banbury fair.  Some were
crying, some were laughing, some were shouting, roaring, puffing, and
panting; others were in carriages, with liveried servants as attendants;
some were on horseback and donkeyback; others were in horse-carts,
donkey-carts, and waggons; and among the number there was a little thin
man of sixty winters, standing about two feet six high with his boots on,
and by his side was his wife, about five feet high, stout, plump, and
about thirty years old.  I should not be surprised to hear that she had
“not agreed to stop again.”  She was well able to carry him on her back,
as gipsies do their children, instead of which she looked down upon him
and allowed him to trudge along in the mud and rain.  She had no love for
the little fellow, or she would have carried him in her arms; in fact,
she seemed inclined to walk on the other side of the road.

In the throng and crush we arrived at Banbury.  I paid my fare—all the
way from Daventry, one shilling and sixpence—shook hands with my kind
friends, and made my way into the crowd of sightseers, gipsies,
mendicants, tramps, the fashionable, and the gay.

The first gipsy I met with was an old friend, “Righteous Smith”—which
name was printed on the van—and his large family, at a cocoa-nut
establishment.  One of the daughters, dressed in lively colours, was in
charge of the balls, and shouting out to the “chaps” as they passed
forward, “Try your luck, gentlemen!” and the father shouted out, “Now,
gentlemen, bowl away! all bad nuts returned.”  In response to their
bewitching entreaties some old cricketers tried their hand, and, much to
the chagrin of “Righteous Smith,” they sent the nuts “spinning away”
rather more freely than was profitable and pleasant for “Righteous,” to
the extent of putting his good name in the shade.  This family of gipsies
have, I should think, about three parts of Romany blood in their veins.
Their van was a good one, and beautifully clean, and will pass muster
when the new order of things comes about, for which I am working night
and day, and which, I am thankful to say, is casting its shadows before
it.  The eight cocoa-nut establishments were owned by cross-bred
Romanies, and one or two of the families lived in vans fairly clean.
There were over thirty families living in the vans attending the fair, in
which there would be an average of three children, one man, and one woman
in each van.  In five of the vans there were two men and two women in
each.  A number of those who owned small short shooting galleries and
“rock stalls” slept with their children under the stalls.

From this cocoa-nut going “concern” I strolled among the shows, bosh,
nonsense, and cheap Jacks.  The introduction to one of the sparring
establishments was by an old woman screaming out, “We are just going to
begin.”  By her side was a dandily dressed and painted doll, setting
herself off to the best advantage.  On some steps between the two women
there stood a man painted as a fool, and dressed in tight indecent
sparring costume.  “Darkey,” with his pug nose, short hair, low narrow
forehead, high cheekbones, deep sunken eyes, glistening fire like a black
glass bead in the centre of a white china button under the glare of a
lamp, which he frequently turned sharply, quickly, and inquisitively to
me as if anxious to know my movements.  If he had been an uncaught thief,
and conscience was telling him that I was a detective, he could not have
eyed me over more quickly and closely than he did.

_Gentlemen_ with diamond rings, poachers, and blackguards formed the
company.  A ring was formed, and “Darkey” and a “Johnny Straw” set to
work with their gloves “milling” each other, and just as their “savage”
was getting up, the curtain to outsiders was drawn.  How long the big and
little fools kept at the “milling” process I did not stay to see.  What
fools there are passing through the world as gentlemen, to be sure, to
witness such debasing exhibitions with “pure frolic” and laughter, while
their money is being drawn out of their pocket imperceptibly by idle
vagabonds.

Not far from this “boxing establishment” there was another “set-out”
waiting for a second dose of fools, with a “champion boxer” as a “draw.”
Money went freely into the coffers, while the owners of stalls upon which
useful articles were exposed for sale “had a bad time of it;” even the
celebrated “Banbury cake” was “a drug in the market.”

Over the door, as a sign at one of the shows belonging to Mr. Great
Frederick Little, where a nude man was exhibiting himself—“girls and
ladies not allowed to enter”—stood two calves’ heads over a skeleton, and
what surprised me most was that the good Banbury folks and country
Johnnies could not see the satire that was being played upon them.
“Calves and bones” for a sign; and I think, judging from the dejected
appearance of the people as they came out of the establishment, they felt
like “calves and bones” themselves; at any rate they did not look any the
wiser—certainly they looked sadder.

Turning from this concern, I was jostled into a crowd of folks to witness
a man named Turnover Snuff, Esq., dressed in best blue cloth, with gold
watches, guards, and rings, making fools of two well-dressed innocent
youths, whom he had called up from the crowd and dressed in rags to eat
buns for a prize, to be used as a “draw,” to enable him to pass off his
showy goods under various colours, dodges, and pretexts.  While the
youths were forcing the buns down their throats he was cracking jokes,
which the people, with their mouths open, swallowed as gospel.  What this
“Cheap Jack” said in action, if not in words, was, “Now, ladies and
gentlemen, you see that these two youths have come up here at my bidding,
to make fools of themselves, and to eat these buns I am forcing down
their throats, to cause you to twitter and laugh with your eyes shut to
the things that are to follow; so in like manner I want all of you to
shut your eyes and open your mouths to receive all the lies I want to
force down your throats, that I may extract the coin from your pockets
for my ‘Cheap Jack’ articles; so we will now proceed to business, ladies
and gentlemen.”

There were one or two exhibitions in the fair of a good genuine
character, and the rest were “rubbish,” of which it might be said of the
performers, as a writer in the _Sword and Trowel_ for 1876 says:

    “See, I am as black as night;
    See, I am darkness, dark as hell.”