By listening attentively to the prayers of a Christian, you will soon discover whether he wants—like a run-down clock—winding up. Losses and crosses, the death of a darling child, affliction, and a thousand other things, God useth as He seemeth well to wind him up and set him a-going again with fresh vigour.
A man who has a heart full of prejudice, spite, malice, and envy has an extra eye upon his nose, eclipsing his other eyes, which can both smell and see the dark side of a man’s character. So sensitive is this nose-eye that it can detect faults and failings when there are none to be detected.
The most lovely Christians are those who, like the beautiful butterfly and charming songsters, live in the sunlight of His throne.
The more miserable Christians are those who, like bats, buzz about in the dark.
Some Christians are like London dogs galloping about the streets after froth, losing their masters, and then they howl out, “Oh that I knew where I might find him!”
When the benevolent action of drawing-room philanthropy ends in nothing but tall talk and carpet gossip, it may be compared to soap bubbles piped forth for show.
Youths receiving their habits, nourishment, character, and stamina from the pothouse and gin-palace may be compared to plants grown in a room lighted and warmed with gas, which sicken and die.
Artificial Christians are like wax flowers, pretty to look upon; but without scent and perfume, difficult to handle, and they will not stand the fire.
Society is like a book of poems, and those members with the most sentiment, poetry, or sympathy in their natures will be the most sought after, prized, and used.
To a man who has done wrong, and has a troubled conscience, a louse upon the window pane appears as an ugly monster.
Conscience is the soul’s looking-glass, and blessed is the man who has courage to hold it up to behold what manner of man he is.
A sick room is often God’s pinfold, where He places in naughty wandering children; and there they will lie until either our blessed Saviour unlocks the gate or takes them over the top of the walls to heaven.
Authors and their books are like flowers: some are small, but send out a rich fragrance, and may be used as button-holes in the drawing-room; others are lovely to look upon, but as sour as crabs to handle and taste. There are others as large and showy as the sunflower, with a perfume anything but paradisical; and there are others with heavenly virtues running through themselves and their books to such an extent that a child will have no difficulty in gathering sufficient flowers to form a beautiful bouquet; and not a few in this our day are actually poisonous, and dangerous to meddle with.
Strong conviction, the offspring of thought and reflection, is the handmaid of inspiration, and the agent through which this heavenly soul-impelling power works out the Divine ends and decrees of Providence in carrying on the affairs of the world; and those who are heavenly inspired by means of the golden cord of love and sympathy, in full action between themselves and God, may be said to be His cabinet ministers.
The food eaten by an idle man warps his body, stunts his mind, and sends his soul to ruin.
An oak tree, or any other tree which stands the storms with defiance, are those whose roots have hold of mother earth with the firmest grip; and as in nature so in grace. A man to withstand all the storms of life must have firm hold upon the Deity.
A crooked tree may be said to be faulty; and it is neither so valuable nor beautiful as those that are straight and stately; so in like manner it may be said of the crooked members of Christian churches and social societies.
Some members of the community may he properly called “creepers,” for they very much resemble the ivy. They have neither backbone nor principle. Their object is to creep into religious communities and social societies, so as to entwine themselves round the members. They harbour filth, impede growth, hide beauty, and climb by the strength they steal from others.
A church whose members are tipsters may be compared to a marsh with too much water at the roots, bringing forth rushes, sedges, and buttercups.
Upon the tail of a snail a farmer’s weather glass is to be seen; so in like manner the footsteps of an enemy will reveal to an observing mind the dangers to be avoided.
Some Christian ministers are like the gas stove, warm-looking in the pulpit, but cold at home.
A man with all sorts of wrong ideas, crotchets, and queer notions in his head exhibits himself as a marsh with spots of green grass and daisies, to get at which mud and quagmire will have to be faced and got through before they are reached, and when this has been done the trouble will have been wasted.
Selfish men and misers engaged in grubbing after mammon may be compared to a swarm of flies feeding upon a dung-heap; and so long as the sun of prosperity shines they can feed, buzz, annoy, and sting.
A man who kisses his wife to hide his sins is sowing seeds that will produce a crop of anguish and despair that will hang heavier round his neck than a millstone. A kissing deceiver is the devil’s major-general.
Every time a man or woman does a deceitful action they make and deposit a grain of gunpowder, that only requires the light of public opinion and truth to send the maker, according to the number of grains deposited, into eternity to reap his folly.
Hungry-bellied politicians, whose object is to sting in order to feed, are the gadflies of English society, settling upon John Bull to fill their pockets and rob for fame.
Paupers and lawyers are leeches which fasten upon social life, often sucking the blood of those who are the least able to stand them.
A wife who cooks her husband’s meals five minutes behind time is carving furrows upon his forehead.
A mother who sends her children unwashed to school is embedding in the child’s nature seeds that will one day bring a crop of poverty, wretchedness, and despair.
A man who sits playing with his thumbs, hoping that something will turn up to put him upon the pedestal of fame and fortune, is hatching addled eggs, and the longer he sits upon them the worse they will stink.
Infidelity is a thick, muddy canal made by men’s hands, the bosom of which is covered with the weeds of idiosyncrasies and Satanic doubts; and beneath its surface it teems with all kinds of big and little, prickly, dead, and dying venomous reptiles; and woe be to the man who trusts his barque upon its stinking and putrefying surface with the hope that it will carry him to the crystal river and sea of glass.
Something of the wonderful infinitude, love, and power of God, in regulating and governing the external and internal relation of myriads upon myriads of millions of worlds teeming with life, variety, and beauty, may be gathered if we can grasp the idea that the separate particles of the rays of light sent forth by the sun to illumine our world each morning are, after they have done their work, whirled into unknown and unbounded space, and transformed as they fly, at a rate faster than imagination can travel, into suns to light up other worlds and other systems. And yet He finds time to number the hairs upon our heads; yea, a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice. Wonderful! most wonderful! Past comprehension. None can fathom.
As the twelve precious stones—jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and an amethyst formed the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, the future home of His saints, with pearly gates, as seen by John the divine in apostolic days; so do hopeful, believing, fighting, wrestling, joyous, singing, patient, benevolent, praying, working, and conquering Christians form the foundation of the present-day heavenly temple, with love and concord as doors, and walls of virtue, wherein God delights to dwell among His children, witnessing adoration with loving eyes, and listening to hymns of praise and thanksgiving with melodious ears.
A man may be said to be in a fog when he cannot see the hand of Providence in all his dealings, or God’s finger pointing out his way.
A closet is a burrow into which a Christian who is hounded to death by the dogs of hell can run and be safe. When once there, Christians can smile at their howls and sing while they show their teeth with rage.
At seven o’clock I was unbolting the door, making my way out of the house to a number of gipsy vans in an orchard on the outskirts of the town. On going to the place I met a little posh gipsy dressed in “rags and trashes,” with the heels—what was left of the “trashes”—upside down. He had just turned out of his bed, he said, and from his bed followed the dog, both having snoozled under the van—in which his uncle and aunt lay—on the ground, with a wet, damp rug as a covering. “Master,” said the little posh gipsy boy, “can you tell me where I can get a bottle of ginger beer? I am so thirsty and hungry. I’ve had nothing since my dinner yesterday.” I went with the boy to several houses where “Ginger-beer sold here” was displayed in the window, but without success. I gave the boy the price of a bottle and trotted him off lower down the town to quench his thirst and satisfy his appetite.
The gipsies were just beginning to “turn out,” and the little gipsies, half naked, were hunting up sticks out of the hedge-bottom to light the fire to boil the water for breakfast. The men and dogs were collecting together in groups, half-dressed, to relate to each other their successes at the fair. Apart from the rest of the gipsies, owning a van of a better kind than the others, two old gipsies were enjoying their breakfast upon the ground. As soon as the old gipsy woman—whose face betokened that it had figured in many an encounter, and was somewhat highly coloured—saw me, she began to get excited, and called me to them. I thought, “Now is the time for squalls; look out.” I drew near to the old woman with a strange mixture of feelings. It was early in the morning. There were now about a score of gipsy men and women looking on, and a few of the dogs came sniffing at my heels. I tried to screw a smile upon my face, and to dig and delve low for a pleasant joke, but it would not come from the “vasty deep.” On my approach the old woman jumped up from the ground, and with both hands clasped mine in hers, which felt as rough as a navvy’s, saying while griping them tightly, “Bless yer, my good mon, I’ve wanted to see yer for a long while. I’ve long ’erd abaut yer, and ha’ never had th’ pleasure o’ puttin’ my een on yer till this mornin’. Sit yer down on th’ gress, I want to tawke to yer. Dunner yer be freetened, I’m not goin’ to swaller yer, bless yer, master mon. Yer’ll ha’ sum brekust, wonner yer?” “Yes,” I said, “I did not mind.” Although I did not exactly like the appearance of things, I thought it would not do to say “no,” and I knelt upon the damp grass. In a pan over their fiery embers were the remnants of bacon and red herrings. There was only one large cup and saucer, without a handle, for the pair of them. I thought most surely she would fetch a cup and saucer out of the van for me. Such was not to be the case. A group of some ten or twelve working men of Hinckley stood looking over the hedge only a few yards away, at the old woman’s “megrims.” She handed me in the first place a piece of bread, upon which was some bacon and herring. It took me all the time to swallow this uninviting morsel. I munched a little of it, and some I put into my pocket for another time. She now filled up her cup with tea, and made her fingers do duty for sugar tongs. I could see no teaspoons about, except one that was among the herrings and bacon. This was fetched out and plunged into the tea, and round and round it went, leaving upon the top of the dark-coloured tea—which I could now see by the bright morning sun shining upon the scene—stars floating about. The old woman first drank herself, and then handed the cup of tea to me. I supped and nibbled the crust. I supped again, till between us the cup was nearly emptied. She had a strong scent of “Black Jack,” and I kept a very sharp eye upon what parts of the cup the old woman drank from. “Now then to bisness,” said the old gipsy. “Yer see none o’ we gipsies con read an’ write. I’ll show yer I con, if none o’ them conner. Han yer got anythin’ wi yer for me to read?” I had a few copies of “Our Boys and Girls,” with me, given to me by the Wesleyan Sunday School Union, and I handed one to the old woman, dated September 1880, and she began stammering at some of the verses in an excited frame of mind between anger and pleasure, as if determined to read them whether she could or not. “Ha—ha—ha,—Haste traveller—ha—ha,—haste! the night comes on.” She got through one or two of the verses pretty well. I then gave her another verse, which she read fairly well:
“He is our best and kindest Friend,
And guards us night and day.”
I gave her another verse, but I could see tears in her eyes, which prevented her getting through it as well as she desired. She laid the fault to her being without spectacles. Her reading these lines touched her very much, and she became quite excited again, and jumped up and clutched hold of both of my hands and said, “Yer see, my good mon, if none o’ the t’other gipsies con read, I con, conner I? But I con do more than read, I con say a lot o’ the Bible off by heart. The Creeds, Church Catechism, Belief, and Sacraments, which I larnt by heart when I was a girl. I went to the Church Sunday School at Uttoxeter. Yer’ll see by that I have not allus been a gipsy. When I got married to my old mon I had to go a-gipsying wi’ him, and have never been in th’ church since. My name’s Bedman, of ‘Ucheter,’ and am well known.”
She knelt upon the grass again, and supped a little more of her strong tea. The number of Hinckley working people and gipsies was increasing, and up she jumped again, clutching both of my hands, after which she laid her hand in navvy fashion upon my shoulder, and began to repeat the Creed: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God,” and on she went to the end in her fashion. After this she knelt down again and began with the Decalogue; “God spake these words and said, I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have none other gods but me,” and with a red face, and tears in her eyes, trembling with emotion, she sung in the usual chanting tone, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” The old gipsy woman went on to the end, to which I responded, “Amen.” Some portions of the Litany were repeated, and then she struck off at a tangent into the Catechism, commencing with “What is your name? May Bedman. Who gave you that name? My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. What did your godfathers and godmothers then for you? They did promise and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life;” and then she sung out, “Amen.” “Ah!” said the old woman, “you see, my good master mon, I know a little, don’t I?” “Yes,” I said, “you know a little, and he that knoweth his Master’s will, and doeth it not, ‘shall be beaten with many stripes.’” “Yes,” said the old gipsy, “I do know my Master’s will, and I have not done it, and I’ve been beaten with many stripes during the last forty years, and here I am. Never mind, let bygones be bygones. ‘Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.’” And I replied, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “Yes, you are right, bless you,” said the old backsliding gipsy, and with wet knees and wet eyes she sang out again, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law,” to which I responded, “Amen.” I then left this penitent gipsy’s strong grips, the gipsy gang, and the number of lookers-on to go to my “quarters” for my breakfast. I then spent another half-hour with the Salvation Army. After a pleasant conversation with the clergyman at my lodgings, I started homeward, and on my way to the station I came upon one of my old gipsy families, who were just having their breakfast in a very filthy, tumbledown van, with their six poor ragged, dirty little children squatting about on the bottom of it. The good-hearted posh gipsy woman seemed to have lost all spirit in her struggles to live a respectable traveller’s life, and was now with her children in the depths of despair and poverty. She would insist on my having a cup of tea as I sat upon the doorstep. I could not drink all of it, but did the best I could under the circumstances. She persisted in pressing me to take a cocoa-nut and a sponge for my little folk at home, the cocoa-nut to eat and the sponge to clean their slates with.
It is from two adjoining villages in the neighbourhood of Hinckley that two of our present-day English tribes of gipsies spring. Many years ago the father of one tribe was a “stockinger”—i.e., one who makes stockings—and he conceived the idea that he would like to be a gipsy. Accordingly he set up a pedlar’s “basket of trifles” and began to stump the country. From this small beginning there are now between forty and fifty “real gipsies,” as some backwood gipsy writers—who would delight in seeing this country dragged backward into Druidism as a retaliation for their own failure in the battle of life—would call them. Poor little-souled mortals! they are to be pitied, or my feeling of disgust at their wrong-doing would lead me to say hard things about them. To be laughed out of school is a start bad enough in the wrong road in all conscience, without a severe probe from me. My pleasure would be to put out the hand to lead wrong-doers back to the wise counsel of a loving Christian father, the decalogue, and the teaching of Christ.
The success of the first gipsies in their “rounds” led the second lot to take up the “profession,” and to-day we have two full-blown tribes of English gipsies in full swing, tramping the country in vans, carts, surrounded in many instances with dogs, dirt, wretchedness, and misery. Sometimes they will be fraternizing with kisses, and other times they will be quarrelling and fighting with each other to the extent of almost “eating each other’s heads off.” In these two families there will be close upon one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, and not more than three or four out of the whole able to read and write a sentence. It is truly heartrending to contemplate the amount of evil that has been done in the country by these two families of artificially-trained gipsies. Thank God, some of them are beginning to see the error of their ways.
I bade the Hinckley gipsies good-bye, and having dined off a slice of bread-and-butter fetched out of the corner of my bag, at Nuneaton station, I made my way homeward. As I was mounting the last hill on this bright, lovely Christian Sabbath day the church bells were pealing forth—
“Come to church and pray
On this blessed day.”
Mr. George Burden, the Leicester poet, author of “The Months,” had heard something of the cry of the gipsy children when he was prompted to send me the following touching little poem:—
“THE GIPSY CHILDREN.
“From the remotest ages,
From many a lovely lane,
The cry of gipsy children
To heaven hath risen in vain.“Chorus. Then rescue gipsy children,
Who roam our country lanes.
Break off their moral thraldom,
That keeps each life in chains.“Through many a bitter hardship
Their little lives have passed;
Round them the robes of kindness
As yet have ne’er been cast.“From city, town, and village
They wander wild and free,
Too long despised, forsaken,
Amid their revelry.“No influence pure and heavenly
Protects them night and day;
Nor wise and blest instruction
To help them on their way.“From vice and shame and ruin,
That taint their early youth,
Ye English hearts deliver—
Shield them with love and truth.“One hastens to their rescue
With earnest heart and will;
God bless the noble mission
Of George Smith of Coalville!”
During the Sunday night after my visit to Hinckley I more than once thought that I was about to enter the great unknown and unseen world of Tátto paáni (spirits) from whence no choórodo (tramp) returns.
After partaking of a light breakfast of the kind Midúvelesko (Christ) and mongaméngro (beggars) eat, with my Romeni (wife), Racklé (sons), and Raklia (girls) at our plain-fare misáli (table), I began with some of “our boys and girls” to wend my way through poous (fields) and by-lanes and over rippling streams to Long Buckby. I had not got far down one of the lanes before I came upon a scissors-grinder (posh) gipsy, who, together with his joovel (woman) and their six nongo-peeró chiklo chavis (barefooted dirty children), were beshing (sitting) upon chiklo drom rig (muddy roadside) rokering (talking), chingaren (quarrelling), sovenholben (swearing), and eating their shooker manro (dry bread) for breakfast and paáni (water) out of the rippling stream for múterimongri (tea). Their yogoméskro (fireplace) was upon the chik (ground); their kair (house) was a barrow covered with rags. Although belonging to Anghitérra (England), and priding themselves on being Gaújokones (English), not one of the eight men, women, and children could tell a letter. Shóshi (rabbits) were not to be seen, and kanegrós (hares) were out of sight, where they Taned (camped). Rooks were “caw”-cawing overhead; baúro-chériklo (pheasants) and ridjil (partridges) had flown. After a chat with them I distributed a few pictures and little things to the chabis (children), and then bade them good (saúla) morning.
A further trembling stroll by the hedges, ditches, daisies, and buttercups brought me to the edge of the canal, where I sat down to watch the darting, jumping, and frisking of the mátcho (fish) as they shot to and fro before me. Every now and again a perch would pop up out of the clear water, as if anxious to have a peep and a game, and then it would, with a whisk of its tail, shoot off like an arrow. The lark was singing overhead. While meditating, musing, and observing upon the surroundings and unregistered and uninspected canal boats and cabins packed to suffocation with uneducated poor canal children, in face of an Act passed—for which I worked hard and long from 1872 and onward to to-day, to prevent this sad state of things—I began to aphorize, and entered into my pocket-book the following aphorisms:—
Some little-brained, over-sensitive, dwarfish mortals, who spend their time in running after little annoyances, may be compared to a policeman running with his staff after a fly which has been tickling the end of his nose on a summer’s sunny afternoon.
A clever man who has found his way into the gutter through his own misconduct may be compared to a piece of granite, with a rugged squarishness about him that would have enabled him to find his upward way into the world and good society; instead of which his ruggedness has been rubbed and kicked off, and to-day he is as a boulder upon the pavement, and undergoing the process of being kicked from pillar to post, with no reward for him but the gutter.
A man who builds up his fortune out of ill-gotten gains, and the grinding sweat of the poor, is feathering his nest in a dead carcase that will stink long in his nostrils, notwithstanding fine feathers, plausible excuses, and sanctimonious looks.
When present unhappiness is the outgrowth of honest conviction and hard-working strivings, a crop of immortal pleasures will be seen where least expected.
Immortal, golden fame is the everlasting perfume of eternal flowers, grown out of immortal deeds, sown upon immortal soil by unselfish hands, and watered by tears of sorrow shed in trial’s darkest hours.
When ignoramuses and fools mistake the artificial light of science for that of the sun, it may be taken for granted that they are in a fair way for having their fingers burnt in the candle.
A shallow headed trickster, with a hungry belly and an empty pocket, clothed in trickery, wringing the watery drops of sympathy and benevolence from his nature to paint virtuous smiles upon his face to deceive his friends while he lightens their pockets of gold, for which he has never worked, has earned the title of the devil’s grave-digger, with perfidus fraudulentus engraved upon the buttons of his coat.
Round boulder-stones are awkward things with which to build up new churches, so are the round members of the community, without principle, fidelity, and piety, awkward members of society to found new Christian churches.
A London smoke prevents healthy vegetation, as do London morals and influences prevent healthy spiritual life and vigour.
A loan office is a social whirlpool that has shipwrecked thousands of honest families, and as the little ones have gone down they have cried for help, but there has been none to deliver.
The man to gauge your pocket correctly is a lawyer, for he can tell what filthy lucre you have in it with his eyes shut.
A lawyer’s office is coated with birdlime, strong enough to fetch the clothes off your back and keep you riveted to the spot; and then the lawyer, with a laugh upon his face like Solomon’s leeches, cries out for more.
As rusty old nails put into pickle produce poison for the body, so do rusty, deceitful old sinners put into social and religious societies produce moral poison.
In the darkest heart, riven with anguish and despair, there lies embedded in the human breast a spiritual vein that only requires one touch of the match of heavenly sympathy to cause it to shed seraphic lustre upon hellish actions, at once transforming them into Divine.
A dandy is fashion’s painted sparrow, whose wings will be sure to be clipped, and who will find a final resting-place in the gutter.
A gin-shop is the devil’s headquarters, with the landlord as his recruiting serjeant, and rags as the standard colours of his army.
In all societies the devil has his “gad-flies,” whose only mission in the world seems to be to sting and annoy.
Slanderers and backbiters are the cats of hell, with eyes of fire, poison-steeped claws, and tails of blood, running wild, and woe be to those who come in their way.
As the light proceeding from the natural sun produces the seven cardinal colours, viz., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, and with a proper mixture of these colours a spotless white is produced; so in like manner with the light proceeding form the Son of God, the seven cardinal graces are the outcome of His glory, viz., love, joy, patience, faith, meekness, temperance, and charity, which, when blended together in human natures, produce a perfect Christian, reflecting His glory and image.
Imagination is the ethereal unseen car that carries the twin angelic sisters, love and sympathy, through space and matter to visit the darkest and brightest spots of creation as a mission of affection, consolation, reproof, help, and encouragement to every fallen son of Adam.
A mother’s prayers are a life-belt that has saved thousands of young men and women from being lost amid the dark storms and wrecks of life, until they have been lifted into the life-boat and carried safe to shore beneath the silver rays of Biblical truth, which the lighthouse of heaven has been shedding o’er the troubled waters dashing against the rocks of land and rugged earth.
As the rose, pine-apple, and other deliciously scented fruits and flowers send forth the best fragrance when clouds are the darkest and lowest, atmosphere the heaviest, and rainstorms flying threateningly about, so in like manner do the most child-like, Christ-like, modest, and heavenly Christians send forth heavenly graces tinted with seraphic splendour when the storms of persecution are flying savagely about, afflictions weigh heavily, and Providence hidden from view.
As the beautiful white snow that flappers and flickers about us in winter appears shapeless and ragged to the naked eye, but when seen through a microscope presents prismatic forms and crystalline beauty beyond imagination, so in like manner the blessings, bounties, and mercies of God do to the eye of sinful nature and a bad heart; but when they are seen by the eye of sincerity, child-like simplicity, and faith, then the beauty and wonderful variety of God’s goodness to us are manifested as they descend with heavenly stillness in our rooms and round our paths.
Children seeking innocent, pure, and moral precepts among wicked street boys and girls, are running barelegged and barefooted after butterflies in a field of nettles and thistles.
A bed of affliction is the “gridiron” upon which God often puts His children when either their keel or propeller—faith and love—gets out of order. Sometimes when they have been very wayward, and have suffered severely, nothing less than being run into “dry dock”—afflictions and earthly losses—will meet their case.
As pearls and other precious gems can be brought out of the sea only by diving—no magnetic hand of an idle man is powerful enough to cause them to swim—so can a Christian fetch up the much more precious hidden mysteries of heaven by retiring from the world and engaging in closet prayer, and diving into God’s wonderful system of Divine love. The gems out of the sea adorn the body, while the pearls of heaven beautify the mind, enliven the soul, put a lustre upon the actions, and illumine the countenance with heavenly radiancy.
As the eyes and nose convey the delicious scents and beauty of creation to the natural man, so in like manner do faith and prayer convey to the soul the fragrance, delight, and beauty of heaven.
A man who seeks to be a philanthropist for worldly fame, with a heart full of pride, selfishness, vanity, levity, lust, babbling, hate, and deceit, has a compass upon his ship out of order. And he may also be compared to a vessel with eight “fo’c’sles” and no “poop,” with helm to steer, trusting to his flimsy sails of false hopes flappering in the breeze to guide him to heaven, but sure to run him aground to hell.
The heavenly prayer of earth tinged with grief and sorrow will become the golden picture of heaven illuminated with joy and tinted with God’s radiant smile.
The face of a good man is the best heliograph in the world. The heliograph used in war-time, as a signal, shines best with the brightest sun, while the heliograph produced upon a man’s face by love shines best in the darkest hour. Dismal cellars, squalid hearths, wretched garrets and prisons, are good places in which to reflect a radiant splendour that will last for ever.
To get a faint idea of God’s goodness and infinite splendour we have only to imagine all the leaves and petals of vegetation, differing in shape and size, teeming with silvery dewdrops of an infinitude of delicate tints, which, as they drop among the flowers of earth, instantly turn into pearls and diamonds of the first water; and while you are picking them up, a doubling and multiplying process is everlastingly going on to fill their places. So God gives, and so are the recipients of His mercies, ever blessed with an infinite number of mercies daily and hourly as we pass along.
After another slow walk I felt drowsy, and sat down upon a mossy bank under a shady tree to rest my bones and wearied limbs. The whistling of the sweet songsters and the bleating of the sheep and lowing of the oxen, together with the lovely summer’s enchantments, sent me into a doze with my elbows upon my knees. I had not been long in this position before the meadow appeared as one vast gipsy encampment, composed of tents, vans, dogs, wretchedness, misery, devilry, ignorance, dirt, filth, and squalor. The gipsy men, women, and children were playing, singing, preying, banging, shouting, fighting, thieving, lying, swearing, poaching, cheating, and fortune-telling to their hearts’ content. Among this vast concourse of English gipsy heathens, there were not a few “spoony” Gorgios, and “posh gipsies.” At one side of the meadow there was a gipsy tent covered with rags and old sheeting. There were several little lost gipsy children playing about it on the grass. Near them stood two gipsy women talking to two silly young ladies, and telling their fortunes. The young ladies, of course, were both in love with fair gentlemen, but the fair gentlemen would prove deceitful and dark gentlemen would take their places; and they would marry well, after crossing the water, and become rich, and have a number of children, who would become dukes and lords, and would live and die rolling in gold and splendour, with horses, carriages, and servants to wait upon them “hand and foot.” One of the young ladies, with glittering wealth hanging about her, would have much trouble and many disappointments before she realized her wishes, but all would be removed and made right as time went on. One of the old fortune-telling wicked hags, who could not read a letter, took out a small pocket Bible, and pretended to read a few verses. The old gipsies made a few signs, repeated some gabble, and looked into the hands of the young ladies, and told them to come again, as they had something of great importance to tell them the next time, which would add much to their happiness, beauty, and pleasure; but before the secrets could be successful they must bring the best and most valuable ring they had in the house for her to make crosses with, so that she might rule her planet properly and dispose of the fair man, who was haunting one of them to make her his wife, but would bring her to ruin. To the other young lady an old gipsy woman said, in a kind of snake’s whisper, “You, my dear young lady, have living with you in your family a fair woman and dark man; they don’t mean you any good. You must have nothing to do with them; be sure and hear what I say. Now mind, you must not listen to what they say, or it will be your ruin, and all my words of counsel will turn to curses.” “But,” said the young lady, “there is no fair woman or dark man in our house, except my father and mother.” “Well,” said the old gipsy, “hear what I have to say. Your father and mother are no friends of yours. Now mark that; goodbye, my sweet girl. The Lord bless you, my dear girl. I shall see you again soon; good-bye. Be sure and bring the best ring in the house. Good-bye, and may the dear Lord bless you. If you can bring two rings it will be all the better for your happiness and fortune. The young gentleman who will be your husband will never be cross. He will always be smiling. He will be beautiful, and he will let you go where you like and do what you like. Bring two rings for your own sake. Good-bye, my darling child. I wish I stood in the way for a fortune and happiness as surely as you do; but all depends upon you bringing me the rings. Good-bye, my sweet child. If you can bring me a spade-ace guinea, or a Queen Victoria sovereign of the present year, it will be all the better. I can influence the planets so that you can have your dear charming little husband, horses, carriages, and footmen to wait upon you earlier. The planets will do anything just now. Good-bye, my 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.
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.