Notwithstanding the reports that have been in circulation, enough to shake the nerves of timid folks, I am received kindly and civilly by all the gipsies. One gipsy woman named Smith in a jocular term said, “Mr. Smith, we have been told that you are going to take all our children away from us and send them to school; you will require a mighty big school, bigger than any in the world, to hold them, I can assure you.”
A few yards from where we were standing there was a van, into which I was invited to tea by the poor woman, the “mistress of the _house_.” In this wooden tumble-down house upon wheels, about 9 ft. long by 5 ft. wide, and 6 ft. high, there were man, wife, and seven children in a most dirty and heartrending condition. The youngest was a baby only three weeks old, and was born in the van at Weedon.
I had a long chat with the good-natured woman. As I sat upon an old sack at the bottom of the van, with the children in rags and dirt creeping round me, and in the midst of an odour not at all pleasant to the olfactory organs, I felt as if my heart was almost ready to break at the sight of human woe and misery before me. To say that I could have wept hot briny tears would not convey in language telling enough the strong feeling of sympathy that crept over me, to the extent of almost freezing the blood in my veins. For a moment I seemed to lose sight of everything else in the fair, and it was with some difficulty I could refrain from crying out, as I stepped from amongst the poor little forgotten and neglected children, and out of this gipsy house, with a cocoa-nut which “Jack” would thrust into my bag, “Good Lord! when shall these sad things and these wretched and pitiable sights come to an end? Would to God that the trumpet which is to bring to life the dead would begin to ring! ring! ring! and thrill into our ears a nervous, disquieting solo, keeping on and on till it has awoke us all up—aye! ministers, philanthropists, Christians of every grade, moralists, members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, and peers—to a sense of our duty towards the little and big heathens at our own door, before our fate becomes as that of Belshazzar and Babylon.”
“Oh say, in all the bleak expanse Is there a spot to win your glance So bright, so dark as this? A hopeless faith, a homeless race.”