Behind me there was to be seen another crowd shooting at glass bottles in the air. These might be said to be “windy customers,” and as a rule they were full of “gas,” bombast, thin and showy; while those who faced the “boss” were thick-necked, with plenty of animalism about them, and ready for a row.
I did not see many gaudily and showily dressed gipsy girls at the fair, but I saw a large number of gipsy girls dressed as “farming girls,” “farmers’ daughters,” and servants, at work among the easy-going chaps. Some of the girls—or, I should say, women—held the hands of the “silly” in their hands, and they were pleasantly looking at the lucky lines with one eye, and bewitchingly into their faces with the other, while they told the geese their fortunes, and the pleasures and troubles they would have on account of “dark ladies” and “fair ladies,” against whom they were to be on their guard, or they would not marry the one they loved. In some cases “dark gentlemen” were trying to steal the affections of their young lady. As a rule gipsies prognosticate evil from “fair ladies” or “fair gentlemen.” Of course it would not do to be too heavy upon the “dark gentlemen” or “dark ladies.” A number of “shoe girls” were having their fortunes told also.
One of the gipsies had offended a man close to me from some cause or other, which had the effect of exasperating the “beery” man to such an extent that he bawled out, “You might rake hell out and scratch among the cinders, and you would not find a worse lot than gipsies.” “Hold, hold,” I said; “many of them are bad, at the same time you will find some good-hearted folks among them, a few of whom I know.” I now turned and had a long conversation with a gipsy from Kent, and the good woman with her husband both fell in with my idea of getting the gipsy children educated by means of a free pass book, and of having their vans registered. Although busy with the evening meal, it did not prevent her entering heartily and pleasantly into my plans for effecting an improvement in the condition of the gipsies and their children, and more than once, surrounded as she was with everything the opposite of heavenly, said, “Thank you, sir, thank you, sir; and may God bless you for your efforts to improve the gipsies.” I told her that all the gipsies were not so kindly disposed as to wish me success. “Never mind them, sir; all the right-thinking gipsies will say so.” “You have spoken the truth,” I said; “before you can apply a remedy to a festering sore the proper thing to do is to probe it to the bottom, and this I have been trying for a long time to do.” It is a thousand times better to get at the root of a sore than to plaster it over by misleading fiction and romance, as some masculine writers, fascinated by the artificial charms of gipsy beauties—so called—have been doing. In this late day such efforts to hoodwink thoughtful, loyal, and observing men, and others who have the welfare of the nation at heart, may well be compared to a man sticking a beautiful French butterfly upon a dead ox, and then going among a crowd of bystanders with a glib tongue, and cap in hand, trying to make them believe that the rotten dead ox was a mass of beautiful butterflies, which only required a shower of coppers and praises to cause them to fly.