“Oh, come, come to school, Your teachers join in praises On this the happy pearl of days; Oh, come, come away.
The Sabbath is a blessed day, On which we meet to praise and pray, And march the heavenly way; Oh, come, come away.”
And, with a deep-drawn sigh, she said, “Ah! they will never come again; no, never! I should like to meet all my children in heaven; but with a life like this it cannot, and I suppose will not be.” I gave the children some little books and some coppers, and then bade her good-bye with a sad and heavy heart, which I sometimes feel when I witness such sorrowful sights. Among the crowd of sightseers were, gaudily dressed in showy colours, a number of “gipsy girls,” anxious to tell simpletons “their fortunes;” and I rather fancy a goodly number listened to their bewitching tales and lies. Dr. Donne, in “Fuller’s Worthies,” says of gipsies—
“Take me a face as full of frawde and lyes As gipsies in your common lottereyes, That is more false and more sophisticate Than our saints’ reliques, or man of state; Yet such being glosed by the sleight of arte, Faine admiration, wininge many a hart.”
I next came upon a gipsy tent, _i.e._, a few sticks stuck in the ground and partly covered with rags and old sheeting. The bed in this tent was a scattering of straw upon the damp, cold ground. Here were a man, woman, and four children. The woman and children were in a most pitiable condition. None could tell a letter. One of the children lay crouched upon a little straw—and it was a cold day—in one corner of the tent. Such a pitiable object I have never seen. It was very ill; it could not speak, stand, hear, or eat; and it was terribly emaciated. If ever sin in this world had blighted humanity, before me lay a little human being upon whom sin seemed to have poured forth its direful vengeance without stint or measure. With an aching heart I deeply sympathized with the gipsy woman and little gipsy children, whose sad condition is worse than the Rev. Mark Guy Pearse’s “Rob Rat,” which could scarcely be; and I did what I could to cheer them.
[Picture: Two English gipsy princesses “at home”]
I visited a number of tents, and wandered among the poor children and gipsy dogs that were squatting about in the dark upon the cold, wet ground. One fine-faced gipsy Lee and his good gipsy wife have had a family of nineteen children, all of whom were born on the roadside; most of whom are now grown up and have large families. It is fearful to contemplate the number of gipsy wanderers and hedgebottom travellers from this family who are neither doing themselves or the country any good.