Chapter I: HAD heard much and often about the Boughton Green Fair, and the vast (5)

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.

[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.