Chapter I: Front Matter

[Picture: The Rev. George Hall. Photo: Brigham]

THE
GYPSY’S PARSON

HIS EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES

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BY

THE REV. GEORGE HALL

RECTOR OF RUCKLAND, LINCOLNSHIRE

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_ILLUSTRATED_

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PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO. LTD.

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TO
MY WIFE
MY COMPANION
ON MANY A GYPSY-JAUNT

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“_They cast the glamour o’er him_.”

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“YOU must forgive us. We are barbarians. . . . We are ruffians of
the sun . . . and we must be forgiven everything.”

“It is easy to forgive in the sun,” Domini said.

“Madame, it is impossible to be anything but lenient in the sun.
That is my experience. . . . But, as I was saying, the sun teaches
one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the
midst of the sand-rascals—eh, Madame, I suppose as a priest I ought
to have been shocked by their goings-on. And, indeed I tried to be,
I conscientiously did my best, but it was no good. I couldn’t be
shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I could only say, ‘It
is not for me to question le bon Dieu, and le bon Dieu has created
these people and set them here in the sand to behave as they do.
What is my business? I can’t convert them. I can’t change their
morals—I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their
sorrows, give them a bit if they’re starving, doctor them a
little—I’m a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a
powder—when they are ill, and I make them at home with the white
marabout.’ That’s what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal
and sand-rascal’s child in Amara is a friend of mine.”

“You are fond of the Arabs, then?” she said.

“Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and I’m as much
at home in their tents, and more, than I ever should be at the
Vatican—with all respect to the Holy Father.”

(Conversation between Domini and Father Beret in _The Garden of Allah_, quoted here by the kind permission of Mr. Robert Hichens.)