books together_, _and burned them before all men_; _and they
counted the price of them_, _and found fifty thousand pieces silver_.
Acts xix. 19.

When relating this dream to a lady, she was asked whether she had
formerly been in the habit of seeking by any means, the aid of the devil,
in order to know future events; it having been asserted that many of the
Gipsies had done so. She informed the lady that she never had done so,
and that she thought none of her people had any thing to do with him,
otherwise than by giving themselves up to do wickedly. The devil tempted
them to do still worse; as those who neglect to seek to God for help,
must of course be under the power of the wicked one.

CHAP. VIII. Of the plans pursued by the Southampton Committee, and the
success which has attended them, continued.

Sixteen reformed Gipsies are now living at Southampton, one of whom is
the aged Gipsy whose history has been published by a lady. {72} There
are also her brother and four of his children, her sister, who has been a
wanderer for more than fifty years, and her daughter, three orphans, and
a boy who has been given up to the Committee by his mother, a woman and
her three children, and the young woman before mentioned, who has, since
her reformation, lost her two children by the measles.

In addition to those who have retired from a wandering life, and are
pursuing habits of honest industry, three other families, whose united
number is sixteen, begged the privilege of wintering with us in the
beginning of 1831. These Gipsies regularly attended divine service twice
on a Sunday, and on the work-day evenings the adults went to school to
learn to read. The children were placed at one of the Infants' Schools.
The prospects of doing one of the families lasting good, are rather dark,
as they are grown old and hardened in crime; but the condition of the
others is more encouraging. The children, who would gladly have stayed
longer with us, were sickly; and it is apprehended, had not this been the
case, the parents would have continued longer, that they might have gone
to school. Two women, mother and daughter, in one family, are much
interested in the worship of God, and already begin to feel the value of
their souls; and both regret that they are under the necessity of
submitting to the arbitrary will of the father. One of them declared
that she could never more act as a Gipsy, and with weeping eyes she said,
that,