d jealous of me as a spy; but finding me inoffensive, and that I
did not bewray counsel, they came at length to recognise me as the
"quiet, sickly lad," and to chatter as freely in my presence as in that
of the other pitchers with ears, which they used to fabricate out of tin
by the dozen and the score, and the manufacture of which, with the
making of horn spoons, formed the main branch of business carried on in
the cave. I saw in these visits curious glimpses of gipsy life. I could
trust only to what I actually witnessed: what was told me could on no
occasion be believed; for never were there lies more gross and monstrous
than those of the gipsies; but even the lying formed of itself a
peculiar trait. I have never heard lying elsewhere that set all
probability so utterly at defiance--a consequence, in part, of their
recklessly venturing, like unskilful authors, to expatiate in walks of
invention over which their experience did not extend. On one occasion an
old gipsy woman, after pronouncing my malady consumption, prescribed for
me as an infallible remedy, raw parsley minced small and made up into
balls with fresh butter; but seeing, I suppose, from my manner, that I
lacked the necessary belief in her specific, she went on to say, that
she had derived her knowledge of such matters from her mother, one of
the most "skeely women that ever lived." Her mother, she said, had once
healed a lord's son of a grievous hurt in half a minute, after all the
English doctors had shown they could do nothing for him. His eye had
been struck out of its socket by a blow, and hung half-way down his
cheek; and though the doctors could of course return it to its place, it
refused to stick, always falling out again. Her mother, however, at once
understood the case; and, making a little slit at the back of the young
man's neck, she got hold of the end of a sinew, and pulling in the
dislodged orb at a tug, she made all tight by running a knot on the
controlling ligament, and so kept the eye in its place. And, save that
the young lord continued to squint a little, he was well at once. The
peculiar anatomy on which this invention was framed must have, of
course, resembled that of a wax-doll with winking eyes; but it did well
enough for the woman; and, having no character for truth to maintain,
she did not hesitate to build on it. On asking her whether she ever
attended church, she at once replied, "O yes, at one time very often. I
am the daughter