to tell them the names of the streets, and read the
mile-posts for them. The full value of money they know perfectly well.
Out of this 20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering
about the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the
alphabet. The others mostly will tell you that they have "finished their
education," and when questioned on the point and asked to put three
letters together, you put them into a corner, and they are as dumb as
mutes. Of the whole number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds
might be attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of
education in this way. Then, again, we have some 1,500 to 2,000 families
of our own countrymen travelling about the country with their families
selling hardware and other goods, from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham,
Leeds, Leicester, the Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing
towns, from London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children
running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told me, the
little education they receive in the winter.

Caravans will be moving about in our midst with "fat babies," "wax-work
models," "wonders of the age," "the greatest giant in the world," "a
living skeleton," "the smallest man alive," "menageries," "wild beast
shows," "rifle galleries," and like things connected with these caravans;
there will be families of children, none of whom, or at any rate but very
few of them, are receiving an education and attending any school, and
living together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van. In
addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of school age "on
the road" tramping with their parents, who sleep in common
lodging-houses, and who might be brought under educational supervision on
the plan I shall suggest later on in this book. Altogether, with the
Gipsies, we have a population of over 30,000 outside our educational and
sanitary laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with
our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.

"I was a bruised reed
Pluck'd from the common corn,
Play'd on, rude-handled, worn,
And flung aside, aside."

DR. GROSART, "Sunday at Home."

Part II.
Commencement of the Gipsy Crusade.

[Picture: A Gipsy's home for man, wife, and six children, Hackney Wick]

When as a lad I trudged along in the brick-yards, now