132
A Respectable Gipsy and his Family "on the Road" 170
A Bachelor Gipsy's Bed-room 174
A Gipsy's Van, near Notting Hill 192
A Fortune-telling Gipsy enjoying her Pipe 222
Inside a Christian Gipsy's Van--Mrs. Simpson's 228
Inside a Gipsy Fortune-teller's Van 236
Gipsy Fortune tellers Cooking their Evening Meal 248
Outside a Christian Gipsy's Van 272
Four Little Gipsies sitting for the Artist 277
A Top Bed-room in a Gipsy's Van 281

[Picture: A Gipsy beauty who can neither read nor write]

Part I.--Rambles in Gipsydom.

The origin of the Gipsies, as to who they are; when they became regarded
as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel, ragamuffin vagabonds; the
primary object they had in view in setting out upon their shuffling,
skulking, sneaking, dark pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the
point of the sword, or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing
dark deeds of plunder, cruelty, and murder, or anxious to seek a haven of
rest; the route by which they travelled, whether over hill and dale, by
the side of the river and valley, skirting the edge of forest and dell,
delighting in the jungle, or pitching their tent in the desert, following
the shores of the ocean, or topping the mountains; whether they were
Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Ishmaelites, Roumanians, Peruvians, Turks,
Hungarians, Spaniards, or Bohemians; the end of their destination; their
religious views--if any--their habits and modes of life have been during
the last three or four centuries wrapped, surrounded, and encircled in
mystery, according to some writers who have been studying the Gipsy
character. They have been a theme upon which a "bookworm" could gloat, a
chest of secret drawers into which the curious delight to pry, a
difficult problem in Euclid for the mathematician to solve; and an
unreadable book for the author. A conglomeration of languages for the
scholar, a puzzle for the historian, and a subject for the novelist.
These are points which it is not the object of this book to attempt to
clear up and settle; all it aims at, as in the case of my "Cry of the
Children from the Brick-yards of England," and "Our Cana