at ignorance and idleness can devise,
they practise. In some instances these things are carried out to such a
pitch as to render them more like imbeciles than human beings endowed
with reason. Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances
used only as a 'blind;' while the women and children go about the country
begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their heathenish tents
sufficient to keep the family. The poor women are the slaves and tools
for the whole family, and can be seen very often with a child upon their
backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.
Upon the shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for
the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens. Many of the women enjoy their
short pipes quite as much as the men.

"Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various
parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are
married. No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even 'jumping
the broomstick,' as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a
respectable Gipsy woman, 'they go together, take each other's words, and
there is an end of it.' I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real
respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy,
who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as
men and wives are married. When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used,
she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, 'we are
either like devils or like lambs.' In the case of some of the adult
Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place.
There is some good among them as with others. A Gipsy in Wiltshire has
built himself a house at the cost of 600 pounds. Considerable difficulty
is experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by
two names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children.
Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting
of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and
the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their
dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them--except in rare
cases--they are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training,
without being taught how to get an honest living. No ray of hope enters
their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as
the food comes, no matter by whom