e, there hung a few articles fresh from
the wash. The pegged cloth indicated that the female occupants were
within, but 'not at home,' nor would they be visible until the wind had
dried the garments that fluttered overhead. We tarried, and were made
quite at home in another kraal, where we gleaned many interesting
particulars of Gipsy life; and here we held a sort of smoking _levee_,
and were honoured by the company of many distinguished residents in camp.
We lay upon a bed of straw, which covered the whole of the interior, save
a little space filled with the brazier, in which a fire of coke was
burning; above was a hole, out of which the smoke passed. The straw had
been stamped into consistency by the feet of the family; there was no
odour from it, and in that particular was an improvement on the rush and
straw floors in the English houses of which Erasmus made such great
complaint. There was no chair, stool, or box on which to sit, and all of
us reclined Eastern fashion in the posture that was most convenient. The
owner of the kraal and his wife were very interesting people: the
mother's hair descended by little steps from the crown of her head, until
it stuck out like a bush, in a line with the nape of her neck, a dense
dead-black mass of hair. She had been a model for painters many a time,
she said, before small-pox marked her; and, since, the back of her head
had often been drawn to fit somebody else's face.

"'When I come again what shall I bring you?' said Mr. Smith, in most
reckless fashion, to the Egyptian Queen. 'Well,' said she, without a
moment's hesitation, 'if there is one thing more than another that I do
want, it's a silk handkercher for my head--a real Bandana.' The request
was characteristic. Of the tales we heard one or two were curious, one
positively laughable, and one related to a deed of blood. Mr. Smith,
going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy woman, to whom he told the object
of his visiting the Gipsies, and what he hoped to accomplish for the
children, and she forwith handed him a money gift. On more than one
occasion a well-polished silver coin of small value, a penny, or a
farthing has been quietly put into Mr. Smith's hands, in furtherance of
his work, by some poor Gipsy woman. The story which made us laugh was of
a Gipsy marriage. It is one of the unwritten laws of Gipsy life that the
wife works while the husband idles about the tent. The wife hawks with
the basket or the cart a