d "Blessed Lord and Master." I
may mention the names of other warm-hearted Gipsies who are trying to
improve the condition of some of the adult portion of their brethren and
sisters--dwellers upon the turf, and clod scratchers, who feed many of
their poor women and children upon cabbage broth and turnip sauce, and
"bed them down," after kicks, blows, and ill-usage, upon rotten straw
strewn upon the damp ground. Mrs. Carey, Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood, Mrs.
Hedges, and the three Gipsy brothers Smith, Mrs. Lee, and a few others,
have not laboured without some success, at the same time they are
powerless to improve the condition of the future generations of Gipsy
women and children, young mongrels and hut-dwelling Gorgios, by applying
the civilising influences of education and sanitary measures to banish
heathenism worse than that of Africa, idleness, immorality, thieving,
lying, and deception of the deepest dye from our midst, as exhibited in
the dwellings of the rag and stick hovels to be seen flitting about the
outskirts, fringe, and scum of our own neglected ragamuffin population,
roaming about under the cognition that the name of a Gipsy is nauseous
and disgusting in most people's mouths on account of the damning evil
practices they have followed and carried out for centuries upon the
honest and industrious artisans, tradesmen, and others they have been
brought in contact with. A raw-boned Gipsy, with low, slanting forehead,
deep-set eyes, large eyebrows, thick lips, wide mouth, skulkingly slow
gait, slouched hat, and a large grizzly-coloured dog at his heels, in a
dark, narrow lane, on a starlight night, is not a pleasant state of
things for a timid and nervous man to grapple with; nevertheless this is
one side of a Gipsy's life as he goes prowling about in quest of his
prey, and as such it is seen by those who know something of Gipsy life.

"And they return at evening: they growl like a dog and compass the
city;
They--they prowl about for food.
If (or since) they are not satisfied they spend the night (in the
search)."

"Sunday at Home."

Even my friends, the canal-boatmen, look upon Gipsies as the lowest of
the low, and lower down the social scale than any boatman to be met with.
Some of them have gone so far as to try to shake my nerves by telling me
that, now I had taken the Gipsy women and children in hand, they would
not give sixpence