the
same, when we got home, and thereby earned the usual shower of blessings.

A few days afterward, while going from Moscow to St. Petersburg, I made
the acquaintance of a young Russian noble and diplomat, who was well
informed on all current gossip, and learned from him some curious facts.
The first young gentleman whom I had seen among the Romanys of Moscow was
the son of a Russian prince by a gypsy mother, and the very noble
Englishman whose photograph I had seen in Sarsha's collection had not
long ago (as rumor averred) paid desperate attentions to the belle of the
Romanys without obtaining the least success. My informant did not know
her name. Putting this and that together, I think it highly probable
that Sarsha was the young lady, and that the _latcho bar_, or diamond,
which sparkled on her finger had been paid for with British gold, while
the donor had gained the same "unluck" which befell one of his type in
the Spanish gypsy song as given by George Borrow:--

"Loud sang the Spanish cavalier,
And thus his ditty ran:
'God send the gypsy maiden here,
But not the gypsy man.'

"On high arose the moon so bright,
The gypsy 'gan to sing,
'I gee a Spaniard coming here,
I must be on the wing.'"

AUSTRIAN GYPSIES.

I.

In June, 1878, I went to Paris, during the great Exhibition. I had been
invited by Monsieur Edmond About to attend as a delegate the Congres
Internationale Litteraire, which was about to be held in the great city.
How we assembled, how M. About distinguished himself as one of the most
practical and common-sensible of men of genius, and how we were all
finally harangued by M. Victor Hugo with the most extraordinary display
of oratorical sky-rockets, Catherine-wheels, blue-lights, fire-crackers,
and pin-wheels by which it was ever my luck to be amused, is matter of
history. But this chapter is only autobiographical, and we will pass
over the history. As an Anglo-American delegate, I was introduced to
several great men gratis; to the greatest of all I introduced myself at
the expense of half a franc. This was to the Chinese giant, Chang, who
was on exhibition at a small cafe garden near the Trocadero. There were
no other visitors in his pavilion when I entered. He received me with
politeness, and we began to converse in fourth-story English, but
gradually went down-stairs into Pidgin, until we found ourselves fairly
in the kitchen of tha