stock. They spoke all these languages fluently, for one was a born
Illyrian and one a Serb. They also spoke Nemetz, or German; in fact,
everything except English.

"Have you got through all your languages?" I at last inquired.

"Tutte, signore,--all of them."

"Isn't there _one_ left behind, which you have forgotten? Think a
minute."

"No, signore. None."

"What, not _one_! You know so many that perhaps a language more or less
makes no difference to you."

"By the Lord, signore, you have seen every egg in the basket."

I looked him fixedly in the eyes, and said, in a low tone,--

"_Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala_?"

There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had
asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added,--

"_Won't_ you talk a word with a gypsy brother?"

_That_ moved them. They all shook my hands with great feeling,
expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them.

"_Mishto hom me dikava tute_." (I am glad to see you.) So they told me
how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold
horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been
for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a
great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language,
stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it
all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and
the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not
consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed,--young
clerks, at least,--who would have fiercely resented being told that they
were impertinent.

"Eye-talians, ain't they?" inquired one man, who was evidently zealous in
pursuit of knowledge.

"Why don't you tell us what they are sayin'?"

"What kind of fellers air they, any way?"

I was desirous of going with the Hungarian Roms. But to walk along
Chestnut Street with an augmenting procession of fifty curious Sunday
promenaders was not on my card. In fact, I had some difficulty in
tearing myself from the inquisitive, questioning, well-dressed people.
The gypsies bore the pressure with the serene equanimity of cosmopolite
superiority, smiling at provincial rawness. Even so in China and Africa
the traveler is mobbed by the many, who, there as here, think that "I
want to know" is full excuse for all intrusiveness. _Q'est tout comme
chez nous_. I