se. But
though their parents often have a stock of cheap toys, especially of
penny dolls and the like, which they put up as prizes for games at races
and fairs, I have never seen these children with playthings. The little
girls have no dolls; the boys, indeed, affect whips, as becomes incipient
jockeys, but on the whole they never seemed to me to have the same ideas
as to play as ordinary house-children. The author of "My Indian Garden"
has made the same observation of Hindoo little ones, whose ways are not
as our ways were when we were young. Roman and Egyptian children had
their dolls; and there is something sadly sweet to me in the sight of
these barbarous and naive facsimiles of miniature humanity, which come up
like little spectres out of the dust of ancient days. They are so rude
and queer, these Roman puppets; and yet they were loved once, and had pet
names, and their owl-like faces were as tenderly kissed as their little
mistresses had been by their mothers. So the Romany girl, unlike the
Roman, is generally doll-less and toy-less. But the affection between
mother and child is as warm among these wanderers as with any other
people; and it is a touching sight to see the gypsy who has been absent
all the weary day returning home. And when she is seen from afar off
there is a race among all the little dark-brown things to run to mother
and get kissed, and cluster and scramble around her, and perhaps receive
some little gift which mother's thoughtful love has provided. Knowing
these customs, I was wont to fill my pockets with chestnuts or oranges,
and, distributing them among the little ones, talk with them, and await
the sunset return of their parents. The confidence or love of all
children is delightful; but that of gypsy children resembles the
friendship of young foxes, and the study of their artless-artful ways is
indeed attractive. I can remember that one afternoon six small Romany
boys implored me to give them each a penny. I replied,--

"If I had sixpence, how would you divide it?"

"That would be a penny apiece," said the eldest boy.

"And if threepence?"

"A ha'penny apiece."

"And three ha'pence?"

"A farden all round. And then it couldn't go no furder, unless we bought
tobacco an' diwided it."

"Well, I have some tobacco. But can any of you smoke?"

They were from four to ten years of age, and at the word every one pulled
out the stump of a blackened pipe,--such depraved-looking fra