alk
so loud, brother. Go away quietly.)

The man's whole manner changed. As if quite sober, he said,--

"_Mang your shunaben_, _rye_. _But tute jins chomany_. _Kushti ratti_!"
(Beg your pardon, sir. But you _do_ know a thing or two. Good-night!)

"I was awfully frightened," said the young girl, as the traveler
departed. "I'm sure he meant to pitch into us. But what a wonderful way
you have, sir, of sending people away! I wasn't so much astonished when
you got rid of the Italians. I suppose ladies and gentlemen know
Italian, or else they wouldn't go to the opera. But this man was a
common, bad English tramp; yet I'm sure he spoke to you in some kind of
strange language, and you said something to him that changed him into as
peaceable as could be. What was it?"

"It was gypsy, young lady,--what the gypsies talk among themselves."

"Do you know, sir, I think you're the most mysterious gentleman I ever
met."

"Very likely. Good-night."

"Good night, sir."

I was walking with my friend the Palmer, one afternoon in June, in one of
the several squares which lie to the west of the British Museum. As we
went I saw a singular-looking, slightly-built man, lounging at a corner.
He was wretchedly clad, and appeared to be selling some rudely-made, but
curious contrivances of notched sticks, intended to contain flowerpots.
He also had flower-holders made of twisted copper wire. But the greatest
curiosity was the man himself. He had such a wild, wasted, wistful
expression, a face marked with a life of almost unconscious misery. And
most palpable in it was the unrest, which spoke of an endless struggle
with life, and had ended by goading him into incessant wandering. I
cannot imagine what people can be made of who can look at such men
without emotion.

"That is a gypsy," I said to the Palmer. "_Sarishan_, _pal_!"

The wanderer seemed to be greatly pleased to hear Romany. He declared
that he was in the habit of talking it so much to himself when alone that
his ordinary name was Romany Dick.

"But if you come down to the Potteries, and want to find me, you mus'n't
ask for Romany Dick, but Divius Dick." "That means Wild Dick." "Yes."
"And why?" "Because I wander about so, and can never stay more than a
night in any one place. I can't help it. I must keep going." He said
this with that wistful, sad expression, a yearning as for something which
he had never comprehended. Was it _rest_?

"And so I _ra