ttos or in a
certain street, and regarded as outcasts and _cagots_. I had heard there
were gypsies in Russian cities, and expected to find them like the
_kerengri_ of England or Germany,--house-dwellers somewhat reformed from
vagabondage, but still reckless semi-outlaws, full of tricks and lies; in
a word, _gypsies_, as the world understands the term. And I certainly
anticipated in Russia something _queer_,--the gentleman who speaks Romany
seldom fails to achieve at least that, whenever he gets into an unbroken
haunt, an unhunted forest, where the Romany rye is unknown,--but nothing
like what I really found. A recent writer on Russia {26} speaks with
great contempt of these musical Romanys, their girls attired in dresses
by Worth, as compared with the free wild outlaws of the steppes, who,
with dark, ineffable glances, meaning nothing more than a wild-cat's,
steal poultry, and who, wrapped in dirty sheep-skins, proudly call
themselves _Mi dvorane Polaivii_, Lords of the Waste. The gypsies of
Moscow, who appeared to me the most interesting I have ever met, because
most remote from the Surrey ideal, seemed to Mr. Johnstone to be a kind
of second-rate Romanys or gypsies, gypsified for exhibition, like Mr.
Barnum's negro minstrel, who, though black as a coal by nature, was
requested to put on burnt cork and a wig, that the audience might realize
that they were getting a thoroughly good imitation. Mr. Johnstone's own
words are that a gypsy maiden in a long _queue_, "which perhaps came from
Worth," is "horrible," "_corruptio optimi pessima est_;" and he further
compares such a damsel to a negro with a cocked hat and spurs. As the
only negro thus arrayed who presents himself to my memory was one who lay
dead on the battle-field in Tennessee, after one of the bravest
resistances in history, and in which he and his men, not having moved,
were extended in "stark, serried lines" ("ten cart-loads of dead
niggers," said a man to me who helped to bury them), I may be excused for
not seeing the wit of the comparison. As for the gypsies of Moscow, I
can only say that, after meeting them in public, and penetrating to their
homes, where I was received as one of themselves, even as a Romany, I
found that this opinion of them was erroneous, and that they were
altogether original in spite of being clean, deeply interesting although
honest, and a quite attractive class in most respects, notwithstanding
their ability to read and write.