d merely
serves as a cordon to separate "sassiety" from society, detracts from the
respectability of humanity, and is in itself vulgar. If every man in
society were a gentleman and every woman a lady, there would be no more
conventionalism. _Usus est tyrannus_ (custom is a tyrant), or, as the
Talmud proverb saith, "Custom is the plague of wise men, but is the idol
of fools." And he was a wise Jew, whoever he was, who declared it.

But let us return to our black sheep, the gypsy. While happy in not
being conventional, and while rejoicing, or at least unconsciously
enjoying freedom from the bonds of etiquette, he agrees with the Chinese,
red Indians, May Fairies, and Fifth Avenoodles in manifesting under the
most trying circumstances that imperturbability which was once declared
by an eminent Philadelphian to be "the Corinthian ornament of a
gentleman." He who said this builded better than he knew, for the
ornament in question, if purely Corinthian, is simply brass. One morning
I was sauntering with the Palmer in Aberystwith, when we met with a young
and good-looking gypsy woman, with whom we entered into conversation,
learning that she was a Bosville, and acquiring other items of news as to
Egypt and the roads, and then left.

We had not gone far before we found a tinker. He who catches a tinker
has got hold of half a gypsy and a whole cosmopolite, however bad the
catch may be. He did not understand the greeting _Sarishan_!--he really
could not remember to have heard it. He did not know any gypsies,--"he
could not get along with them." They were a bad lot. He had seen some
gypsies three weeks before on the road. They were curious dark people,
who lived in tents. He could not talk Romany.

This was really pitiable. It was too much. The Palmer informed him that
he was wasting his best opportunities, and that it was a great pity that
any man who lived on the roads should be so ignorant. The tinker never
winked. In the goodness of our hearts we even offered to give him
lessons in the _kalo jib_, or black language. The grinder was as calm as
a Belgravian image. And as we turned to depart the professor said,--

"_Mandy'd del tute a shahori to pi moro kammaben_, _if tute jinned sa
mandi pukkers_." (I'd give you a sixpence to drink our health, if you
knew what I am saying.)

With undisturbed gravity the tinker replied,--

"Now I come to think of it, I do remember to have heard somethin' in the
parst lik