e that. It's a conwivial expression arskin' me if I won't have
a tanner for ale. Which I will."

"Now since you take such an interest in gypsies," I answered, "it is a
pity that you should know so little about them. I have seen them since
you have. I saw a nice young woman, one of the Bosvilles here, not half
an hour ago. Shall I introduce you?"

"That young woman," remarked the tinker, with the same immovable
countenance, "is my wife. And I've come down here, by app'intment, to
meet some Romany pals."

And having politely accepted his sixpence, the griddler went his way,
tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that his
first speeches did not agree with his last; he was not in the habit of
being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned
Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little
inconsistencies. Serene and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine,
he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker.
He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing the utmost
indifference either for a tinker's blessing or a tinker's curse, and he
retaliated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned him.
In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type of this
droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its single
melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, "Toujours
Santerre."

"Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied
Von dem versoff'nen Pfannenschmied,
Und wer's nicht weiter singen kann,
Der fang's von Vorne wieder an."

'T will ever be the same old song
Of tipsy tinkers all day long,
And he who cannot sing it more
May sing it over, as before.

I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy tinker he
must have been self-contained and pleasant. He had his wits about him,
too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made a flute or
pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would play on it to
pass time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced the
leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as only a gypsy tinker
could,--calm as a summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture.
Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a man of the same
tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood as Honest John, confined
in the prison of Moyamensing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing,
o