eaking off to a
magistrate.

"Yes," he continued, "England's a little country, very little, indeed,
but it is astonishing how many Romanys come out of it over here. _Do I
notice any change in them after coming_? I do. When they first come,
they drink liquor or beer all the time. After a while they stop heavy
drinking."

I may here observe that even in England the gypsy, although his getting
drunk is too often regulated or limited simply by his means, seldom shows
in his person the results of long-continued intemperance. Living in the
open air, taking much exercise, constantly practicing boxing, rough
riding, and other manly sports, he is "as hard as nails," and generally
lives to a hearty old age. As he very much prefers beer to spirits, it
may be a question whether excess in such drinking is really any serious
injury to him. The ancestors of the common English peasants have for a
thousand, it may be for two thousand, years or more all got drunk on
beer, whenever they could afford it, and yet a more powerful human being
than the English peasant does not exist. It may be that the weaklings
all die at an early age. This I cannot deny, nor that those who survive
are simply so tough that beer cannot kill them. What this gypsy said of
the impartial and liberal manner in which he and his kind are received by
the farmers is also true. I once conversed on this subject with a
gentleman farmer, and his remarks were much like those of the Rom. I
inferred from what he said that the coming of a party of gypsy
horse-dealers into his neighborhood was welcomed much as the passengers
on a Southern steamboat were wont of old to welcome the proprietor of a
portable faro bank. "I think," said he, "that the last time the gypsies
were here they left more than they took away." An old Rom told me once
that in some parts of New Jersey they were obliged to watch their tents
and wagons very carefully for fear of the country people. I do not
answer for the truth of this. It speaks vast volumes for the cleverness
of gypsies that they can actually make a living by trading horses in New
Spain.

It is very true that in many parts of America the wanderers are welcomed
with _feux de joie_, or with salutes of shot-guns,--the guns,
unfortunately, being shotted and aimed at them. I have mentioned in
another chapter, on a Gypsy Magic Spell, that once in Tennessee, when an
old Romany mother had succeeded in hoaxing a farmer's wife out of