more than ever
how utterly different they are from the human race; that there is a
key to their strange life which we do not possess,--a secret free
masonry that renders them more isolated than the veriest savages
dwelling in the African wilds,--and a hidden mystery hanging over
them and their origin that we shall never comprehend. They are
indeed a people so entirely separate and distinct that, in whatever
clime or quarter of the globe they may be met with, they are
instantly recognized; for with them forty centuries of association
with civilized races have not succeeded in obliterating one single
sign."

* * * * *

"Alas!" cried the princess; "I can never, never find the door of the
enchanted cavern, nor enter the golden cavern, nor solve its
wonderful mystery. It has been closed for thousands of years, and it
will remain closed forever."

"What flowers are those which thou holdest?" asked the hermit.

"Only primroses or Mary's-keys, {285} and tulips," replied the
princess.

"Touch the rock with them," said the hermit, "and the door will
open."

* * * * *

The lady writer of "Magyarland" held in her hand all the while, and knew
it not, a beautiful primrose, which might have opened for her the
mysterious Romany cavern. On a Danube steamboat she saw a little blind
boy sitting all day all alone: only a little Slavonian peasant boy, "an
odd, quaint little specimen of humanity, with loose brown garments, cut
precisely like those of a grown-up man, and his bits of feet in little
raw-hide moccasins." However, with a tender, gentle heart she began to
pet the little waif. And the captain told her what the boy was. "He is
a _guslar_, or minstrel, as they call them in Croatia. The Yougo-Slavs
dedicate all male children who are born blind, from infancy, to the
Muses. As soon as they are old enough to handle anything, a small
mandolin is given them, which they are taught to play; after which they
are taken every day into the woods, where they are left till evening to
commune in their little hearts with nature. In due time they become
poets, or at any rate rhapsodists, singing of the things they never saw,
and when grown up are sent forth to earn their livelihood, like the
troubadours of old, by singing from place to place, and asking alms by
the wayside.

"It is not diffic