h justice is
evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.

Yet it is not a good country, on the whole, for _hokkani boro_, since the
people here, especially in the rural districts, have a rough-and-ready
way of inflicting justice which interferes sadly with the profits of
aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy
woman robbed a farmer by the great trick of all he was worth. Now it is
no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee greatly resemble
Indians in certain respects, and when I saw thousands of them, during the
war, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied their dark
brown faces, high cheek bones, and long straight black hair, that the
American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee
farmer and his neighbors, at any rate, reverted very strongly indeed to
the original type when robbed by the gypsies, for they turned out all
together, hunted them down, and, having secured the sorceress, burned her
alive at the stake. And thus in a single crime and its punishment we
have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offense, an European
Middle-Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the red
Indians.

SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK.

"So good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with
any tinker in his own language during my life."--_King Henry the
Fourth_.

One summer day, in the year 1876, I was returning from a long walk in the
beautiful country which lies around Bath, when, on the road near the
town, I met with a man who had evidently grown up from childhood into
middle age as a beggar and a tramp. I have learned by long experience
that there is not a so-called "traveler" of England or of the world, be
he beggar, tinker, gypsy, or hawker, from whom something cannot be
learned, if one only knows how to use the test-glasses and proper
reagents. Most inquirers are chiefly interested in the morals--or
immorals--of these nomads. My own researches as regards them are chiefly
philological. Therefore, after I had invested twopence in his
prospective beer, I addressed him in Romany. Of course he knew a little
of it; was there ever an old "traveler" who did not?

"But we are givin' Romanes up very fast,--all of us is," he remarked.
"It is a gettin' to be too blown. Everybody knows some Romanes now. But
there _is_ a jib that ain't blown," he remarked reflectively. "Back
slang an' cantin' an' rhymin' is grow