upon me!' and
then tip them Long Melford, to which, as the saying goes, there is
nothing comparable for shortness all the world over."

{picture: The Green, Long Melford, Suffolk. Photo: C. F. Emeny, Sudbury:
page261.jpg}

He had probably a natural inclination towards a liberal or eccentric
morality, but he was no thinker, and he gave way to a middle-class
phraseology--with exceptions, as when he gives it as the opinion of his
old master, the Norwich solicitor, that "all first-rate thieves were
sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in
abeyance by their love of gain." Sometimes Borrow allows these two sides
of him, his private and his social sides, to appear together
dramatically. For example, he more than half seriously advises Jasper to
read the Scriptures and learn his duty to his fellow-creatures and his
duty to his own soul, lest he should be ranked with those who are
"outcast, despised and miserable." Whereupon Jasper questions him and
gets him to admit that the Gypsies are very much like the cuckoos,
roguish, chaffing birds that everybody is glad to see again:

"'You would wish to turn the cuckoos into barn-door fowls, wouldn't you?'

"'Can't say I should, Jasper, whatever some people might wish.'

"'And the chals and chies into radical weavers and factory wenches, hey,
brother?'

"'Can't say that I should, Jasper. You are certainly a picturesque
people, and in many respects an ornament both to town and country;
painting and lil writing too are under great obligations to you. What
pretty pictures are made out of your campings and groupings, and what
pretty books have been written in which Gypsies, or at least creatures
intended to represent Gypsies, have been the principal figures! I think
if we were without you, we should begin to miss you.'

"'Just as you would the cuckoos, if they were all converted into barn-
door fowls. I tell you what, brother, frequently as I have sat under a
hedge in spring or summer time, and heard the cuckoo, I have thought that
we chals and cuckoos are alike in many respects, but especially in
character. Everybody speaks ill of us both, and everybody is glad to see
both of us again.'

"'Yes, Jasper, but there is some difference between men and cuckoos; men
have souls, Jasper!'

"'And why not cuckoos, brother?'

"'You should not talk so, Jasper; what you say is little short of
blasphemy. How should a bird have a soul?'

"'And how sh