they call themselves, can light the fire and boil the
kettle undisturbed. There is almost "no tan to hatch," or place to stay
in. So it has come to pass, that those among them who cannot settle down
like unto the Gentiles, have gone across the Great Water to America,
which is their true Canaan, where they flourish mightily, the more
enterprising making a good thing of it, by _prastering graias_ or
"running horses," or trading in them, while the idler or more moral ones,
pick up their living as easily as a mouse in a cheese, on the endless
roads and in the forests. And so many of them have gone there, that I am
sure the child is now born, to whom the sight of a real old-fashioned
gipsy will be as rare in England as a Sioux or Pawnee warrior in the
streets of New York or Philadelphia. But there is a modified and yet
real Rommany-dom, which lives and will live with great vigour, so long as
a regularly organised nomadic class exists on our roads--and it is the
true nature and inner life of this class which has remained for ages, an
impenetrable mystery to the world at large. A member of it may be a
tramp and a beggar, the proprietor of some valuable travelling show, a
horse-dealer, or a tinker. He may be eloquent, as a Cheap Jack, noisy as
a Punch, or musical with a fiddle at fairs. He may "peddle" pottery,
make and sell skewers and clothes-pegs, or vend baskets in a caravan; he
may keep cock-shys and Aunt Sallys at races. But whatever he may be,
depend upon it, reader, that among those who follow these and similar
callings which he represents, are literally many thousands who,
unsuspected by the _Gorgios_, are known to one another, and who still
speak among themselves, more or less, that curious old tongue which the
researches of the greatest living philologists have indicated, is in all
probability not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age,
an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.

For THE ROMMANY is the characteristic leaven of all the real tramp life
and nomadic callings of Great Britain. And by this word I mean not the
language alone, which is regarded, however, as a test of superior
knowledge of "the roads," but a curious _inner life_ and freemasonry of
secret intelligence, ties of blood and information, useful to a class who
have much in common with one another, and very little in common with the
settled tradesman or worthy citizen. The hawker whom you meet, and wh