chuck it away,
and nobody ask a word for any of it." "What would _you_ do," he
continued, "if you were in the fields and had nothing to eat?"

I replied, "that if any could be found, I should hunt for fern-roots."

"I could do better than that," he said. "I should hunt for a
_hotchewitchi_,--a hedge-hog,--and I should be sure to find one; there's
no better eating."

Whereupon assuming his left hand to be an imaginary hedge-hog, he
proceeded to score and turn and dress it for ideal cooking with a case-
knife.

"And what had you for dinner to-day?" I inquired.

"Some cocks' heads. They're very fine--very fine indeed!"

Now it is curious but true that there is no person in the world more
particular as to what he eats than the half-starved English or Irish
peasant, whose sufferings have so often been set forth for our
condolence. We may be equally foolish, you and I--in fact chemistry
proves it--when we are disgusted at the idea of feeding on many things
which mere association and superstition render revolting. But the old
fashioned gipsy has none of these qualms--he is haunted by no ghost of
society--save the policeman, he knows none of its terrors. Whatever is
edible he eats, except horse-meat; wherever there is an empty spot he
sleeps; and the man who can do this devoid of shame, without caring a pin
for what the world says--nay, without even knowing that he does not care,
or that he is peculiar--is independent to a degree which of itself
confers a character which is not easy to understand.

I grew up as a young man with great contempt for Helvetius, D'Holbach,
and all the French philosophers of the last century, whose ideal man was
a perfect savage; but I must confess that since I have studied gipsy
nature, my contempt has changed into wonder where they ever learned in
their _salons_ and libraries enough of humanity to theorise so boldly,
and with such likeness to truth, as they did. It is not merely in the
absolute out-of-doors independence of the old-fashioned Gipsy, freer than
any wild beast from care for food, that his resemblance to a
"philosopher" consists, or rather to the ideal man, free from imaginary
cares. For more than this, be it for good or for evil, the real Gipsy
has, unlike all other men, unlike the lowest savage, positively no
religion, no tie to a spiritual world, no fear of a future, nothing but a
few trifling superstitions and legends, which in themselves indicate no
faith whatever