and
very often this is changed with the fleeting second by some associated
thought, which materially modifies it. It is always difficult, in
consequence, to take down a story in the exact terms which a philologist
desires. There are two words for "bad" in English Gipsy, _wafro_ and
_vessavo_; and I think it must have taken me ten minutes one day to
learn, from a by no means dull gipsy, whether the latter word was known
to him, or if it were used at all. He got himself into a hopeless tangle
in trying to explain the difference between _wafro_ and _naflo_, or ill,
until his mind finally refused to act on _vessavo_ at all, and
spasmodically rejected it. With all the patience of Job, and the
meekness of Moses, I awaited my time, and finally obtained my
information.

The impatience of such minds in narrative is amusing. Let us suppose
that I am asking some _kushto Rommany chal_ for a version of AEsop's
fable of the youth and the cat. He is sitting comfortably by the fire,
and good ale has put him into a story-telling humour. I begin--

"Now then, tell me this _adree Rommanis_, in Gipsy--Once upon a time
there was a young man who had a cat."

Gipsy.--"_Yeckorus--'pre yeck cheirus_--_a raklo lelled a matchka_"--

While I am writing this down, and long before it is half done, the
professor of Rommany, becoming interested in the subject, continues
volubly--

--"_an' the matchka yeck sala dicked a chillico apre a rukk_--(and the
cat one morning saw a bird in a tree"--)

I.--"Stop, stop! _Hatch a wongish_! That is not it! Now go on. _The
young man loved this cat so much_"--

_Gipsy_ (fluently, in Rommany), "that he thought her skin would make a
nice pair of gloves"--

"Confound your gloves! Now do begin again"--

_Gipsy_, with an air of grief and injury: "I'm sure I was telling the
story for you the best way I knew how!"

Yet this man was far from being a fool. What was it, then? Simply and
solely, a lack of education--of that mental training which even those who
never entered a schoolhouse, receive more or less of, when they so much
as wait patiently for a month behind a chair, or tug for six months at a
plough, or in short, acquire the civilised virtue of Christian patience.
That is it. We often hear in this world that a little education goes a
great way; but to get some idea of the immense value of a very little
education indeed, and the incredible effect it may have upon character,
one should study