with gentleness and patience a real Gipsy.

Probably the most universal error in the world is the belief that all
men, due allowance being made for greater or less knowledge, or
"talents," have minds like our own; are endowed with the same moral
perception, and see things on the whole very much as we do. Now the
truth is that a Chinese, whose mind is formed, not by "religion" as we
understand it, but simply by the intense pressure of "Old Custom," which
we do not understand, thinks in a different manner from an European;
moralists accuse him of "moral obliquity," but in reality it is a moral
difference. Docility of mind, the patriarchal principle, and the very
perfection of innumerable wise and moral precepts have, by the practice
of thousands of years, produced in him their natural result. Whenever he
attempts to think, his mind runs at once into some broad and open path,
beautifully bordered with dry artificial flowers, {21} and the result has
been the inability to comprehend any new idea--a state to which the
Church of the Middle Ages, or any too rigidly established system, would
in a few thousand years have reduced humanity. Under the action of
widely different causes, the gipsy has also a different cast of mind from
our own, and a radical moral difference. A very few years ago, when I
was on the Plains of Western Kansas, old Black Kettle, a famous Indian
chief said in a speech, "I am not a white man, I am a _wolf_. I was born
like a wolf on the prairies. I have lived like a wolf, and I shall die
like one." Such is the wild gipsy. Ever poor and hungry, theft seems to
him, in the trifling easy manner in which he practises it, simply a
necessity. The moral aspects of petty crime he never considers at all,
nor does he, in fact, reflect upon anything as it is reflected on by the
humblest peasant who goes to church, or who in any way feels himself
connected as an integral part of that great body-corporate--Society.

CHAPTER II. A GIPSY COTTAGE.

The Old Fortune-Teller and her Brother.--The Patteran, or Gipsies' Road-
Mark .--The Christian Cross, named by Continental Gipsies Trushul, after
the Trident of Siva.--Curious English-Gipsy term for the Cross.--Ashwood
Fires on Christmas Day.--Our Saviour regarded with affection by the
Rommany because he was like themselves and poor.--Strange ideas of the
Bible.--The Oak.--Lizards renew their lives.--Snails.--Slugs.--Tobacco
Pipes as old as the world.

"Duv