“Shul, Shul, gang along with me; Gang along with me, I’ll gang along with you.”
How much better it would have been for this scissor-grinding _posh_ gipsy if he had followed the advice that had been given to him, and endeavoured to lead the poor lost wanderer upon right paths to heaven instead of to hell.
A gipsy’s charges for “grinding” and “setting” a pair of scissors vary from twopence to two shillings and sixpence; all depends upon circumstance and who owns them.
_Posh_ gipsies and others who encourage gipsy wrongdoing know it to be misleading and evilsome; but it does not answer their purpose to speak faithfully and truthfully about gipsy wrong-doing. Gipsy idleness, gipsy frauds, gipsy cruelty, gipsy filth, gipsy lies, gipsy thefts, gipsy cheating, gipsy fornication, and gipsy adultery, are looked upon by all enlightened Englishmen and Christians as sins to be avoided and not to be encouraged. And he who encourages the gipsies in this wrongdoing is an enemy to the State, an enemy to God, an enemy to Christianity, and an enemy to himself, for which he will be made to smart some day. Their ill-gotten coin will burn their pockets and singe the hair of their head with terrible vengeance.
To come again to the things I saw with my eyes shut while lying under the shade.
Among the hundreds of gipsy children in this vast camp who were going to ruin there were a few fast-goers, fools and fops, fraternizing with the “gipsy beauties,” but no hand was put out to help to save the children from woe. The “_gentlemen_” were too busy to soil their hands with the poor-ragged, forlorn, neglected, forgotten, and forsaken gipsy children. They might live like heathen and die like dogs. A thousand things must be attended to, and the souls and bodies of the gipsy children might go to hell for aught they cared.
Occasionally a gipsy child in this camp would begin to sing; but, as Elton Summers in the _Christian World_ Magazine for 1877, says—
“More plaintive and low is its melody, Till, faint with its own sad reverie, It sinks to a whisper and dies.”
As I lay, I noticed a man, apparently about sixty years of age, with grey hair, round features, and a load upon his back, coming through the gate into the meadow. The nimbleness and elasticity of his step had well-nigh gone. His clothes were ragged and worn. He staggered along, and as he began to move among the gipsies they began to add to his load. Sorrow had furrowed his cheeks and a paleness was upon his countenance. Every few minutes he seemed to hesitate and stop, as if going to put his load upon the ground, in order to move more quickly among them, and into a resting tent at the edge of the meadow.