Though they are fond of a great degree of heat, and to lie so near the fire, as to be in danger of burning, yet they can bear to travel in the severest cold, bareheaded, with no other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over them.
The causes of these bodily qualities, or at least some of them, evidently arise from their education, and hardy manner of life.
The pitiless mother takes her three months old child on her back, and wanders about, in fair and foul weather, in heat or cold; there it sits winter and summer, in a linen rug, with its head over her shoulder. Gypsey women never use a cradle, nor even possess such a piece of furniture. The child sleeps in their arms, or on the ground. When a boy attains three years of age, his lot becomes still harder. Whilst an infant, and his age reckoned by weeks and months, he was wrapt in rags, but now deprived of these, he is equally with his parents, exposed to the rigour of the elements, for want of covering; he is now put to trial how far his legs will carry him; and must be content to travel about with, at most, no other defence for his feet than thin socks.
Thus he acquires a robust constitution by hardships and misery; but though the children of Gypsies do not partake of what the refinements of art and of tenderness would account advantages, writers are unanimous in stating, they are good-looking, well-shaped, lively, clever, and have fine eyes. The Gypsies, in common with uncivilized people, entertain unbounded love for their children. This is a source of inexcusable neglect: Gypsey children never feel the rod, they fly into the most violent passions, and at the same time hear nothing from their parents but flattering and coaxing. In return they act with ingratitude, as is commonly the consequence of such education.
Gypsies would long ago have been divested of their swarthy complexions, had they discontinued their filthy mode of living. The Laplanders, Samoieds, as well as the Siberians, likewise, have brown, yellow-coloured skins, in consequence of living from their childhood, in smoke and dirt, in the same manner as the Gypsies.
Experience shows that their dark colour, which is continued from generation to generation, is more the effect of education, and manner of life, than of descent. Among those who serve in the Imperial army, where they have learned to pay attention to order and cleanliness, there are many to be found, whose extraction is not at all discernible in their colour; though they had, probably, remained to the age of twelve or fourteen years under the care of their filthy parents.