And here L. told me what the old dye had insisted on reading in my hand. It was simply very remarkable, and embraced an apparent knowledge of the past, which would make any credulous person believe in her happy predictions of the future.
“Ah, well,” I said, “I suppose the dukk told it to her. She may be an eye-reader. A hint dropped here and there, unconsciously, the expression of the face, and a life’s practice will make anybody a witch. And if there ever was a witch’s eye, she has it.”
“I would like to have her picture,” said L., “in that lullo diklo [red handkerchief]. She looked like all the sorceresses of Thessaly and Egypt in one, and, as Bulwer says of the Witch of Vesuvius, was all the more terrible for having been beautiful.”
Some time after this we went, with Britannia Lee
a-gypsying, not figuratively, but literally, over the river into New Jersey. And our first greeting, as we touched the ground, was of good omen, and from a great man, for it was Walt Whitman. It is not often that even a poet meets with three sincerer admirers than the venerable bard encountered on this occasion; so, of course, we stopped and talked, and L. had the pleasure of being the first to communicate to Bon Gualtier certain pleasant things which had recently been printed of him by a distinguished English author, which is always an agreeable task. Blessed upon the mountains, or at the Camden ferryboat, or anywhere, are the feet of anybody who bringeth glad tidings.
“Well, are you going to see gypsies?”
“We are. We three gypsies be. By the abattoir. Au revoir.”
And on we went to the place where I had first found gypsies in America. All was at first so still that it seemed if no one could be camped in the spot.
“Se kekno adoi.” (There’s nobody there.)
“Dordi!” cried Britannia, “Dikkava me o tuv te tan te wardo. [I see a smoke, a tent, a wagon.] I declare, it is my puro pal, my old friend, W.”