“How I could love a chavi (child) like that, couldn’t you?” one young woman says to another.
Now, an older woman remarks to a friend—
“Yes, that’s true, I know drink will do that, for I’ve seen it.”
One feels that the story, simple as it is, touches the hearts of the listeners, and cannot but have an uplifting tendency.
I am glad to note the total absence of that “button-holing” of the individual which some seem to think so necessary in work of this nature. Gentle, straightforward, persuasive, heart-to-heart talk may, and probably will, win a Romanichal in time, but button-holing—never! I almost tremble to think of any zealous young man who adopts this method with a gypsy; few care to be button-holed in this way, but to try it with a gypsy is to make an enemy.
Now, all join heartily in the closing hymn, and there can be no doubt as to their enjoyment of it, for they sing it over again and again, so bringing to a close a gathering that would probably be regarded by an outsider as a strange meeting of strange people, and yet there is withal a fascination and charm about the whole affair, a sense of something to be thankful for that one fails to experience at a fashionable gathering.
“NO PLACE LIKE HOME.”
The well-known one-time hatred of all churches by the Romanies, and their dislike to adopt any custom of the gorgio would almost suffice to account for the gypsies having their own marriage ceremony, but when it is borne in mind that gypsies were—ought I not to say, are?—looked at askance by church-goers, and are obviously regarded with more scorn than sympathy, and that the gypsy knows this, it will be evident that the mission worker has need of infinite tact, and must be able to grasp and appreciate the traditional beliefs and inherited distrust of the gypsy, as well as sympathize in the difficulties and temptations which confront and beset him, if he hopes to find eventually that his work has not been in vain.