Before finally dismissing the theme of fortune telling, I feel that as my gypsy friends have afforded me unique opportunities for studying the question from their point of view, I have at the same time been able to bring my unbiassed judgment to bear from the position of an outsider, and I owe it to the Romanies to state some of their reasons for thinking the law in the matter deals hardly with them, while I cannot but admit the good intention to suppress all proved attempts to obtain money by false pretences.
It cannot be denied that the Western nations are unable to fathom the mysticism of the Far East, neither can they explain the means by which Orientals—who are uncivilized in our meaning of the term—receive and transmit information without the aid of modern science but with greater facility and rapidity. Again, some of the Native Indian races seem to have entirely under control influences of which we of the West know nothing, or to which we perhaps give vague names to cover our ignorance. If, to this, we add the fact that in sheer trickery, deception and sleight of hand, the Oriental has no equal, we have a combination which must be regarded as in some degree the heritage of the Romany, and sweeping condemnation of the practices of such people, who are not understood, is likely to be unjust. Always, there have been, of course, gypsies whose practices would be based on trickery and deception,—always, too, there have been others, who have in no small degree inherited the occult powers of their ancestors, and who would scorn the deceits of their humbler and less scrupulous brethren; the former class have no better defence of their fortune telling than—that they must live somehow, and if people can be found who are silly enough to believe what they tell them, they are perfectly justified in taking their money for it; the latter class, however, when practising fortune telling exercise a profound knowledge of human nature, and consciously or unconsciously bring into operation powers of which we have little or no conception, and whose pronouncements are no more intentional swindling than are those of a phrenologist, and one cannot but respect some of the arguments they advance in their defence:—
They seldom foretell ill-luck,—usually they predict a happy marriage, accession to wealth, long life and a good time generally.
They contend that this is no more reprehensible than the lie which passes one’s lips when he says to a friend who is very ill, or may be apparently on the road to recovery, “Oh, you certainly look so much better than you did yesterday,” knowing the while that the sufferer is more seriously ill than on the previous day.
That surely it is well to foretell a good time, even when the seer has no prescience in the matter, so that the anxious one may be cheered by the thought of the happiness lying just ahead, although it be always just ahead, as to many it too often is until with their latest breath it becomes a glorious reality.
Better this, anyhow, than the uncharitable pessimism of a writer on this very subject of the last century, who, after characterizing everything a gypsy might say as a “stark lie” said, “And why should we deceive ourselves with gay and splendid expectations?”
After all, whatever may be our individual leanings in these matters,—the things that really count may be best gauged by the words of Him Who said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”
Once in the hop country I heard a child at a little distance crying distressfully as though in pain; before I could reach her, a somewhat rough-looking gypsy fellow forestalled me, and, after gently endeavouring to soothe the child, he called to a woman near for a piece of rag,—some one had evidently thrown a sharp stone which had cut, rather badly, the face of the child, causing it to bleed freely. The woman, seeing that a piece of linen was necessary, at once ripped off a piece of the blouse she was wearing, applied the inner side to the child’s face and bound up the wound. After it had ceased crying she led it away to its mother in a distant part of the field. The torn blouse seemed to be of no consequence,—a little child was in trouble and she had done what she could.
CHAPTER XI
IT is at any time interesting to meet in propriâ personâ either the original, or an exact counterpart of a character with whom one has hitherto been acquainted only through the observations of a third person, and it has been my good fortune to meet one such in a certain Mr. Petulengro, a name, by the way, that is pretty well known as the Romany equivalent of the surname Smith. Almost every one who mixes at all with gypsies will come across a number of Smiths, especially in the southern and eastern counties, but he whom I have in mind is one of the old school, and, so far as identity alone is concerned, might have stepped out of the pages of a writer upon gypsy life of the last century. He is a man of medium height, with typical Romany features, and may often be seen wearing a black great-coat having two silver buttons—each about one and a half inches in diameter—near the top. He is comparatively well-to-do, and is in possession of a caravan which cost something well over a hundred pounds to build. Until recently, he and I had somehow always managed to keep beyond hand-shaking distance, although we were known to each other through mutual friends. When at last I met him, he said as we shook hands—