which caused me to undergo a process of screwing up my feeling, and winking and blinking to avoid any sign of weakness becoming visible.
What a blessed future there would be for our gipsies and other vagabonds, if all their children could sing with tear-fetching pathos, “Whither, pilgrims, are you going,” in a way that would bring their parents often to their knees!
I bade them good-bye, and made my way back to London and home. I was far from well, and it was fortunate I had sent word over-night to my wife, asking her to meet me part of the way from the station, as I was coming by the last train.
The night was dark, very dark and wet, and with a giddy sensation creeping over me, I stepped out of the train and began to wend my way home, reeling about like a drunken man. I staggered and walked fairly well for more than half the distance, till I felt that I must pull up or I should tumble. For a few minutes I stood by a gate, my forehead and hands felt as cold as a lobster, with a clammy sweat upon them. I felt at my pulse, but the deadness of my fingers rendered them insensible to the throbbings of the human gauge fixed in our wrists.
Not a star in the heavens was visible to send its little twinkling cheer. If the bright brilliant guiding lamps of heaven had receded ten degrees backwards into the dark boundless space, the heavens could not have been darker. Everything was as still as death, and I did not seem to be making any headway at all. Neither sound of man nor horse could be heard. Oh! how I did wish and pray that somebody would pass by to give me a lift. I made another start, and had got as far as a heap of stones on the side of the road, when I felt that if I were to swoon, or to have a fit, or die, it would be better to be off the road. I was just going to sit upon the heap of stones, and had dropped my “Gladstone bags,” when I heard the patter of some little feet in the distance. I pricked up my ears, and shouted out as loud as I could, “Halloo, who’s there.” The answer came from my wife and little folks, “It is we.” I was steadied home between them, and found to my joy a good fire and supper awaiting me. I then thanked God for all His mercies and retired to my couch, feeling as Richard Wilton, M.A., felt when he penned the following lines for the Christian Miscellany, 1882—
“Some fruit of labour will remain,
And bending ears shall whisper low,
Not all in vain.”
Rambles among the Gipsies at Northampton Races.
In the midst of doubts and perplexities, sometimes inspired with confidence and at other times full of misgivings, and with my future course completely hidden from me as if I had been encircled by the blackest midnight darkness, with only one little bright star to be seen, I mustered up the little courage left in me; and with great difficulty and many tears of sorrow and disappointment, I started by the first train, with as light a load of troubles as possible under the circumstances, to find my way to Northampton races, to pick up such facts and information relating to the poor little gipsy tramps that Providence placed in my way, or I could collect together.
After the usual jostling, crushing, and scrambling by road and rail, smoke, oaths, betting, gambling, and swearing, I found myself seated in a tramcar in company with one gentleman only, and, strange to say, of the name of “Smith,” but not a “gipsy Smith,” nor a racing “Smith,” of whom there are a few; in fact, there are more gipsies of the name of “Smith” than there are of any other name. It may be fortunate or unfortunate for me that I cannot trace my lineage to a “gipsy Smith,” and that my birthplace was not under some hedge bottom, with the wide, wide world as a larder that never needed replenishing by hard toil. All required of the “gipsy kings” of the ditch bank, now as in days of yore—so long as the present laws are winked at, and others intended to reach them are shelved—is to “rise, kill, and eat,” for to-morrow we die, and the devil take the hindmost. My friend Mr. Smith was left in the car, and I sped my way upon the course. I had not been long in wandering about before I was joined by a respectable-looking old man, who evidently had done his share of hard work on “leather and nails,” and was on the lookout for ease and fresh air during the remainder of his pilgrimage to the one of two places in store for him. After a few minutes’ conversation about the “ities” and “isms” rampant at Northampton, and our various views upon them, we separated at the edge of the gipsy encampment, wigwams, squalor, and filth. I took the right turning—at least I have no doubt about its proving so in the long run—and he took the left turning; and to this day we have not run against each other again.
The gipsies, Push-gipsies, and Gorgios were hard at work putting up their tents and establishments, and I in the meantime walked and trotted the course in a morning’s airing fashion, coming in contact occasionally with a sceptic, infidel, and freethinker. These were turned away in my rough fashion, and my wandering racing meditations brought forth some of the following seeds of thought as I paced backwards and forwards upon the turf. At any rate they are problems, maxims, and aphorisms—such as they are—that have appeared before my vision in my gipsy rambles as I have been working out my gipsy plans, and are, I think, as worthy of a place here as the misleading gipsy lore and lies we have read and heard of. Some of these will probably die as they bud into life, others may keep green for a little time, and there may be a few that will live and cause a few wanderers to take notes of the journey: