The heavenly prayer of earth tinged with grief and sorrow will become the golden picture of heaven illuminated with joy and tinted with God’s radiant smile.
The face of a good man is the best heliograph in the world. The heliograph used in war-time, as a signal, shines best with the brightest sun, while the heliograph produced upon a man’s face by love shines best in the darkest hour. Dismal cellars, squalid hearths, wretched garrets and prisons, are good places in which to reflect a radiant splendour that will last for ever.
To get a faint idea of God’s goodness and infinite splendour we have only to imagine all the leaves and petals of vegetation, differing in shape and size, teeming with silvery dewdrops of an infinitude of delicate tints, which, as they drop among the flowers of earth, instantly turn into pearls and diamonds of the first water; and while you are picking them up, a doubling and multiplying process is everlastingly going on to fill their places. So God gives, and so are the recipients of His mercies, ever blessed with an infinite number of mercies daily and hourly as we pass along.
After another slow walk I felt drowsy, and sat down upon a mossy bank under a shady tree to rest my bones and wearied limbs. The whistling of the sweet songsters and the bleating of the sheep and lowing of the oxen, together with the lovely summer’s enchantments, sent me into a doze with my elbows upon my knees. I had not been long in this position before the meadow appeared as one vast gipsy encampment, composed of tents, vans, dogs, wretchedness, misery, devilry, ignorance, dirt, filth, and squalor. The gipsy men, women, and children were playing, singing, preying, banging, shouting, fighting, thieving, lying, swearing, poaching, cheating, and fortune-telling to their hearts’ content. Among this vast concourse of English gipsy heathens, there were not a few “spoony” Gorgios, and “posh gipsies.” At one side of the meadow there was a gipsy tent covered with rags and old sheeting. There were several little lost gipsy children playing about it on the grass. Near them stood two gipsy women talking to two silly young ladies, and telling their fortunes. The young ladies, of course, were both in love with fair gentlemen, but the fair gentlemen would prove deceitful and dark gentlemen would take their places; and they would marry well, after crossing the water, and become rich, and have a number of children, who would become dukes and lords, and would live and die rolling in gold and splendour, with horses, carriages, and servants to wait upon them “hand and foot.” One of the young ladies, with glittering wealth hanging about her, would have much trouble and many disappointments before she realized her wishes, but all would be removed and made right as time went on. One of the old fortune-telling wicked hags, who could not read a letter, took out a small pocket Bible, and pretended to read a few verses. The old gipsies made a few signs, repeated some gabble, and looked into the hands of the young ladies, and told them to come again, as they had something of great importance to tell them the next time, which would add much to their happiness, beauty, and pleasure; but before the secrets could be successful they must bring the best and most valuable ring they had in the house for her to make crosses with, so that she might rule her planet properly and dispose of the fair man, who was haunting one of them to make her his wife, but would bring her to ruin. To the other young lady an old gipsy woman said, in a kind of snake’s whisper, “You, my dear young lady, have living with you in your family a fair woman and dark man; they don’t mean you any good. You must have nothing to do with them; be sure and hear what I say. Now mind, you must not listen to what they say, or it will be your ruin, and all my words of counsel will turn to curses.” “But,” said the young lady, “there is no fair woman or dark man in our house, except my father and mother.” “Well,” said the old gipsy, “hear what I have to say. Your father and mother are no friends of yours. Now mark that; goodbye, my sweet girl. The Lord bless you, my dear girl. I shall see you again soon; good-bye. Be sure and bring the best ring in the house. Good-bye, and may the dear Lord bless you. If you can bring two rings it will be all the better for your happiness and fortune. The young gentleman who will be your husband will never be cross. He will always be smiling. He will be beautiful, and he will let you go where you like and do what you like. Bring two rings for your own sake. Good-bye, my darling child. I wish I stood in the way for a fortune and happiness as surely as you do; but all depends upon you bringing me the rings. Good-bye, my sweet child. If you can bring me a spade-ace guinea, or a Queen Victoria sovereign of the present year, it will be all the better. I can influence the planets so that you can have your dear charming little husband, horses, carriages, and footmen to wait upon you earlier. The planets will do anything just now. Good-bye, my sweet darling child. You are so much like your dear aunt; she was one of the prettiest and best ladies I ever knew, and it would be a thousand pities for you not to have a good husband. Bring the two rings, and the guinea or sovereign, and it shall be all right. Good-bye.” “But,” said the young lady, “I have not got any diamond rings and sovereigns. They are my father’s and mother’s.” “Never mind. Hear what I say; you must bring them if you want to be happy. I’ll influence the planets to send your father and mother,” said the old hag, closing her fist, and with fire in her eyes, and a devil’s anger in heart, and frowns upon her face, “more in their places of greater value to them. The planets will not be ruled, my dear young lady, except by the rings that your father and mother have worn; and the sovereign would be all the better if taken out of either your father’s or mother’s pocket. The gold and rings of your mother have the most influence with the planets.”
After the young ladies had gone, the woman winked at me with a twinkle, and said, with her arm raised, “Don’t you spoil my game, and I will bless you. If all goes on right we shall have lots of money the whole of the winter. If you do spoil my game, I—I—I will curse you to death; to death will I curse you, and shall call you a vile wretch for ever; to death you shall be sent.”
While this was going on, a little bird was singing in the trees overhead, which caused the old gipsy woman to look up at it and me, and in a softened voice said, “What does it say?” I said, “If you could but read it rightly, it says, ‘Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” This seemed to startle the old gipsy, and she vanished into the crowd.
Among the crowd of gipsies I noticed several gipsy men clustered together. In the centre of the group there was a dead sheep. Sticker said to Nobbler, “How did you come by it?” “Never mind,” said Nobbler. “I’ve got it and that’s enough, but I may as well tell you a little. I went round the villages a few miles away selling some pegs and skewers, and just outside one of the villages there was a large lot of sheep in one of the fields in prime condition, belonging to a farmer who, they say, is a sleepy sort of a chap, and will never put any of the bobbies upon your track. I conceived a liking for one of the sheep. I knew Goggle Fletcher would be passing by the end of the field in which the sheep were with his cart; and so I hung about in the public-house in the village till it was dark. I entered the field through a gap, and drove them into a dry corner. I kept upon the tufts of grass as much as I could, so that I could not be traced. I was not long before I made short work with one of them. After this I dragged him to the ditch by the side of the road by which Goggles was to pass. I lay in the ditch for a long time. It seemed as if he never would come. At last about eleven o’clock he came. I could tell the sound of his trap. On coming up to me I bawled out in a soft voice, ‘Goggles, Goggles, step down. I’ve got something for you. It will be a treat for Sunday’s dinner.’ ‘Is that you, Nobbler? What! You’ve been up to it again, have you? You will have the “long wools,” if they are to be got, without either love or money.’” Goggles jumped down and helped Nobbler to lift the sheep into the cart, and off they bowled, arriving in the meadow about one o’clock in the morning. Gipsies always take their plunder far away. The skin was buried, and they set to work dividing the carcase among their kith and kin.
Another gang had been out on a poaching expedition with their lurcher dogs, and brought to their tents and vans some hares, rabbits, and pheasants; these were also divided. Among this vast gipsy encampment, numbering some hundred men, women, and children, I saw an aged couple of gipsies with some of their grandchildren round them. The old woman had learned to read the Bible a little, and she was telling the children to be good and love God. She was the only one who could read among the gipsies, except a few riffraff Gorgios, who were studying gipsying with a view to leading an idle vagabond’s life, free from parental restraint and elevating social influences.
In the camp I noticed a posh gipsy “scissor-grinder” from one of our alleys, and his gipsy wife; every few minutes he bawled out, “Scissors to grind!” “Scissors to grind!” While he was grinding away at his knives and scissors, his wife was stitching umbrellas and “minding her baby.”