Among the hundreds of gipsy children in this vast camp who were going to ruin there were a few fast-goers, fools and fops, fraternizing with the “gipsy beauties,” but no hand was put out to help to save the children from woe. The “gentlemen” were too busy to soil their hands with the poor-ragged, forlorn, neglected, forgotten, and forsaken gipsy children. They might live like heathen and die like dogs. A thousand things must be attended to, and the souls and bodies of the gipsy children might go to hell for aught they cared.
Occasionally a gipsy child in this camp would begin to sing; but, as Elton Summers in the Christian World Magazine for 1877, says—
“More plaintive and low is its melody,
Till, faint with its own sad reverie,
It sinks to a whisper and dies.”
As I lay, I noticed a man, apparently about sixty years of age, with grey hair, round features, and a load upon his back, coming through the gate into the meadow. The nimbleness and elasticity of his step had well-nigh gone. His clothes were ragged and worn. He staggered along, and as he began to move among the gipsies they began to add to his load. Sorrow had furrowed his cheeks and a paleness was upon his countenance. Every few minutes he seemed to hesitate and stop, as if going to put his load upon the ground, in order to move more quickly among them, and into a resting tent at the edge of the meadow.
During one of his standstills I heard him with tears in his eyes saying to himself, “Shall I put the load down? Yes, I think I will;” and then he summoned up strength and courage and said, “No! no! I won’t put it down till I’ve either carried it to where I want to carry it or die in the attempt.”
Presently he staggered and fell heavily with his burden upon the sod. He lay for a few minutes without any one noticing him. After he had lain for some time a crowd began to gather round him. Some said, with a chuckle and a grin, “He’s dead, thank God! We’ve done with him, thank God! and hope he has got into a warm place.” Three or four gentlemen pressed through the crowd to look at the old man; and as they were going among the bystanders I heard them say to each other, “If he shows signs of life we will give him a lift, but if he is going to die we will have nothing to do with him. Let those see to him who like, we will leave him to his fate, be it rough or smooth.” Like the priests and Levites of old, they went on the other side.
Among the crowds in the ditches I noticed an old posh gipsy woman from South Carolina Street, with basket in hand picking up wasps, newts, and weasels. One of the gentlemen noticed what she was doing, and questioned her as to her movements and intentions. She replied as follows, “You will see what I am going to do with them when I have gathered my basketful. I hold in my pocket a bottle containing some mixture that when once it is applied to the basket will cause them to buzz, sting, and poison fearfully. For the matter of that a few others will help to do the same thing; and when this is done I am going to empty them upon the poor devil’s head to either poison or sting him to death. Several here tried to do it before, but they were fools and did not go the right way to work.” One gentleman said, “Has the poor fellow ever done you any harm or wronged you in any way?” “Well, I don’t know that he has, but I and a few others want to see the end of him.”
She filled her basket, and applied the mixture to the wasps, newts, and weasels, and just as she was going to empty them upon the head of the poor fellow, about dying, they turned and settled upon her own pate, and away she went out of the crowd, and I have not seen her since. By the side of the poor fellow lay a small bag of seeds which were to grow bread, clothes, and comfort, which a few friends had collected to help the old man on his journey. It was not long by the side of the old pilgrim before up stepped a little dodger who had taken to gipsying, named Philip Lamb, from Russia, who seized the small bag and off he scampered. The last I saw of him was that he was tramping the country with patches upon his breeches.
While this was taking place, three or four other gentlemen—real and not shams—appeared upon the scene. For a few minutes they looked and stared at each other, as if at a loss to know what it all meant, and what the old man had done wrong. “Oh!” said one and another and another, “it will never do to let the poor fellow die in this way;” and they at once set to work to lighten his load, and to give him some nourishment. After treatment of this kind for a little time, he began to come round again, and smiles were to be seen upon his face and the faces of his friends.
Through one of the gates leading into this gipsy encampment I saw running post haste a number of well-dressed young men and women of respectable appearance, who were making their way to three or four men from the Ionian Isles, who had disappointed society and society had disappointed them. One man stood upon a little hillock, piping forth, in slap-dash gipsy songs, backwood novels, boshy stories, and gipsy lore, the beauties, delights, and loveliness of gipsy life in a way that caused a shivering, aching pang to run through my system from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. He continued to tell of the pleasure of white lies, and taking things that were not your own; and also in feeding upon things, whether birds, beasts, fish, or game, that lived in the water that God gave us, or upon the grass that He sent us. “God,” said these gipsy sensualists, “knew nothing of gates, fences, locks, keys, bars, and bolts.” These poor misguided young folks listened with open mouths, and in the end they went into the gipsy tents. They doffed their cloth, put on gipsy garbs, tanned and washed their faces in walnut water, and sallied forth into the crowd cadging and begging, lying and stealing—as only gipsies can.