unced upon any question affecting them. The Gipsies, in the winter,
certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the metropolis.
They do not cause rents to rise. They are satisfied to put up their tent
where a Londoner would only accommodate his pig or his dog, and they
certainly do not affect the balance of labour, few of them being ever
guilty of robbing a man of an honest day's work. Yet, with all their
failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take their part
in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account of their hard lot,
and the scanty measure with which the good things of this life have been,
and still are, meted out to them. Constrained by an irresistible force
to keep ever moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree
of cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit. As the
approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest possible
number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ the whole of his
time profitably, and those who only follow an outdoor life for the
pleasures it yields naturally gravitate towards the shelter of large
towns in which to spend the winter months of every year. So when the
cold winds begin to blow, and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to
town, and settle upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused
yards, and eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where
their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before them. The young
men get a day's work where they can; the young women hawk wool mats,
laces, or other women's vanities; while the more skilful go round with
rope mats, and every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes
and canes. The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or tinker pots
and pans; and, if a fine day or a pleasure fair calls forth all the
useful mouths and hands from their tents and caravans, the babies will
take care of themselves in the straw which makes the pony's bed until
some member of the camp returns home in the evening. So the winter
months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to call,
these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is acquainted with, go
forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or on the commons of the
country, pass their summer, earning a precarious subsistance--honestly if
they can--content with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel
the free air of heaven blowing about them night