tements of Mr.
Harrison in a letter published in the _Standard_ last August, backing up
my case, it will be seen that the Scotch Gipsies if anything have
degenerated. Mr. Harrison's letter will be found in Part II.

Much has been said and written with reference to their health and age.
For my own part I firmly believe that the great ages to which they say
they live--of course there are many exceptions--are only myths and
delusions, and another of their dodges to excite sympathy. From the days
of their debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable
phrase for Gipsies, "old hags," they seem to jump from sixty to between
seventy and eighty at a bound. I was talking to one I considered an old
woman as to her age only a day or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful
tone, "I am a long way over seventy," and I asked her if she could tell
me the year in which she was born, to which she replied that she "was
sixteen when the good Queen was crowned."

The following case, related to me by the tradesman himself, at
Battersea--a sharp, quick, business gentleman, who boasted to me that he
had never been sold before by any one--will show faintly how clever the
Gipsy women are at lying, deception, and cheating:--Three pretty,
well-dressed Gipsy women went into his shop one day last summer, and said
that they had arranged to have a christening on the morrow, and as beer
got into the heads of their men, and made them wild, which they did not
like to see on such occasions, they had decided to have a quiet, little,
respectable affair, and in place of beer they were going to have wine,
cakes, and biscuits after their tea; and they ordered some currant cake,
several bottles of wine, tea, sugar, and other things required on such
occasions, to the amount of two pounds fourteen shillings. The Gipsies
asked to have the bill made out and the goods packed in a hamper. And
while this was being done the Gipsies said to the tradesman: "Now, as we
have ordered so much from you, we think that you ought to buy a mat or
two and other things of us." Without consulting his wife, he agreed to
buy one or two things, to the amount of eleven shillings, which the
tradesman had thought would have been deducted from their account; but
the Gipsies thought differently--and here was the craft--and said, "We
don't understand figures. You had better pay us for the mats, &c., and
we will pay you for the wine." The tradesman, who was thrown off his