he decoction.
They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last extremity. They are
very much like the man who tried by degrees to train his donkey to live
and work without food, and just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and
so it is with the poor Gipsy children. It kills them to break them in to
the hardships of Gipsy life. Occasionally I have heard of Gipsies who
act as human beings should do with their children. A well-to-do Gipsy
whom I know--one of the Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson--has spent over 30
pounds in doctors' bills this winter for his children's good. Not one
Gipsy in a thousand would do likewise.

Gipsies die like other folk, although before doing so they may have lived
and quarrelled like the Kilkenny cats among other Gipsies; but at death
these things are all forgotten, and a Gipsy funeral seems to be the means
to revive all the good they knew about the person dead and a burying of
all the bad connected with the dead Gipsy's life. I am now referring to
a few of the better class of Gipsies. Gipsies, as a rule, pay special
regard to the wishes of a dying Gipsy, and will sacrifice almost anything
to carry them out. I attended the funeral of a house-dwelling Gipsy,
Mrs. Roberts, at Notting Hill, a few weeks ago. The editor and
proprietor of the _Suburban Press_, refers to this funeral in his edition
under date February 28th, as follows:--"On Monday last a noteworthy event
took place in the humble locality of the Potteries, Notting Dale. In
this district are congregated a miscellaneous population of the poorest
order, who get what living they can out of the brick-fields or adjoining
streets and lanes, or by costermongering, tinkering, &c., &c. They dwell
together in the poorest and most melancholy-looking cottages, some in
sheds and outhouses, or in dilapidated vans, for it is the resort and
_locale_ of many of the Gipsies that wander in the western suburbs. Yet
all these make up a kind of community and live together as friends and
neighbours, and every now and again they show themselves amenable to good
influences, and characters of humble mark and power arise among them. To
those who sympathise with the poet who sings of the

"'Short and simple annals of the poor,'

we scarcely know a region that can be studied to greater advantage. In
the present instance it was the funeral of an old inhabitant of the Gipsy
tribe, one of the oldest, most respected, and loved of all the nomads,
and