oyful hope.

"A Wonder--The Gipsy Girl.--If you wish to know all the
secrets of your past and future life, the knowledge of
which may save you years of sorrow and care, don't fail
to consult the above-named palmist. Charge 50 cents.
The Gipsy has also on hand a secret which will enable
any lady or gentleman to win or obtain the affections
of the opposite sex. Charge extra. No. 207 3d av.,
between 18th and 19th sts."

How the knowledge of all the secrets of his past life was to save
him years of sorrow and care at this late day he could not
exactly comprehend, and was willing to pay fifty cents for the
information. And then wasn't it worth half a dollar to see a live
gipsy? Of course it was.

Kettles, camp-fires, white tents under green trees, indigenous
brown babies and exotic white ones, with a panorama of empty
cradles and mourning mothers in the distance, moonlight nights,
midnight foraging excursions, expeditions against impertinent
game-keepers, demonstrations against hen-roosts--successful by
masterly generalship and pure strategic science--and the midnight
forest cookery of contraband game, surreptitious pigs and
clandestine chickens--were among the romantic ideas of a
delightful vagabond gipsy life that at once suggested themselves
to the mind of the Cash Customer. He did not really expect to
find the Third-Avenue gipsy camped out under a bed-quilt tent in
the lee of the house, or cooking her dinner in an iron pot over
an out-door fire in the back yard, but he had a vague undefined
hope that there would be some visible indications of gipsy life,
if it was nothing more than the pawn-tickets for stolen spoons.

He thought to find at least one or two beautiful babies knocking
about, decorated with coral necklaces and golden clasps,
suggestive of rich parents and better days, and had firmly
resolved to send the little innocents to the alms-house by way of
improving their condition. Full of these romantic notions, the
reporter started on his philanthropic mission, taking the
preliminary precaution of leaving at home his watch and
pocket-book, and carrying with him only small change enough to
pay the advertised charges.

In one of those three-story brick houses so abounding in this
city, which seem to have been built by the mile and cut off in
slices to suit purchasers, in the Third Avenue above Eighteenth
Street, dwelt at that time the gay Bohemian. The building in
wh