awakened within me the
highest interest. Of all connected with them, however, their language
was doubtless that which exercised the greatest influence over my
imagination. I had at first some suspicion that it would prove a mere
made-up gibberish. But I was soon undeceived. Broken, corrupted, and
half in ruins as it was, it was not long before I found that it was an
original speech, far more so, indeed, than one or two others of high name
and celebrity, which, up to that time, I had been in the habit of
regarding with respect and veneration. Indeed, many obscure points
connected with the vocabulary of these languages, and to which neither
classic nor modern lore afforded any clue, I thought I could now clear up
by means of this strange broken tongue, spoken by people who dwelt among
thickets and furze bushes, in tents as tawny as their faces, and whom the
generality of mankind designated, and with much semblance of justice, as
thieves and vagabonds. But where did this speech come from, and who were
they who spoke it? These were questions which I could not solve, and
which Jasper himself, when pressed, confessed his inability to answer.
"But, whoever we be, brother," said he, "we are an old people, and not
what folks in general imagine, broken gorgios; and, if we are not
Egyptians, we are at any rate Rommany Chals!"

"Rommany Chals! I should not wonder after all," said I, "that these
people had something to do with the founding of Rome. Rome, it is said,
was built by vagabonds, who knows but that some tribe of the kind settled
down thereabouts, and called the town which they built after their name;
but whence did they come originally? ah! there is the difficulty."

But abandoning these questions, which at that time were far too profound
for me, I went on studying the language, and at the same time the
characters and manners of these strange people. My rapid progress in the
former astonished, while it delighted, Jasper. "We'll no longer call you
Sap-engro, brother," said he; "but rather Lav-engro, which in the
language of the gorgios meaneth Word Master." "Nay, brother," said Tawno
Chikno, with whom I had become very intimate, "you had better call him
Cooro-mengro, I have put on _the gloves_ with him, and find him a pure
fist master; I like him for that, for I am a Cooro-mengro myself, and was
born at Brummagem."

"I likes him for his modesty," said Mrs. Chikno; "I never hears any ill
words come from his mou