confess that I was vexed, and, considering that it was in
my native city, mortified.

A few days after I went out to the _tan_ where these Roms had camped.
But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual debris
of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had
some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest; and that is all I
ever saw of them.

I have heard of a philanthropist who was turned into a misanthrope by
attempting to sketch in public and in galleries. Respectable strangers,
even clergymen, would stop and coolly look over his shoulder, and ask
questions, and give him advice, until he could work no longer. Why is it
that people who would not speak to you for life without an introduction
should think that their small curiosity to see your sketches authorizes
them to act as aquaintances? Or why is the pursuit of knowledge assumed
among the half-bred to be an excuse for so much intrusion? "I want to
know." Well, and what if you do? The man who thinks that his desire for
knowledge is an excuse for impertinence--and there are too many who act
on this in all sincerity--is of the kind who knocks the fingers off
statues, because "he wants them" for his collection; who chips away
tombstones, and hews down historic trees, and not infrequently steals
outright, and thinks that his pretense of culture is full excuse for all
his mean deeds. Of this tribe is the man who cuts his name on all walls
and smears it on the pyramids, to proclaim himself a fool to the world;
the difference being that, instead of wanting to know anything, he wants
everybody to know that His Littleness was once in a great place.

I knew a distinguished artist, who, while in the East, only secured his
best sketch of a landscape by employing fifty men to keep off the
multitude. I have seen a strange fellow take a lady's sketch out of her
hand, excusing himself with the remark that he was so fond of pictures.
Of course my readers do not act thus. When they are passing through the
Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite
the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once
knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense
that she should not watch artists at work. "Why, we used to make up
parties for the purpose of looking at them!" she said. "It was half the
fun of going there. I'm sure the artists were delighted to get a chance