e of the purchaser, a game not unknown
to Gorgios. I have heard of a German _yahud_ in Philadelphia, whose
little boy Moses would shoot from the door with a pop-gun or squirt at
passers-by, or abuse them vilely, and then run into the shop for shelter.
They of course pursued him and complained to the parent, who immediately
whipped his son, to the great solace of the afflicted ones. And then the
afflicted seldom failed to buy something in that shop, and the corrected
son received ten per cent. of the profit. The attention of the public
had been drawn.

As we went about looking at people and pastimes, a Romany, I think one of
the Ayres, said to me,--

"See the two policemen? They're following you two gentlemen. They saw
you pallin' with Bowers. That Bowers is the biggest blackguard on the
roads between London and Windsor. I don't want to hurt his charackter,
but it's no bad talkin' nor _dusherin_ of him to say that no decent
Romanys care to go with him. Good at a mill? Yes, he's that. A reg'lar
_wastimengro_, I call him. And that's why it is."

Now there was in the fair a vast institution which proclaimed by a
monstrous sign and by an excessive eruption of advertisement that it was
THE SENSATION OF THE AGE. This was a giant hand-organ in connection with
a forty-bicycle merry-go-round, all propelled by steam. And as we walked
about the fair, the two rural policemen, who had nothing better to do,
shadowed or followed us, their bucolic features expressing the intensest
suspicion allied to the extremest stupidity; when suddenly the Sensation
of the Age struck up the Gendarme's chorus, "We'll run 'em in," from
Genevieve de Brabant, and the arrangement was complete. Of all airs ever
composed this was the most appropriate to the occasion, and therefore it
played itself. The whole formed quite a little opera-bouffe, gypsies not
being wanting. And as we came round, in our promenade, the pretty girl,
with her rifle in hand, implored us to take a shot, and the walk wound up
by her finally letting fly herself and ringing the bell.

That pretty girl might or might not have a touch of Romany blood in her
veins, but it is worth noting that among all these show-men and
show-women, acrobats, exhibitors of giants, purse-droppers,
gingerbread-wheel gamblers, shilling knife-throwers, pitch-in-his-mouths,
Punches, Cheap-Jacks, thimble-rigs, and patterers of every kind there is
always a leaven and a suspicion of gypsiness.