ng about it. My obligations to him
for "Lavengro" and the "Romany Rye" and his other works are such as I owe
to few men. I have enjoyed gypsying more than any sport in the world,
and I owe my love of it all to George Borrow. I have since heard that a
part of Mr. Borrow's "Romano Lavo-Lil" had been in manuscript for thirty
years, and that it might never have been published but for my own work.
I hope that this is true; for I am sincerely proud to think that I may
have been in any way, directly or indirectly, the cause of his giving it
to the world. I would gladly enough have burnt my own book, as I said,
with a hearty laugh, when I saw the announcement of the "Lavo-Lil," if it
would have pleased the old Romany rye, and I never spoke a truer word.
He would not have believed it; but it would have been true, all the same.

I well remember the first time I met George Borrow. It was in the
British Museum, and I was introduced to him by Mrs. Estelle Lewis,--now
dead,--the well known-friend of Edgar A. Poe. He was seated at a table,
and had a large old German folio open before him. We talked about
gypsies, and I told him that I had unquestionably found the word for
"green," _shelno_, in use among the English Romany. He assented, and
said that he knew it. I mention this as a proof of the manner in which
the "Romano Lavo-Lil" must have been hurried, because he declares in it
that there is no English gypsy word for "green." In this work he asserts
that the English gypsy speech does not probably amount to fourteen
hundred words. It is a weakness with the Romany rye fraternity to
believe that there are no words in gypsy which they to not know. I am
sure that my own collection contains nearly four thousand Anglo-Romany
terms, many of which I feared were doubtful, but which I am constantly
verifying. America is a far better place in which to study the language
than England. As an old Scotch gypsy said to me lately, the deepest and
cleverest old gypsies all come over here to America, where they have
grown rich, and built the old language up again.

I knew a gentleman in London who was a man of extraordinary energy.
Having been utterly ruined, at seventy years of age, by a relative, he
left England, was absent two or three years in a foreign country, during
which time he made in business some fifty thousand pounds, and,
returning, settled down in England. He had been in youth for a long time
the most intimate friend of Ge