To the waves upon the shore.

Our new acquaintance was ragged and disreputable. Yet he held in his
hand a shilling copy of "Helen's Babies," in which were pressed some fern
leaves.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked.

"_Shelkin gallopas_ just now," he replied.

"And what is that?"

"Selling ferns. Don't you understand? That's what we call it in
_Minklers Thari_. That's tinkers' language. I thought as you knew
Romanes you might understand it. The right name for it is _Shelter_ or
_Shelta_."

Out came our note-books and pencils. So this was the _Shelter_ of which
I had heard. He was promptly asked to explain what sort of a language it
was.

"Well, gentlemen, you must know that I have no great gift for languages.
I never could learn even French properly. I can conjugate the verb
_etre_,--that is all. I'm an ignorant fellow, and very low. I've been
kicked out of the lowest slums in Whitechapel because I was too much of a
blackguard for 'em. But I know rhyming slang. Do you know Lord John
Russell?"

"Well, I know a little of rhyming, but not that."

"Why, it rhymes to _bustle_."

"I see. _Bustle_ is to pick pockets."

"Yes, or anything like it, such as ringing the changes."

Here the professor was "in his plate." He knows perfectly how to ring
the changes. It is effected by going into a shop, asking for change for
a sovereign, purchasing some trifling article, then, by ostensibly
changing your mind as to having the change, so bewilder the shopman as to
cheat him out of ten shillings. It is easily done by one who understands
it. The professor does not practice this art for the lucre of gain, but
he understands it in detail. And of this he gave such proofs to the
tramp that the latter was astonished.

"A tinker would like to have a wife who knows as much of that as you do,"
he remarked. "No woman is fit to be a tinker's wife who can't make ten
shillings a day by _glantherin_. _Glantherin_ or _glad'herin_ is the
correct word in Shelter for ringing the changes. As for the language, I
believe it's mostly Gaelic, but it's mixed up with Romanes and canting or
thieves' slang. Once it was the common language of all the old tinkers.
But of late years the old tinkers' families are mostly broken up, and the
language is perishing."

Then he proceeded to give us the words in Shelta, or Minklers Thari.
They were as follows:--

Shelkin gallopas Selling ferns.
Soobli, Soob