l follow this work. But
throwing aside all the evidence afforded by language, traditions,
manners, and customs, one irrefutable proof still remains in the physical
resemblance between Gipsies all the world over and the natives of India.
Even in Egypt, the country claimed by the Gipsies themselves as their
remote great-grandfather-land, the native Gipsy is not Egyptian in his
appearance but Hindu. The peculiar brilliancy of the eye and its
expression in the Indian is common to the Gipsy, but not to the Egyptian
or Arab; and every donkey-boy in Cairo knows the difference between the
_Rhagarin_ and the native as to personal appearance. I have seen both
Hindus in Cairo and Gipsies, and the resemblance to each other is as
marked as their difference from Egyptians.

A few years ago an article on the Rommany language appeared in the
"Atlantic Magazine" (Boston, U.S., America), in which the writer declared
that Gipsy has very little affinity with Hindustani, but a great deal
with Bohemian or Chech--in fact, he maintained, if I remember right, that
a Chech and a Rom could understand one another in either of their
respective tongues. I once devoted my time for several months to
unintermitted study of Chech, and consequently do not speak in entire
ignorance when I declare that true Rommany contains scores of Hindu words
to one of Bohemian. {133}

CHAPTER IX. MISCELLANEA.

Gipsies and Cats.--"Christians."--Christians not "Hanimals."--Green, Red,
and Yellow.--The Evil Eye.--Models and Morals.--Punji and
Sponge-cake.--Troubles with a Gipsy Teacher.--Pilferin' and
Bilberin'.--Khapana and Hopper.--Hoppera-glasses.--The little wooden
Bear.--Huckeny Ponkee, Hanky Panky, Hocus-pocus, and Hokkeny
Baro.--Burning a Gipsy Witch alive in America.--Daniel in the Lions'
Den.--Gipsy Life in Summer.--The Gavengroes.--The Gipsy's Story of Pitch-
and-Toss.--"You didn't fight your Stockings off?"--The guileless and
venerable Gipsy.--The Gipsy Professor of Rommany and the Police.--His
Delicacy of Feeling.--The old Gipsy and the beautiful Italian Models.--The
Admired of the Police.--Honesty strangely illustrated.--Gipsies willing
or unwilling to communicate Rommany.--Romance and Eccentricity of Gipsy
Life and Manners.--The Gipsy Grandmother and her Family.--A fine Frolic
interrupted.--The Gipsy Gentleman from America.--No such Language as
Rommany.--Hedgehogs.--The Witch Element in Gipsy Life.--Jackdaws and
Dogs.--Their Uses.--Lurchers a