who always affected the old Gipsy style), in striped corduroy
coat, leather breeches and gaiters, red waistcoat, yellow
neck-handkerchief, and a frightfully-dilapidated old white hat, was not,
it must be admitted, entirely adapted to the exterior of a highly
respectable mansion. "And he had such a vile way of looking, as if he
were a-waitin' for some friend to come out o' the 'ouse." It is almost
needless to say that this apparition attracted the police from afar off
and all about, or that they gathered around him like buzzards near a
departed lamb. I was told by a highly intelligent gentleman who
witnessed the interviews, that the professor's kindly reception of these
public characters--the infantile smile with which he courted their
acquaintance, and the good old grandfatherly air with which he listened
to their little tales--was indescribably delightful. "In a quarter of an
hour any one of them would have lent him a shilling;" and it was soon
apparent that the entire force found a charm in his society. The lone
lady herself made a sortie against him once; but one glance at the
amiable smile, "which was child-like and bland," disarmed her, and it was
reported that she subsequently sent him out half-a-pint of beer.

It is needless to point out to the reader accustomed to good society that
the professor's declining to sit in a room where valuable and small
objects abounded, in the absence of the owner, was dictated by the most
delicate feeling. Not less remarkable than his strict politeness was the
mysterious charm which this antique nomad unquestionably exercised on the
entire female sex. Ladies of the highest respectability and culture, old
or young, who had once seen him, invariably referred to him as "that
charming old Gipsy."

Nor was his sorcery less potent on those of low degree. Never shall I
forget one morning when the two prettiest young Italian model-girls in
all London were poseeing to an artist friend while the professor sat and
imparted to me the lore of the Rommany. The girls behaved like moral
statues till he appeared, and like quicksilver imps and devilettes for
the rest of the sitting. Something of the wild and weird in the mountain
Italian life of these ex-contadine seemed to wake like unholy fire, and
answer sympathetically to the Gipsy wizard-spell. Over mountain and sea,
and through dark forests with legends of _streghe_ and Zingari, these
semi-outlaws of society, the Neapolitan and Romm