ry to sustain the Gipsies in thus avoiding the union. That
the wandering Rommany can live at all is indeed wonderful, since not only
are all other human beings less exposed to suffering than many of them,
but even foxes and rabbits are better protected in their holes from
storms and frost. The Indians of North America have, without exception,
better tents; in fact, one of the last Gipsy _tans_ which I visited was
merely a bit of ragged canvas, so small that it could only cover the
upper portion of the bodies of the man and his wife who slept in it.
Where and how they packed their two children I cannot understand.

The impunity with which any fact might be published in English Rommany,
with the certainty that hardly a soul in England not of the blood could
understand it, is curiously illustrated by an incident which came within
my knowledge. The reader is probably aware that there appear
occasionally in the "Agony" column of the _Times_ (or in that devoted to
"personal" advertisements) certain sentences apparently written in some
very strange foreign tongue, but which the better informed are aware are
made by transposing letters according to the rules of cryptography or
secret writing. Now it is estimated that there are in Great Britain at
least one thousand lovers of occult lore and quaint curiosa, decipherers
of rebuses and adorers of anagrams, who, when one of these delightful
puzzles appears in the _Times_, set themselves down and know no rest
until it is unpuzzled and made clear, being stimulated in the pursuit by
the delightful consciousness that they are exploring the path of
somebody's secret, which somebody would be very sorry to have made known.

Such an advertisement appeared one day, and a friend of mine, who had a
genius for that sort of thing, sat himself down early one Saturday
morning to decipher it.

First of all he ascertained which letter occurred most frequently in the
advertisement, for this must be the letter _e_ according to rules made
and provided by the great Edgar A. Poe, the American poet-cryptographer.
But to reveal the secret in full, I may as well say, dear reader, that
you must take printers' type in their cases, _and follow the proportions
according to the size of the boxes_. By doing this you cannot fail to
unrip the seam of any of these transmutations.

But, alas! this cock would not fight--it was a dead bird in the pit. My
friend at once apprehended that he had to deal with an o