one can go in it to the confines of the world,--to Boston
and to Albany.

There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy's
education. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band of
gypsies who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little
roadside patch of green turf by the river-bank not far from his
house. It was shaded by elms and butternut-trees, and a long spit of
sand and pebbles ran out from it into the brawling stream. Probably
they were not a very good kind of gypsy, although the story was that
the men drank and beat the women. John didn't know much about
drinking; his experience of it was confined to sweet cider; yet he
had already set himself up as a reformer, and joined the Cold Water
Band. The object of this Band was to walk in a procession under a
banner that declared,

"So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate;"

and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of a
well-curb with a long sweep. It kept John and all the little boys and
girls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age;
though perhaps a few of them died meantime from eating loaf-cake and
pie and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.

The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of
curiosity and fear. Nothing more alien could come into the New
England life than this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible
that here were actually people who lived out-doors, who slept in
their covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air;
it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and the
remote times of the story-books; and John took these city thieves,
who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing
horses and robbing hen-roosts and cornfields, for the mysterious race
who for thousands of years have done these same things in all lands,
by right of their pure blood and ancient lineage. John was afraid to
approach the camp when any of the scowling and villainous men were
lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took more courage when only
women and children were visible. The swarthy, black-haired women in
dirty calico frocks were anything but attractive, but they spoke
softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him into
bringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course of
the season. In front of the tent were planted in the ground three
poles that met