Part 27

I forwarded copies of the Amended Bill to Sir Charles Dilke, the new President of the Local Government Board, and also to Mr. Mundella, the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, and here are their replies. A few days previously I had written to Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Mundella, urging them to take up the Bill; in fact, I have for years been pressing the Government to take up the Bill, as one that will do much good and bring them much credit. Of course I cannot expect them to do impossibilities. I know their hands are full; at the same time the period has come when the sixty thousand canal and gipsy children must be educated and cared for by “hook or by crook,” as being of primary importance for the country’s welfare to the thousand and one things that are now before Parliament.

“LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, WHITEHALL, _March_ 14, 1883.

“DEAR SIR,

“I have to thank you for the copy of the Bill you have sent to Sir Charles Dilke. In consequence of Mr. Ashton Dilke’s death he will not be present in the House of Commons this week.

“Yours truly, A. E. C. BODLEY.

“_George Smith_, _Esq._”

* * * * *

“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE, _March_ 14, 1883.

“SIR,

“Mr. Mundella desires me to thank you for sending him a copy of your Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill enclosed in your letter of the 12th inst.

“Yours faithfully, H. T. BRYANT.

“_George Smith_, _Esq._”

My days of hard work, and scores of letters written in relation to the questions put to Mr. Dodson and Mr. Mundella, have brought forth the usual molehill of “under consideration.” The political fields of moral and social progress are full of crotchets and molehills. Would to God that either John Bull with his horns or John Straw with his spade would level them to the ground.

At any rate those mountainous molehills, six inches high, which are checking the van of social progress, laden as it is—aye, heaped up—with blessings for the thirty thousand poor little gipsy children who are starving to death in our midst, in the mud, rotten straw, filth, and rags of a soul-perishing and body-killing nature, amidst which the poor gipsy child has to live.

The greatest difficulties I know of are the dung heaps scattered about by sensational trash backwood gipsy writers. I can almost imagine our imported and other Demetriuses and damsels calling out on the steps of St. Stephen’s, Westminster, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.” “Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people.” “Our craft is in danger to be set at nought.” “Let us hang the devil.”

The registration official overcomes “difficulties” when he registers a gipsy hawker’s van in order that he may extract £4 from him; and the policeman overcomes “difficulties” when he brings to bay before a bench of magistrates a gipsy child for stealing a turnip, or a gipsy poacher for making too free with a partridge. There are seas of “difficulties” to be waded through, it would seem, before the gipsy children are to be led to the school doors, and the sanitary inspectors to their suffocating, immoral, and unhealthy homes. It is un-English, wicked, and unjust to deliver the gipsy and other travelling children over to the policeman, without ever having taught them to know right from wrong in day and Sunday schools. A terrible day of reckoning and vengeance awaits us for our wrongdoings towards our present-day English gipsy children, think about it as lightly as we may.

The sanitary inspector steps into lodging-houses to prevent overcrowding. The factory inspector steps, without an invitation, into the workshop to prohibit the overworking of children. The Board of Trade officer will not allow overcrowding of ships, although they may be classed as A1 at Lloyd’s. Overcrowding in barracks and workhouses is not allowed, and the School Board officer steps into a labourer’s household—the head of which, with a large family surrounding him, only earns about 12s. per week—under pain of a fine and the “squire’s” displeasure, and orders the young urchins off “neck and crop” to school; while canal and gipsy children are left out in the cold.

Two years ago I invited twelve gipsy children, who were living in two vans and attending our feast, to tea on our hearthstone. Although three of the parents could read and write, and ten of the children were of school age, not one of the poor little things could tell a letter. All the van-dwellers were in the lowest depths of degradation, filth, and misery. They were surrounded with sunshine, and yet it never entered their wretched dwelling; at any rate they never opened their door with glad hearts and thankful song to receive its cheering rays.

The chimes and music of church bells seemed to have no other effect upon their lives than the bringing forth of the cries of misery, wails of anguish, and groans of despair. The beautiful robes with which nature was clothed made their ragged, wretched torn garments look as if they had been pulled to pieces, torn and stuck together by demons who had thrown off all moral restraint, and were following the downward tendencies of human nature to their hearts’ content. Three of the parents once had a comfortable settled home, but alas! alas! it seems to be all over, and a blacker future for the children awaits them, if the Government do not take the poor things by the hand and lead them a step forwards and upwards.

At the close of 1882 I visited, on a Sunday afternoon, a camp of gipsies upon Turnham Green. There were five vans and tents, and fourteen men and women and seventeen children squatting round their fires upon the wet and slushy grass. As I neared them, five of the gipsy children, half naked, came running towards me. One little curly-headed fellow, named Boswell, shouted out, “If you please, guv’-nor, have you come to teach us to read, the same as a kind lady did last summer? We wish you would. Have you brought us any picture books? Please read a bit to us.” After a few minutes chat with them, I emptied my bag of cards, and with a sorrowful heart left the gipsy children in their ignorance to speed their wishes into the air, so it appears. With a writer in the _Sunday Magazine_, I say with a deep, deep-drawn sigh—

“Oh the wandering waifs and strays, In hiding day and night, And lacking verdant shelter, On their lives a blight; Aye, creeping far and farther From the eyes of men; If they find a lodging, ’Tis in some horrid den!”

A little later on I went to Daventry and found a man—a tradesman—in the market-place, exhibiting a deformed pony rather than follow his own trade. Both man and wife could read and write—in fact, the woman had once been a Sunday-school teacher—but not one of their five children could read a sentence.

Only the other day, our good vicar’s respected wife, Mrs. Darnell, in company with her niece, Miss Stansfeld, took shelter in a cottage, rather than face two most repulsive-looking men and one woman with seven children, who were tramping the country in a most wretched and forlorn condition. Their only home consisted in an old handcart full of rags, upon which were perched, on a most bitterly cold and wet day, three poor gipsy children; and the other four children were trudging by the side of the hand-cart scarcely able to get one foot before the other. Their shoeless footprints seemed to cry out loud for help. Many gipsies camp upon Cannock Chase from time to time, and such is their character that people passing that way in dark hours generally take the precaution to be armed with pistols, and to have dogs by their sides.

Think about it lightly as we may, the evils of gipsying are on the increase in this country. Fortune-telling and deceit are taking fast hold upon the “silly girls and young chaps.” Very recently the _Daily News_ reported a case in Dorsetshire where two gipsy women induced a dairyman’s wife to part with her sovereigns for a sheep’s heart studded with pins in mystic patterns outside, and crammed inside with bright farthings. The heart was to be hung in the chimney till Easter, when it was to be taken out and all the farthings to be turned into sovereigns. The woman’s husband broke the “spell” by pulling the heart out of the chimney before Easter. The _Graphic_, in the spring of 1882, reports a case of a “white witch” at Plymouth, who declared that the whole crew of a smack were under a “spell”—and the crew believed it—which “spell” only the gipsy witch could remove, and of course for money only. The _British Workman_ for October, 1882, shows a little of some of the evils of fortune-telling. At the Bradford county police-court recently, Delia Young, a gipsy, was charged with fortune-telling. For some weeks the prisoner, with a number of other gipsies, had been staying at a village named Wyke, and hundreds of persons of all ages and both sexes had visited her. Her fees ranged from ls. to 5s., the latter sum being charged when a “planet was ruled.” It was stated that her earnings must have averaged several guineas a day for many months. For the defence it was contended that the prisoner and her family had told fortunes at Blackpool during the season for twenty years. She was fined £5 and costs, with the alternative of two months’ imprisonment. The money was paid.

I have visited more than once the gipsies upon Plaistow marshes in company with Mr. —, and also with my son, and found about thirty families squatting about in their vans and tents, up to their knees in mud, and in a most heartrending condition. Farmers house their pigs in a much better condition than we found the poor lost gipsies tented and housed. Gipsy children came round us by the score. There would be not fewer than between a hundred and a hundred and fifty poor little creatures, growing up without ever visiting either the school or the church, although there were a magnificent school and church within a stone’s throw. The sanitary inspector, school board officer, and Christian ministers were unknown to those wretched, lost gipsy children. They are fully acquainted with the policeman and his doings. In one or two of the vans smallpox and fever appeared to me to be at work. Round the outskirts of London there will be nearly 3,000 gipsies tenting and squatting about. They generally find the lowest and swampy spots.

My scores of visits to various parts of the country during many years are not recorded here, but the same sorrowful tale is everywhere manifest.

It does seem that letters of blood and words of fire will be needed to arouse the hearts and consciences of my countrymen, and compel them to observe the dark side of human life which lies close to our eyes and noses; and to draw the veil of ignorance away which is preventing the sun of civilization carrying out its mission among our own outcasts.

“The darkness falls, the wind is high, Dense black clouds till the western sky, The storm will soon begin. The thunders roar, the lightnings flash, I hear the great round rain drops dash; Are all the children in?”

_The Christian Freeman_, 1877 _and_ 1878.

I answer, “No! no!” and with a tear-fetching pang I again say, “No!” The canal and gipsy children are still outside the door, and our legislators do not care to open it, owing to the “difficulties” which prevent the latch from being lifted up. The nail is in the way, and the door is locked—

“Nobody kind words pouring In that gipsy heart’s sad ear, But all of us ignoring What lies at our door so near.”

_The Christian Freeman_.

Rambles among the Scotch Gipsies at Yetholm.

THE 18th of December, 1882, was a bitterly _shil_ (cold) _divvus_ (day),

## partly frozen _ghie_ (snow) lay several inches on the _chik_ (ground).

The _dúvel_ (sky) was gloomy and overcast as if threatening this _doŏvelesto-chairos_ (world) of ours with a fresh outburst of _vénlo_ (wintry) vengeance. Not a _patrin_ (leaf) was to be seen upon the _rook_ (tree). The _bával_ (wind) seemed at times to engage in a chorus of _shoolo_ (whistling) and howling, and other discordant _gúdli_ (noises). The few linnets, sparrows, bullfinches to be seen hopping about the _drom_ (road) in quest of _kóben_ (food), were almost starved to _méripen_ (death); _shil_ (cold) and _bok_ (hunger) had made them tame and _posh_ (half) _moólo_ (dead).

In a few minutes I stood at our door with my old grey coat over my arm, wondering whether I should in my state of health face my cold journey to Scotland. After a little reflection, quickened by “the path of duty is the path of safety,” which seemed to be more beautiful than ever, I started with my bag in hand to tramp my way to the railway station. I did not feel on the way in a humour for singing, with cap in hand, and in joyous strains, “Oh! this will be joyful,” but could have said with Wesley,

“If in this darksome wild I stray, Be Thou my Light, be Thou my Way.”

In the train I duly seated myself, and we sped on till I arrived at Leicester, the seat of stockings and leather.

Leicester is a pleasant town, but, as in the case of other towns, there are a few—only a few, thank God!—fools in it whose light from farthing candles will become less as her wise men, good and true, increase. After my landing upon the platform I made my way to the house of my sister-in-law, and there rested my bones for the night. During my restless night, with the full blaze of a lamp shining in my face, some of the following aphorisms were entered in my notebook:—

The books of infidels, sceptics, socialists, and atheists may be compared to handfuls of sulphur cast into the fire of public opinion. They give a bluish flash for a moment, reflecting deathly and ghastly hues upon those who stand near; which sometimes cause children, and those of weak minds, narrow vision, and short sight to put their hands into the fire to see where the deathly colours come from.

Righteous kings and queens, doing God-like acts to elevate and beautify their subjects, may be compared to heavenly gardeners, whose business in life is to beautify human nature and society with an increasing number of moral tints and splendour, reflected by the heavenly throne, and to transmit the colouring rays to the human flowers growing up under their charge; thus making this beautiful earth more like Paradise every year.

The righteous deeds of a good king or queen, when they emanate from a heart filled with heavenly desires to render earthly subjects contented and happy, are seeds that the spirit of evil cannot kill. They will live and thrive to the end of time, and then they will be transplanted to heaven to bloom through eternity.

When a Christian is said to have taken to doubting God’s goodness, lovingkindness, and fatherly care, he may be said to have drawn down the blinds of his soul and dimmed his vision of the beauty, power, and love of Jehovah, the creator and upholder of all things in heaven, earth, and sea.

Those who through fraud, craft, and deceit obtain the crown of laurels won by others will find that, instead of the soft, beautiful leaves, it will turn into a hard crown of thorns, that will prick sharp and deep enough to touch the quick of the soul, ruffle the thoughts, disturb the mind, and trouble the conscience.

As bees in gathering honey from flowers often transmit many new and lovely colours to plants and flowers, so in like manner good children in passing into the world among all kinds of families, especially among the young, change and beautify by kind words, soft answers, and example the characters of those they are brought in contact with.

The words used in faith by good Christian fathers and mothers in blessing their children are jewels, pearls, and other precious stones, which will be strung together by angelic hands with golden threads, and worked into patterns that are to adorn the children as they walk over the plains of Paradise. They are the immortal flowers of earth, with a life within them that will transform them into the everlasting flowers of heaven, that will be strewn by little loved ones upon the path of saints as they walk the streets of the New Jerusalem.

It is not always the largest flowers which make the prettiest bouquet, or adorn a drawing-room to the best advantage. The little bird’s-eye, that grows among the thistles in the hedge-bottom, is prettier and more modest than the large sunflower; so in like manner it is not always the big, shining, dashing, flashing Christian, with few real good deeds, that is the most beautiful and lovely in God’s sight. The little Sunday-school scholar, with Jesus shining out of his actions, in a garret is the most beautiful and lovely to look upon, and illumines a modest quiet corner with the greatest effect.

Bees gather honey from the most unassuming flowers, which are oftentimes hid among thorns; so in like manner the sweetness of heaven is to be gathered from good and lovely children, brought up by Christian parents, living modestly and quietly in our back streets among the roughest and lowest of the low, more prickly than thorns, and more poisonous than poison.

Those short-sighted beings engaged in trying to get virtue out of a gin-palace will find it harder work than extracting honey out of a putrifying dead dog.

Double-faced Christians, engaged in trying to draw forth goodness out of sin, wherewith to quench the qualms of conscience, will find that they are engaged in a more difficult task than that of drawing pure spring water from a cesspool.

Words are leaves, prayers bloom, and deeds fruit. If the tree has grown up under religious influence the kernel contains seeds of immortality, but if reared under the influence of sin the kernel will be a rotten core and worse than useless.

To love and to sing is to live, and to hate and to swear is to die.

Bad deeds, though often written and rewritten, soil the hands of the scribe, corrupt his heart, taint the olfactory senses of the reader—although they may be as angels—with an unpleasant odour, offend their eyes, and become in the end illegible blotches, smudges, and smears.

Good deeds, performed with a good object, eat themselves clearly and legibly into the pages of history, which time turns into gold, and leave a pleasant impression upon the writers and readers—although they may be devils—that time and men’s hands cannot efface.

Those who write flashy, misleading lies of various hues, whether about gipsy, saint, or angel, will find that they are earning red-hot coppers, which “puffs” will not prevent burning the author’s fingers and scratching his conscience.

Worldly-minded human beings engaged in trying to weave a cloak of righteousness out of their own evil deeds wherewith to hide their deformities, ugliness, and consumption, may be compared to a poor old deformed woman trying to weave a golden cloak out of rotten straw to hide the wretchedness and misery of Seven Dials.

Those engaged in reclaiming children from sin and ignorance are making themselves a silver ladder upon which to climb to golden fame.

When our ways are clouded by mysteries and doubts, we may take it for granted that we have got off the road, and are wandering among marshes and swamps from which fogs and poisonous vapours arise.

Satan often ties firebrands to the tails of hypocritical professing Christians, and uses them as Samson did his foxes.

* * * * *

At 6.30 on Tuesday morning I stepped out of doors with my travelling paraphernalia upon some six-inches deep of newly fallen snow. My only light was the flickering gas, which was miserable indeed. Underneath the snowy carpet the roads felt, and in fact were, like a sheet of glass. If the new soles upon my shoes had been beeswaxed and polished I could not have slipped and slurred about more. Sometimes my bags were in the snow, and at other times I was trying the resisting force of the lamp-posts. Some of the workmen as they passed me rolled about as if they were “tight,” and I daresay they thought me to be a brother chip. After three-quarters of an hour’s exercise for patience, temper, and legs, I arrived “safe and sound in wind and limb” in a third-class compartment, and without any hot-water bottles to cheer my onward course.

At Trent Station I spent five minutes with Mr. Taylor, the fine, good-looking station-master, in talking over the caste, kind, and character of the gipsies in India, in which country Mr. Taylor was a station-master for some time. At Settle I pulled up for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. The little refreshment-room, about ten feet square, was quite a delightfully warm, cosy nook. The glasses and decanters of variegated colours were sparkling, the fire was bright and cheerful, and the waitress brimmed over with smiles, grace, and good-nature. I was nearly frozen, and to jump from the freezing train to the warm sunny “bar” at one bound was enough almost to make me wish that a coal truck would get across the line to cause a delay for half-an-hour. It was not to be, and the cruel porter bawled out, “Take your seats, gentlemen!” and we were off to the snowy region of the North, where all things are not forgot and sheep looked like rabbits. In puffing along we passed through the snow-drifts, which two days previously had held bound by the icy hand of winter eleven trains and their freights of “live and dead stock” for twenty-four hours, bringing forth from the sympathetic wife of the station-master hot tea, cakes, and coffee for the travellers.

In passing over the Settle and Carlisle railway I experienced a very queer kind of sensation. I was in the carriage alone. For many miles nothing was to be seen but snow and telegraph posts. The fences were covered, the sheep and cattle were housed, and, owing to the barren nature of the soil, there were no trees to be seen peering their heads upwards. A gloom, without a break or gleam of sunshine, spread over the face of the heavens. The snow-covered hills and valleys looked like so many white clouds, and appeared to be undulating as we passed through them. Not a sound was to be heard except the puffing and punting of the engine as we steamed away, and it appeared as if we were miles high between two worlds, travelling I knew not whither. To make myself believe that I was still in the land of the living and not among “the dreary regions of the dead,” I paced my compartment pretty freely, filling up my time by singing—

“One there is above all others,” &c.,

and counting the telegraph posts as we glided along. Among other things, as I walked to and fro in my solitary compartment, I jotted down some of the following thoughts and aphorisms:—