In the midst of doubts and perplexities, sometimes inspired with confidence and at other times full of misgivings, and with my future course completely hidden from me as if I had been encircled by the blackest midnight darkness, with only one little bright star to be seen, I mustered up the little courage left in me; and with great difficulty and many tears of sorrow and disappointment, I started by the first train, with as light a load of troubles as possible under the circumstances, to find my way to Northampton races, to pick up such facts and information relating to the poor little gipsy tramps that Providence placed in my way, or I could collect together.

After the usual jostling, crushing, and scrambling by road and rail, smoke, oaths, betting, gambling, and swearing, I found myself seated in a tramcar in company with one gentleman only, and, strange to say, of the name of “Smith,” but not a “gipsy Smith,” nor a racing “Smith,” of whom there are a few; in fact, there are more gipsies of the name of “Smith” than there are of any other name. It may be fortunate or unfortunate for me that I cannot trace my lineage to a “gipsy Smith,” and that my birthplace was not under some hedge bottom, with the wide, wide world as a larder that never needed replenishing by hard toil. All required of the “gipsy kings” of the ditch bank, now as in days of yore—so long as the present laws are winked at, and others intended to reach them are shelved—is to “rise, kill, and eat,” for to-morrow we die, and the devil take the hindmost. My friend Mr. Smith was left in the car, and I sped my way upon the course. I had not been long in wandering about before I was joined by a respectable-looking old man, who evidently had done his share of hard work on “leather and nails,” and was on the lookout for ease and fresh air during the remainder of his pilgrimage to the one of two places in store for him. After a few minutes’ conversation about the “ities” and “isms” rampant at Northampton, and our various views upon them, we separated at the edge of the gipsy encampment, wigwams, squalor, and filth. I took the right turning—at least I have no doubt about its proving so in the long run—and he took the left turning; and to this day we have not run against each other again.

The gipsies, Push-gipsies, and Gorgios were hard at work putting up their tents and establishments, and I in the meantime walked and trotted the course in a morning’s airing fashion, coming in contact occasionally with a sceptic, infidel, and freethinker. These were turned away in my rough fashion, and my wandering racing meditations brought forth some of the following seeds of thought as I paced backwards and forwards upon the turf. At any rate they are problems, maxims, and aphorisms—such as they are—that have appeared before my vision in my gipsy rambles as I have been working out my gipsy plans, and are, I think, as worthy of a place here as the misleading gipsy lore and lies we have read and heard of. Some of these will probably die as they bud into life, others may keep green for a little time, and there may be a few that will live and cause a few wanderers to take notes of the journey:

Little, cramped, and twisted ideas of God are the outcome of froth and foam, set in motion by thwarted conceit and mortified vanity.

Vaunted scepticism is the poisonous fungus of decaying minds and rotten ideas.

Infidelity is hellish divinity gone mad.

Nihilists and Fenians are crawlers, who crawl out of rotten heaps of wrongs, which the light of day turns into devil-flies, with fiery hate in their eyes and poisonous stings in their tails.

Socialists and Communists are the rotten toads of society, whose love for the country’s welfare consists in inflating themselves till they burst, like the frog in the fable.

Infidels and sceptics are the devil’s bats, with one of their wings cropped shorter than the other.

The froth, foams, and fumes of sceptics and infidels are only a little hellish mist that temporarily dims our eyeglasses, which the sun of truth dispels with laughing smiles.

The soft tears of love are the nightly mist-drops of heaven, which the dawn of the eternity turns into the everlasting snowdrops of paradise.

Our godly prayers sent heavenward are preserved by our heavenly Father, and will, on our arrival on the shores of paradise, become the merry pealing bells of heaven which will chime through eternal ages.

In the spirit of disobedience there is an unseen power that can draw down the greatest curse of Heaven.

The spirit of love is a heavenly wand that causes everything to laugh and dance that comes under its influence.

The spirit of hate is a Satanic rod of such baneful influence that it withers and kills everything that it touches.Our loving, trickling tears of penitence and contrition are being collected by God to form the pure, transparent streams and rivers of joy and gladness which are to run through the celestial city; and those whose lot it has been to shed many upon earth will have increased happiness in heaven from the fact that they have contributed more largely to make heaven more beautiful and lovely by adding to the refreshing streams of paradise.

The prayers of trouble of God’s children upon earth are being reset in heaven to angelic music, which, on our landing upon the heavenly shores, are to be our songs of joy and praise.

Selfish, hollow, hypocritical, sleek-tongued deceivers are the four-faced and four-headed Satanic demons of society. Their home is among the mud; they can smile in the sunshine; but their deeds are dirty and poisonous. They are difficult to catch, but more difficult to hold when caught.

Pop-gun liberality, when it is the outcome of a little, bad heart, selfishness, and pride, may be compared to bubbles rising upon putrid waters. In the distance, and with a smiling sun, the various colours present a beautiful enchanting appearance; but as you near them the blackness, fitfulness, and stench is observable, and you turn away disgusted.

A double-headed face without eyes is he who spends a lifetime in wrecking others to hoard up ill-gotten gold, which, when in the last extremity and in fear of being wrecked himself, he throws overboard to some benevolent object, trusting to God’s lovingkindness and tender mercies to turn it into a lifeboat that will bring him safe to land.

As the sun is the centre of our solar system of heavenly bodies, giving light to the eleven illuminating planets of various colours, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Georgium Sidus moving round it, so in like manner is Love the centre of the heavenly graces, giving light and beauty to the eleven Christian characteristics, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, industry, honesty, temperance, and chastity.

Every action of retaliation is a bunch of hard prickles, and it has in the centre of it a wasps’ nest, and the buzzing of the wasps can be heard and their stings felt by the bystanders; while every act of love is a collection of perfumed, fragrance-scented oils, with a cooing dove on the top as a guard.

Retaliation and revenge are a dark cave, sending forth sulphurous fumes and the groans of hell; while forgiveness and love are a lovely garden of fragrant flowers, with cooing doves and rippling water-brooks in the midst, sending forth heavenly music.

As the process of “inoculation” applied to flowers gives to us the most beautiful coloured, tinted, edged, and lovely flowers, so in like manner it is with the Spirit of Christ. When once the Spirit of Christ is brought into contact with our human nature, refined sentiment and feelings—the Christian graces—soon become manifest.

As the wind and storm shake off the fruit which has the least hold upon the tree, so in like manner it is with the members of Christian Churches and the State. Those members and citizens the most careless, loveless, and cold, who have the least hold upon the Church, God, and the State, storms and persecution readily bring to the ground.

Death-wishers, with evil hearts, in pursuit of a good man, are the parents and life-bearers of immortal fame, which will sit upon the object of their malice, hate, and spite as a crown of precious jewels; and that which they intended and still intend to be the arrow of death God has turned and is turning into a tree of life, ever budding, blossoming, and teeming with endless delicious fruits.Hope is the magic Luna of heaven let down and swinging to and fro in earth by golden cords, which answers to the call of young or old, rich or poor, wise or simple, learned or ignorant, and transfers darkness into light, hell into heaven, and devils into saints. Under its power poverty becomes riches, tears of sorrow songs of joy, sickness health, and death life.

The last man stands the first on a backward course.

An idle man is the devil’s standard-bearer, and works harder and does more service by his example than any man in the black force.

The first man who arrives at the top of a hill is the man to live the longest, see the most, and enjoy the most happiness.

Mysterious actions, according to the intent of the author, are either the seeds of life or the seeds of death.

As fire and cooking brings out the sweetness of food to make it digestible, so in like manner the fiery trials of affliction bring out the sweetness of a Christian character, making his path through life pleasant, agreeable, and profitable.

Private prayer is the Christian’s log, which indicates the rate he travels towards heaven, and Christlike acts of benevolence are the log-book in which his speed is registered.

When a professing Christian dances about among the members of Christian Churches solely for the sake of trade and filthy lucre, it may be taken as an indication that he has stuck a broom upon his masthead, and is open for sale to the highest bidder.

Birds, bees, and wasps pick the finest and sweetest fruit, so in like manner naughty men, women, and children pick at the sweetest children of heaven whom God loves and smiles upon.

False, misleading sentiment is the devil’s tonic sol-fa, set to music to suit his hearers.To keep out of fogs is to live on a hill, so in like manner to keep out of damping thoughts and foggy doubts about God’s ways and doings is to live high up in His favour.

As atmospheric influences round marshy spots, rushy swamps, and low meadows produce a meteoric light called “Jack-o’-Lantern,” which in the distance looks beautiful to outsiders flitting about in the dark, carried by an unseen hand, but which is dangerous to follow, so in like manner it is with scientific Christianity apart from the Gospel.

A scientific Christian held up as a light without Christ is a “Will-o’-the Wisp” Christian.

Fawners and flatterers are like dogs that have worms in their tails and wag them to strangers; they are not to be trusted.

A backslider is a tree with three parts of the top cut down, leaving sufficient above ground to serve as a warning to others, or as a post upon which to hang a gate to prevent others passing that way.

If a writer wishes to add lustre to his literary fame, he will best succeed in his purpose by turning “French polisher,” instead of becoming a literary thief.

To polish and give artistic touches to a crude cabinet, bringing out its beauty and defects, showing the knots and grain, gives credit to the artist; while to run away with the rough and unpolished jewels it contains, claiming as his own that which belongs to another, brings disgrace and ruin.

To drive successfully along the crooked and zigzag lanes of life, time and space must be taken to go round the corners. Fools can drive along a straight level, but it takes a wise man to round the down-hill corners without a spill over.

Gilt and crested harness does not improve the quality of a poor emaciated, bony, half-starved horse; so in like manner a few Oxford and Cambridge gilt touches put upon a sensual, backwood gipsy romantic tale, will not improve the condition of our gipsies and their children.

My wandering meditation being over, I now drew myself up to a gipsy “grand stand.” To all sensible, good men it appears as a horrible fall rather than the “grand stand.” Thousands of young men and women, trained by Christian, godly parents, have been brought to ruin by its rotten foundation and evil associations. It is a “stand” from which men and women can see—if they will open their eyes—the wrath of God, the roads to destruction, and the “course” to hell.

My first salutation was from three big grizzly poachers’ snaps, a kind of cross between a bloodhound, greyhound, and a bulldog, that lay at the entrance of a wigwam, in which lay a burly fellow marked with small-pox, and whose hair was close shaven off his head and from round his coarse, thick neck. This specimen of an English gipsy possessed a puggish kind of nose, a large mouth, and his clothes seemed “greasy and shiny.” The woman looked an intelligent, strong kind of woman, and well fitted, to all appearance, for a better life. Round a tin pot upon the greensward there were three other gipsy tramps, kneeling and gnawing meat off a bone like dogs, with bread by their sides. They did not growl like dogs, but they showed me their teeth and muttered, and this was quite sufficient. The occupation of this gang seemed to be that of attending to a cocoa-nut establishment, the profits of which, during the races, they had travelled from London by road in three days to secure. To me it appeared all were fish that came to their net; and if they did not come of their own accord, they would not think twice before fetching them. This gipsy wigwam was the kitchen, drawing-room, dining-room, bedroom, &c., for four men, one woman, and two big girls, not one of whom could read and write. The only little gleam of light which shone from the conversation in this dark abode was when they referred to some gipsies, who, they said, had been “putting on a pretence of religion in order to fill their pocket,” and they knew one who “saved over £800 since he had been religious.” “If I must be religious, I would be religious, and no mistake about it,” said another. At this they began to swear fearfully. I mentioned several gipsies who had given up their old habits, and, as I told them, had begun to lead better lives. “Never,” they said, with a vengeance; to which I answered, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” I then shook hands, and wended my way to the next establishment. This was an old cart covered over entirely with calico from the ridge to the ground. Connected with this van there were two men and a boy, who, it seems, are novices at the cocoa-nut profession. To me it appeared that they were tired of the hard work and tightness of town life, and were trying their fortune at gipsying and idle-mongering. On the course there would be nearly twenty cocoa-nut “saloons.” Connected with three of the vans on the course there were sixteen children and eight men and women, only one of whom could read and write. In one of the three vans there was a poor little girl of about nine summers evidently in the last stage of consumption. Her cheeks were sunken, shallow, and pale; her fingers were long and thin; her eyes glassy bright, and black hair hung in tangled masses over her shoulders. I gave the poor girl a penny as she stood at the door of the filthy van, for which, with much effort she said, “Thank you, sir,” and sat down on the floor. I said to the mother, formerly a Smith, but now a G—, “Why don’t you get the poor child attended to?” She replied as follows: “Well, sir, gipsy children have much more to put up with now than they formerly had. They cannot half stand the cold and damp we used to do. They are always catching cold. I only bought a bottle of medicine this morning for which I paid half a crown, and I cannot be expected to do more. She has been staying some time with her grandmother at Bristol, but we did not like leaving her there in case anything happened to her. If she is to die, we gipsies like our children to die in the van or tent with us, as may be. We like to see the last of them. We have hard times of it, we poor women and children have, I can assure you, sir.” The woman had now begun to do some washing in earnest, not before it was needed, and while she was scrubbing away at the rags in a tin pail, she began to tell me some of her history and that of her grandfather. She said that her mother had “had fifteen children, all born under the hedge-bottom, nearly all of whom are alive.” I asked her if any of her family could read and write, and she said, “No, excepting the poor little girl you see, and she can read and write a little, having been to a day school in Bristol for a few weeks last winter. I wish they could read and write, sir, it would be a blessed thing if they could.” She now referred to her grandfather. At this her eyes brightened up. She said, “My grandfather was a soldier in the Queen’s service”—the poor gipsy woman did not understand history so well as cooking hedgehogs in a patter of clay—“and fought in the battle when Lord Nelson was killed. And do you know, sir, after Lord Nelson was killed, he was put into a cask of rum to be preserved, while he was brought to England to be buried; and I dare say that you will not believe me—my grandfather was one of those who had charge of the body; but he got drunk on some of the rum in which Lord Nelson was pickled, and he was always fond of talking about it to his dying day.” I said, “Do you like rum.” “Yes, we poor gipsies could live upon rum and ‘’bacca.’” In the van in which the poor gipsy child and its mother lived there were a man, a baby a few weeks old, and four other children, huddling together night and day in a most demoralizing and degrading condition. While standing by the side of this tumble-down van I found that vans and tents, in which people eat, live, sleep, and die, are put to other shocking, filthy, and sickening purposes during fairs and races than habitations for human beings to dwell in. Sanitary officers, moralists, and Christians must be asleep all over the country. In going by and round one van I noticed an old woman storming away at some children with an amount of temper and earnestness that almost frightened me. Immediately I arrived at the door, and almost before I could say “Jack Robinson,” she dropped down into a position with which miners and gipsies are so familiarly accustomed, and began to tremble, shed “crocodile tears,” and tell a pitiful tale of the sorrows and troubles of her life, intermixing it with “my dear sirs,” “good mans,” “God bless yous.” Every now and then she would look up to heaven, and present a picture of the most saintly woman upon earth. When I asked her how old she was, she said she was a long way over seventy, but could not tell me exactly. She further said that she had had sixteen children, all born under the hedge-bottom, nearly all of them gipsies up and down the country, some of whom were grandmothers and grandfathers at the present time. And then she would begin another pitiful tale as follows, “If you please, my good sir, will you give me a copper, I do assure you that I have not tasted anything to eat this day, and I am almost famished with hunger.” And then with trembling emotion she said, wringing her hands, “I shall die before morning.” After my visits to the other vans, and before going home, I turned unexpectedly to have another peep at the old gipsy woman, whom I found to be a long way off dying, and in all probability I shall see her again before she passes over to the great eternity.

An English gipsy Duchess—Smith—“rheumaticky and lame”Among the rest, sitting upon a low stool and drinking beer, there was a big, bony, coarse Frenchman, whom I found out to be a Communist. He was ostensibly selling calico, lace, and other trifles. His eyes were fiery, mouth ugly, on account of its having been put to foul purposes, and his demeanour that of an excited Fenian maddened by revenge and murder. Round him were a number of poor ignorant folks who could neither read nor write, and as they listened to his lies and infamy about the clergy, ministers, the well-to-do tradesmen, professional gentlemen, noblemen, and royalty, they opened their eyes and mouths as if horrified at his words and actions. Among other things he said the clergy of the Church of England were in receipt of over £20,000,000 per annum out of the pockets of the poor. I questioned him as to the source from which it came, and if he could point out the items in the Budget. At this he began to get excited and said, “It came from direct and indirect taxes.” I said, “Can you give me one instance or give me particulars in any shape setting forth the direct taxes in this country collected for the benefit of the clergy to the amount you say?” Instead of replying to this question he began to stutter and stammer, and appeared before me with his fists shut, exhibiting all sorts of mountebank megrims to the terror of some of the listeners and amusement of others. In the end I calmed him down, and he asked me if I would buy a parrot of him if I saw him again in two years’ time. One of those who stood by said, “He has got parrots enough of his own without buying more.”

Connected with one of the cocoa-nut establishments, and owned by a good-hearted gipsy from London, there were the clowns, fools, hunchbacked old women, and other simpletons to catch the “foolish and the gay.” At the back of this establishment there were all sorts of painted devices, or I should rather say “daubed” devices, upon the sheets, full of satire which the fools with plenty of money could not read. One was a barber shaving his customers; another was a donkey, after he had been well fed, turning his heels towards his silly friends and kicking them in the face and sending them sprawling upon the ground with their pockets empty; and many others with the flags of “Old England” flying in all directions. I learned some time after that the owner of this establishment during the two days’ races cleared nearly twenty pounds out of fools and cocoa-nuts, giving thousands of young folks of both sexes a taste for gambling, and then clearing off to London with smiles and chuckles, and his poaching dogs at his heels, leaving his customers to say the next morning, “What fools we have been, to be sure!” If I had been at the door of their bedroom I should have bawled out, “No greater fools in existence could possibly be. When you went upon the race-course you had money if you had not any sense; this morning you have neither money nor sense, and now you are neither more nor less than a third of a shrivelled-up sausage without any seasoning in your nature, unsuitable for pickling and not worth cooking, fit for nothing but the dunghill, and food for cats and dogs.” I now took another stroll amongst the gipsies at the other end of the “course,” and came up against one who owned the “steam-flying dobby-horses;” but before I began to chat with him one of the gipsy women whispered in my ear, “It is his wife that has made him; she is very good-looking and one of the best women in the world; no one can tell why it was that she took up with the man as his second wife. He would not have been worth twopence had it not been for her. She is a rare good un, an’ no mistake. You must not tell him that I say so. She sees to all the business and he dotes over her. He is not a bad sort of a chap.” I soon began to chat with the “dobby-horse” owner, and he was not long before he began to tell me of his cleverness and what he had passed through, as follows: “You see, sir, a few years ago I had to borrow three shillings and sixpence to help me to get away from this town, now I’ve turned the tide and got at the top of the hill. These ‘shooting galleries,’ ‘dobby-horses,’ ‘flying boxes,’ vans, and waggons are my own.” Pointing with his finger to a new van, he said, “I made that myself last winter, and have done all the painting upon the ‘horses’ myself.” The steam organ, the steam whistle, the shouting, screaming, and hurrahing, and his face having been in the wars, made it difficult for me to hear him. He now spoke out louder and referred to family affairs and some of his early history. “I left Bagworth when I was a lad, owing to the cruel treatment of a stepmother, and wandered up and down the country in rags and barefooted, sleeping in barns, and houses, and piggeries, and other places I could creep into; and in course of time I fell in with the gipsies and married one. But she was a wretch; oh! she was a bad un, and I was glad when she died. I am thankful I have got a better one now. She is a good un; but I must not say anything about her, we get on well together, and she keeps me straight.” “Bang bang” and “crack crack” went the bullets out of the rifle guns close to our ears, against the metal plates, through a long sheet iron funnel of about twelve inches diameter. “Now then,” cried out a little sharp, dark-eyed, nimble woman of about thirty-five years—of course upon this point I had no means of knowing or guessing exactly; I had not examined her teeth. She might say she was only twenty-eight, a favourite age with some maids looking out for husbands—“be quick and rub out the marks upon the plate.” And away the old man trotted at his wife’s bidding, as all good husbands who are not capable of being masters should do. A “slap” and a “dash” with the old gipsy’s brush, and all the “pops” were for over obliterated. What a blessed thing it would be for themselves and future generations if all the sins committed upon the racecourse that day could have been wiped out as easily. Why not?

Upon the “course” there were, at a very rough calculation, nearly fifty families of gipsies in vans, tents, and carts, in which vans, tents, &c., there lived over a hundred and fifty children and one hundred men and women sleeping inside and huddling together with their eyes open, like rabbits at the bottom of a flour cask, when no other eye sees them but God’s. While the jockeys were riding to death upon classical horses with the devil at their heels, to a place where, as Dr. Grosart says in the Sunday at Home, “The surges of wrath crash on the shores infernal,” I mused, pondered, and then wended my way home for meditation and reflection, and, as a writer in the Churchman’s Penny Magazine says—

“We take Thy providence and word
As landmarks on our way.”