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 doovelesto-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:—

Faith is the quicksilver of heaven placed in the hearts of God’s children. When it is low or weak, rains and storms are brewing, difficulties are ahead; and when it is high and strong, then peace and joy may be expected. Unsteady Christians will do well to change their quarters.

Every glass of intoxicating drink given by parents to their children may have pleasure swimming upon the surface, but at the bottom there will be dregs of groans, and cries that will be hurled back by the children with vengeance and retorts upon the names and tombs of their parents as they lie smouldering in their coffins.

The benevolent actions of earth become at death the flowers of heaven.

The heavenly influences of God’s children in life become at death the fragrance of eternity.

As the light-giving rays of the sun appear as darkness to mortals with weak eyes and contracted vision, so in like manner do the searching and light-giving rays of God’s Word appear as darkness to those whose mind and mental powers have become weakened through looking into the lovely system of heaven with narrow, preconceived ideas and notions.Tears are the dewdrops of sorrow; if of heavenly sorrow, they will be the means, as they drop to the earth, of watering seeds that will produce a crop of heavenly joy.

In every cup of sorrow given to us by God to drink there are mixed up in the ingredients fine precious seeds of a higher life, greater joy, and abiding peace to bloom everlastingly in heaven.

Those who dabble in sin stain their hands with indelible ink, which nothing but grace can remove.

Prayer is a pump-handle, and faith the rods and bucket that lift the clear spring of heavenly truth into our earthly vessels to refresh us on the way to Zion.

Hot-tempered and fiery-tempered Christians often expose the nakedness of their souls.

Those people who think that they can go to heaven by indulging in worldly pleasure and sin are travelling in a balloon of their own manufacture, which may carry them high up in the opinion of worldlings, but in reality they are soaring into the freezing atmosphere of God’s wrath, to come down with a terrible crash.

A man with a large heart, broad sympathy, but under the influence of a short temper, often burns his fingers; while the man with a narrow soul and an envious disposition has a fire within that will blister his tongue and singe the hair off his head.

Sacred poems and hymns are the million silver steps leading to the heavenly city from every quarter of the globe; and the tunes set to them are the lovely seraphs from the angel-land taking us by the hand to lead us onward and upward to the golden doors studded with diamonds and other precious stones, which are opened to all who have been sanctified and made ready for the indescribable kingdom within.

Death is the postman from the unknown land—except to those who have seen it by the eye of faith—knocking at our door.

Once or twice we passed several men with shovels in their hands and dressed in garbs that only required a very slight stretch of imagination to make us believe that they were in the Arctic regions searching for the bodies of Sir John Franklin and his noble crew. Suddenly we dropped upon Carlisle, and for a few minutes we pulled ourselves together. As there were no sandwiches to be got, I dined off a penny bun and a sour orange, the rind of which, owing to my benumbed fingers, sorely tried my patience, and in retaliation I set to it with my teeth in a most savage manner, and cast the remnants to the wind to perish in the mud.

We duly arrived at St. Boswell’s Station. I felt nearly “done up,” and at this place I slipped, rolled, and tumbled into an hotel for a warm rest and a feed. When it was dark I turned out again and made my way by train to Kelso, the place of fame, and noted for its public spirit. As I drew near to the town I could have said with Alfred Miles, in Young England, 1880—

“Louder blew the winds and fiercer,
The night was drawing nigh.”

From the station to the town was a most miserable half-hour’s journey. The snow was in heaps, and travellers had to clutch the arms of friends or foes to enable them to “steer a steady course.” The snow whistled and squeaked under the pressure of the soles of my feet; for by this time I did not seem to have any other soul. Sometimes I seemed to take one step forward to two backward, till at last a ’busman picked me up and set me down within a hundred yards of the Temperance Hotel door—Mr. Slight’s—which was the nearest he could get me to without risk to life and limb, owing to the great depth of snow. I felt faint, and the full force of what Marianne Farningham says in the Christian World—

“O God, the way is very long,
And the storms are rough and wild.”

Men working in snow, in the blackness of night, beneath the dull, flickering lamps, and with a heavy, foggy atmosphere overhead, present a most curious and interesting spectacle, such as might call forth from nervous, sensitive minds a thousand ghostly wild conjectures about gipsies, witches, &c.

During the evening “mine host” invited me, with some three commercial travellers, to a little family party he was having, numbering altogether some six gentlemen and eight young ladies.

Of the gentlemen I will say nothing except that they were very gentlemanly; but of the young ladies I will say that they were of the usual agreeable mixture. One was charming, another sweet, another was lively, another was delightful, another was pretty, another was pleasant, another was full of grace, and so on. Of course, each had her own peculiar special graces, figure, and colour of hair. Singing, playing, lively and interesting conversation whiled the evening hours away. Notwithstanding these enchanting proceedings, I did not feel happy. I tried hard to put a smile upon my face, but imagined I was not successful, for the company often had to try to “liven me up.” The trials and hardships of the day, and my work on the morrow, weighted me heavily with anxiety and sorrow.

I retired to my chamber pensive, sad, and cold. My bed was like ice, and all the clothes, rugs, &c., I had would not make me warm. The night was shiveringly cold, and my heart ached for the poor gipsies out in the snow. I dozed, winked, and blinked. I got out of bed again and again; and, to while away the long hours of the night, I jotted some of the following aphorisms down, by the side of the dying embers of a little fire:—

Sunday-schools are God’s flower-beds, upon which He sends more gleams of sunshine and spring showers than upon the rest of the world. Some Sunday-school children are the little roses, pinks, mignonette, &c. There are other Sunday-school children very modest and very good, but with little show; these are the thyme, ladslove, &c. The naughty children are the sour and poisonous weeds.

When a Christian leaves the prospect hill for the marshes and swamps of despondency and gloom, he will soon discover—or ought to do—that he is in the neighbourhood of hellish fogs and mists, which will lead him into worse than the Roman’s “shepherd’s race,” maze, or labyrinth, and from thence to gloomy thoughts and hazy notions of God and His works.

Infidels are the rats of society, puddling and muddling the rippling streams of pure truth that run through our land.

Cold places of worship, with a shivering minister as doorkeeper, are the places to turn warm Christians into freezing saints.

A drunken Christian minister is a toppled-over guide-post with the bottom rotted off, owing to its having being set in too much water.

Hope is the second—love the first—greatest moral force in the world. When a man is down in the gutter it lifts him up; when he is in darkness it puts light in his face and fire in his eyes. It enters the breast of a child; it fills the heart, and is seen in every action of man; it is in the soul of kings, governs empires, and rules destinies; and it lifts human beings, populating all worlds, from earth and hell to heaven. Oh! bliss-inspiring hope!Hope is the father of ambition and the earthly companion of the soul; they join together till they come to the edge of the river, whence the soul takes its flight into eternity, and hope becomes the life of the fame left behind, and ends with fame’s death.

Despair is the wastrel daughter of ambition forsaken by her father, and her mother, hope and pride. She drags all who touch her to poverty, ruin, degradation, misery, and death. When she creeps do you run.

Elevating natural parental love buds in time and blooms through eternity. It turns a mud cottage or gipsy wigwam into a palace, a desert into a garden, a waste into an earthly paradise. It causes the birds and variegated songsters to chirp and sing round your dwelling, the trees to laugh, the stones to shout, the cat to purr upon the hearth, and the children to kiss and fondle upon your knees. It sends whole families where love dwells off to bed in good humour, and causes the cock to crow early in the morning at your door, telling you that a diviner love is about to enter your family circle with a fragrance excelling that of the rose, and its effects more lovely to behold than that of the lily.

The soil of earth is the brain of nature.

Children with good hearts and lovable dispositions, under the fostering care of a good, kind, Christian mother, will become God’s pretty little singing birds, to beautify and enliven His heavenly garden; while naughty, disobedient, bad children will become worse than rotten eggs, not even fit for manure.

As bells are placed upon the necks of leading wether sheep to give out a sound of danger and guidance, so in like manner is the word of God placed upon the necks of His ministers, to give out words of consolation, counsel, reproof, and warning, and woe be to those who give out an uncertain sound.Gipsies, vagrants, tramps, and vagabonds are the corns and bunions of society.

Every kind, benevolent act of a Christian, full of love to God and man, is a cask of heavenly oil poured upon the troubled waters of life, and those who go down deep into human misery will find, by looking upward, as the oil of paradise swims upon the waves of woe, the beautiful light of heaven reflected upon their every movement to raise fallen humanity.

The love of God in the heart of man produces a smoothness upon the surface of his face and body that eases his way to heaven through the chilling billows of selfishness, deceit, and fraud.

A cruel retort from an ungrateful son opens a parent’s eyes to his sins and follies more than the advice of one hundred friends.

To mount the highest hill of God’s favour upon the alternate steps of prayer and good works, with faith as a handrail, is to see the indescribable beauties of heaven and the unsurpassed splendour of earth as no other mortal can; and by climbing higher still we can see more and more, till we find ourselves lost in love and wonder.

The transparent dewdrops of heaven to be seen, by the light of the bright morning sun, resting and twinkling into rainbow colours upon the flowers and blades of grass on the green, mossy carpet, are the lively, sweet, innocent little children whom God sends to cheer and beautify our path for awhile before He calls them to heaven by the absorbing rays of Divine love.

To a good man dark moments are the harbingers of bright days, and to a bad man light moments of excitement are the precursors of long, dark days of sorrow.

Love is the greatest moral force in the world. With the birth of a child it has a beginning, and it is the right hand companion of the soul; and with the death of the body it is transferred with its redeemed chief to paradise, to be the singing, joyful companion of the soul through endless ages and never-ending delights and pleasures.

Divine love is the celestial life of heaven dwelling in man’s breast, purifying his heart, enlivening his soul, transforming his affection to such an extent that he can sing in the midst of a burning, sandy, waterless, parching desert, “Oh! that will be joyful.” It transforms the black demon face of a gipsy, or a child of hell, into the lovable, smiling face of a child of God. Its possessor can jump ditches, bound over fences, and scale battlements as easily as if they were level green, mossy carpets. It makes life happy, and opens heaven to our view.

After I had passed through this ordeal, I tried pacing the room with no better results. Notwithstanding these things, I felt as the Rev. Richard Wilton felt when he penned the following lines for Hand and Heart, June, 1880:

“Sufferings are gifts, accept for my sake,
And from earth’s sighs heaven’s music shall wake.”

Morning dawned and found me with wakeful eyes ready to receive it. After breakfast I began to prepare for my journey through deep snow which had fallen evenly upon the ground to the height of the stone walls. I found that the postman with his cart had begun to prepare for the journey, and he calculated that if all were straight it would take him five hours to “do the eight miles.” “Mine host” would not consent to this arrangement, and the next best thing was to hire a horse and trap. So through the deep snow we started. I had not got very far before my muffler was frozen and icicles hung round my beard like little diamonds. A few carts and waggons had been pulled over the snow in places by the farmers, and had left a few tracks. Notwithstanding these our old hunter was not long before he began to “puff and blow.” My gigman said, “I don’t know whether we shall be able to get through to Yetholm, but we will go as far as we can. We can but turn back if we can get no further.”

Our steed did not require pulling up to stop him. Of his own instinct he stopped pretty frequently. I said to the man, “Our horse seems to be short of ‘puff.’” “Yes,” said the gigman; “his wind is touched a little, but nothing to hurt. He will be all right if we can once pull through.” Sometimes we went into the ditches. How deep they were before the snow fell I don’t know. I should think some of them were pretty deep. Thanks to the Almighty, the bottom of our gig would not let us topple over. Many times I began to wonder where we should find a resting-place for the night. I said to my gigman as we went ploughing through the snow in one of the ditches, “In case we get stuck fast, what shall we do next?” “Well,” said the gigman, “we shall have to leave the trap behind and return to Kelso as best we can. We shall both have to get upon the horse’s back, and if he will not carry us we must take turn and turn about. It won’t do to stop on the road to perish.” I began to “pump” my gigman in order to know whether I was in the hands of one who understood his business. I wanted my fears settling upon this point.

I said, “How long have you been a coachman?” “Between twenty and thirty years,” he said. “And have you ever had a ‘spill’ or been stuck fast?” “I have only had one ‘pitch in’ and never a ‘spill.’” This news gave me confidence in my man, and on we kept ploughing away. A strong contrast presented itself to our view close to a cottage just off the roadside. There was a fine dark woman with a bright scarlet hood and cloak on her big body, doing something upon one of the hedges. It struck me that she was bird-liming, for the London markets, the poor linnets that choose to be caged rather than to perish.

The sights along the road were most lively, and I shall never forget it as long as the breath is in my body. The excitement “on the road,” the bubbling sympathy within my breast for the poor perishing rabbits, hares, partridges, and crows upon our path, the dangers of the way, and the magnificent grandeur of the scenery, were of such a nature as to cause me to forget the biting cold at work benumbing my nose, fingers, and toes. The Scotch firs in the dales and vales along our path and on the hillsides never appeared more grand and beautiful. They were artistically touched by the hand of God. The pure white lovely prismatic children of the clouds and cold boundless space had descended softly from heaven, as if loth to leave their pure abode for a resting-place in the mud; but before doing so they appeared anxious to adorn the trees of nature with the beauties of ethereal space, and in such a manner as to cause one’s heart to glow with gratitude towards God, the Giver of all good. The boughs were bent downwards, heavily laden with the angelic snowflakes; the whole trees presenting a spiral sight, leading your eyes and mind upwards toward heaven. At the extreme tips of the branches the snow had formed a kind of white clapperless bells. As I passed under the heavily-laden trees I felt that I should like to have helped them to bear their burden, and also to keep the prismatic children of the clouds and infinitude from settling into their dirty resting-places. Nature seemed to speak through the beautiful snow-adorned trees, and wintry-capped hills and covered valleys with a warm loving tenderness that I had never experienced before.

Upon the fences the snow had come softly and stealthily down, apparently as if in gentle wavelets, which presented the appearance of fold upon fold, overhanging waves upon waves in beautiful round and soft designs; and as I beheld it I felt for a few minutes that it would be a real pleasure, with joy and gladness running through my bones, and smiles forcing themselves upon my face, to roll, plunge, tumble, and fluster under its overhanging laps and waved folds, which seemed to speak invitingly, and with open arms, to those who cast a sympathetic glance at them. Never in this world did snow appear more to be like the downs of heaven than upon this occasion, notwithstanding the biting cold day. On this journey the live things seemed to be dying, while the dead things seemed to be living.

We had now been on the road ploughing away over two hours among the snow, and still we were not at the end of our journey. We had had many escapes of a spill, with the consolation that we should not have been hurt, except in case the iron heels of our beast had come sharply in contact with our almost frost-bitten noses. As we topped the hills and neared Yetholm it was manifest that the rude hand of storm and tempest had been busily at work among the trees at some not very remote period. Hundreds had been uprooted, some of which were left to tell the tale. Not a public-house was to be seen on the way. There was a kind of cabin a little off the roadside, on which was stuck a piece of board, showing that tea, tobacco, coffee, and snuff were sold there. Among the hills in the distance Yetholm was observed. The thought that had run freely through my mind, that I might not reach Yetholm, had now vanished.

The veritable gipsy town was in sight, and our steed pricked up his ears and quickened his pace. The blood which had imperceptibly been freezing in my veins seemed to glow again. The use of my hands and feet seemed to be coming round, and into a public-house I stumbled at half past one to get a cup of tea, “a cheer up,” and thorough warming. After which I set out with my bag in one hand loaded with Testaments, supplied to me by a friend and the Christian Knowledge Society; picture cards, supplied to me by the Religious Tract Society; and Our Boys and Girls, supplied to me by the Wesleyan Sunday-School Union; while in the other hand I carried a quantity of oranges and tobacco, purchased from Mr. Laidlaw’s, a tradesman in the place. With this “stock-in-trade” for the big and little gipsies at Kirk Yetholm I started my tramp.

The nestling and nuzzling of the gipsy hypocrites beneath the walls of the church at Kirk Yetholm, when they first landed in this country and for centuries onward, is only in accord with their first appearance in many parts of England. There can be no doubt that when the gipsies came from the Continent they came as hypocritical, religious, popish pilgrims, and succeeded well for a time in inveigling themselves into the good graces and pockets of the well-to-do English men and women, so that many of them were able to dress in scarlet and gold till they were found out, as I have shown elsewhere.

Kirk Yetholm, the gipsy town, is about half a mile from Town Yetholm.

Gipsy Winter quarters, Yetholm

By the time I had arrived at the gipsy quarters, owing to my loads, the deep snow, and the slippery nature of the roads in some places, I was ready for a rest.

At the entrance to the village I met a number of little half-starved, dirty, ragged gipsy children, who, to say the least, would require a deal of “straightening up” before they were ready for angelic robes. One little fellow with fine lips, but a mouth almost extending from ear to ear, accosted me in such a manner as to satisfy me that I was, without doubt, in the land of gipsydom. With the exception of the fine old church and one or two houses, the whole presented a miserable appearance. The gipsy dwellings were one story high, and of a dirty dingy white.Leydon’s opinion of the Yetholm gipsies in his day was not very high, for he says—

“On Yeta’s banks the vagrant gipsies place
Their turf-built cots. A sunburnt swarthy race,
From Nubian realms their tawny line they bring,
And their brown chieftain vaunts the name of king.
With loitering steps from town to town they pass,
Their lazy dames rock’d on the panier’d ass,
From pilfer’d roots or nauseous carrion fed,
By hedgerows green they strew their leafy bed;
While scarce the cloak of tawdry red conceals
The fine-turned limbs which every breeze reveals.
Their bright black eyes through silken lashes shine,
Around their necks their raven tresses twine;
But chilling damps and dews of night impair
Its soft sleek gloss and tan the bosom bare.
Adroit the lines of palmistry to trace,
Her horded silver store they charm away,
A pleasing debt for promised wealth to pay.”

Slater says in his Directory for 1882 that “Town Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm are both very humble in appearance, especially the latter, which is chiefly inhabited by gipsies, a race formerly remarkable for their disorderly lives and dangerous characters, and at this day distinguished by peculiarity of habits from the general body of the community.”

Dr. Baird says in his “Memoir of the Rev. John Baird,” written some twenty years ago, “A colony of gipsies which had long been settled at Kirk Yetholm had given rather an unenviable notoriety to the village, and rendered its name familiar to thousands in Scotland. The great majority of this wandering race were little better than heathens though born in a Christian land, and were notorious for poaching, thieving, and blackguardism.”

Most of the gipsy dwellings belong to a friend, the Marquis of Tweeddale, and he has of late years taken steps to improve their appearance. At the present time I am told the gipsy dwellings, so far as the outsides are concerned, show a great improvement. Sad to relate, the gipsy tenants have not improved one jot. Landlords may make gipsies’ and labourers’ houses—and it is right they should—healthy and habitable, but estate agents cannot purify the moral iniquity that dwells within. The schoolmaster, law, and the gospel are the agents for this reforming work.

I was told by Mr. Laidlaw that a gipsy named Mathew Blythe was the most respectable gipsy in Yetholm, and would give me any information; so to Mathew I made my way. I knocked at his door and was met with a shout—“Come in.” I did not stand knocking twice after this invitation, and went through the dingy, greasy passage—or “entrance hall”—to another door, which I opened, and there found a round-faced, grey-haired, good-looking, cobbling gipsy at work upon his “last.” The room seemed to serve for kitchen, scullery, parlour, dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, closet, and workshop. For a minute or two he eyed me over from head to foot before asking me to sit down on a rickety old chair that stood by my side. I told him that I was come to look up the gipsies at Yetholm. I was met with a gruff reply, “There are no gipsies at Yetholm; they are all gone away, and I don’t know where they are gone to.” I said, “I am sorry for that, as I had brought some books, oranges, tobacco, pictures, and coppers for them.” And after a few words in Romany the old man turned up his face with a smile and said, “Well, to speak the truth, I am a gipsy, but my old woman is not. Sit you down.” I sat down and began my tale, and told him who I was and all about the object of my visit. At this the old man opened his eyes wider and wider and said, “Lord, bless you, me and my brother, who lives at Town Yetholm, were only talking about you yesterday, and saying how glad we should be to see you. Let’s shake hands.” He took hold of my hand and gave it a good grip and a squeeze, one that I shall not soon forget. I said, “I suppose you wanted to see me in order to give me a ‘good tanning,’ or else to make the place warm for me; for I have been told by a backwood gipsy writer at — that the gipsies in Scotland would make it hot for me if they once got hold of me; and this is one, among the many other reasons, why I am here to-day.” “Those,” said Mr. Blythe, “who told you that tale told you a lie. I don’t know any gipsy who would hurt your little finger. You have said some hard things about us, but they are true, or nearly so. Why should not our children be educated like other people’s children? Why should gipsy children not be allowed to sit on the same bench with the rest? They are the same flesh and blood, and God looks upon them the same as He does upon other children. In church and in school no one will come near to us, and what is the result? Why, there is not a gipsy in all the place—and there are between one and two hundred—except myself who goes to church on Sundays. The gipsies in Yetholm are worse off to-day than they ever were. Some are in receipt of parish relief.” This upsets the romantic tales of the gipsy writers who maintain that gipsies never receive parish relief. “A few of the children can read and write, but that is all. I learned to read and write a many years, thank God, and I also learnt to make and mend shoes.” I said, “What do the gipsies do and where do they wander, as they grow up?” “They,” said Mr. Blythe, “generally goes to town, or travels the country, and nobody knows where they end their days.” Mr. Blythe was some distant—“ninety-second cousin”—relation to the notorious dare-devil gipsy, Will Faa, who claimed to be a sort of a gipsy king, and on this account I wanted to have a few words about the gipsy kings of Scotland. “Well,” said Mr. Blythe, “you know better than I can tell you that there are no such beings as gipsy kings and queens. It is all bosh and nonsense, conjured up to get money on the cheap. The woman they call the gipsy queen does not live at Yetholm now, she has gone to live at Kelso. I could not tell you whereabouts she lives, but in some of the back streets.”

Mr. Blythe began to relate some of the gipsy tales; and how many kings’ lives the gipsies had saved, and a number of other things relating to gipsy life, into which I had not time to enter, as I wanted to be on the road again with my gigman before it was dark. The old man’s crippled foot prevented him making some visits with me to the other gipsies in the village, or, as he said, “I should have been only too glad to have done so. The poor things want somebody looking after them, I can assure you.” I emptied nearly the whole of the contents of my bags of books, pictures, tobacco, oranges, and a few coppers upon the gipsy cobbler’s bench, among the awls, nails, waxed-ends, &c., for him to distribute, as a man, among the gipsy children and old women in the village; and as a man, and with gipsy greetings and good wishes, trusting to Mr. Blythe’s honour, I left them, and they have, with God’s blessing, no doubt been distributed. After a few words of cheer and consolation and several shakes of the hands, which somehow brought out my weakness in tears, I bade Mr. Blythe, the grey-haired, open-faced gipsy, “good-bye,” maybe never to meet again on this side of Jordan. I felt as I stepped out of the door that I could have said with a blind writer in the Church of England Magazine—

“Though dark and dreary be my way,
Thy light can turn my night to day.”

“Pensive I tread my sad and lonely road,
Pain, gloom, and sorrow marked me for their prey.”

I took a stroll through the place to eye the gipsy dwellings over, and by the time I had got to the bridge homeward, a number of poor half-starved gipsy children had gathered round me. I had not gone far before I met some bigger gipsies “working home” for the night. I thought I would have five minutes’ chat in the snow with a little old gipsy woman named Sanderson, who had accosted me in the usual gipsy fashion, viz., a curtsy and “Your honour, sir.” I pulled up and deposited my bags in the snow. At this the old woman began to smile; she no doubt thought that she had succeeded in her first step to draw something from me. She was not long in perceiving that I was not a Scotchman, and took pains to tell me her name, and that she was an English gipsy from the neighbourhood of Newcastle. It occurred to me that I would just for once try the old woman’s volubility of thanks, and accordingly I dipped into my bag for an orange; this brought the old woman almost upon her knees with a “Thank yer honour;” each “thanks” was accompanied by low curtsies. I next pulled out a picture card; this she put to her breast and said, “Lord bless yer honour.” I gave her another card, for which she responded with upturned eyes, “May the Lord bless you, my dear good gentleman.” I next gave her some coppers; she again turned up her eyes toward heaven and said with a smile, “May you never want a friend in the world.” I next gave her some tobacco, to which she responded, “May the dear Lord thank you a thousand times.” I ran through all the varieties I had, without exhausting her stock of thanks. I began to think that I must “give it up.” I believe Nisbets, Sunday School Union, Hodder and Stoughton, Partridge, Religious Tract Society, Christian Knowledge Society, and all the wide world-known first class publishing houses in Paternoster Row—and over London there are many of them—would not produce variety of picture books enough to exhaust the different kind of thanks the old gipsy woman had in store; at any rate she would have a curtsy for the last and one to spare for the next gift. I had a Testament in my bag, and as a last present I thought I would give it to her. The old woman took it out of my hand as a hungry starving child takes a piece of bread, with more eagerness than she had shown over either the money or the tobacco, and clasped it to her breast and called out with tears in her eyes in an attitude of prayer, “May the dear Lord Jesus bless you, my dear good gentleman, so long as you shall live, and may you never want a friend.” Tears and curtsies came again pretty freely, I shook hands with the old gipsy, and we parted. The rimy moisture on my spectacles, and the hastiness of my movements prevented me testing the old gipsy woman’s tears, to see whether they were genuine or not. I rather think they were; at any rate it is more pleasant to human nature to have smiles than frowns, even if they come from the devil.

I jumped into the trap, put on a warm muffler, and jolted and jogged for some two hours to my lodgings, passing some gipsy poachers on the way, and watching the growing moon in the heavens facing me, which seemed to speak words of consolation showing unmistakably that all was not darkness in the temporary Arctic cold regions in the world of gipsydom.

In Kelso I found out that one of the princes of gipsydom had been in jail nearly a score of times; in fact, one of the magistrates told me that he himself had sent one of the gipsy vagabonds to jail something like half a dozen times during the last two years. As a rule, when his “highness” was not in jail, he was employed scraping the streets, scavenging, or getting a penny in other ways. In the train I was told that one of the queens of gipsydom indulged in language which would not be a sufficient passport to heaven, and was at the present time to outside observers a poor, miserable old woman, with one foot in the grave, a standing lie to the advantages, blessings, and beauties of an uncivilized, demoralizing, wandering vagabond’s life.

Esther Faa Blythe—a Scotch gipsy queen

A portrait of one of the self-crowned Scottish gipsy queens, Esther Faa Blythe, is here given. The old woman is eighty-five years of age, and has an eye to business. She is sharp, and can adapt herself to all circumstances. With the saints she becomes heavenly, and so on, almost through the whole of the lights, shades, and phases of social life.

There are numbers of “gipsy kings” and “queens” in the country—aye, almost in every county; at any rate those who are simple enough to believe in them say so. One gipsy queen not long ago used to dress in dashing, gaudy silks, and sit in “a chair of state” in her van, and the Londoners paid their threepennies to see her from time to time. She now lives a “retired life,” upon her gains, at Maidenhead.

The best gipsy queen I know of is the good Christian woman, Mrs. Simpson—formerly a Lee—at Notting Hill, who has become a devoted, good Christian woman, and tries to do all the good she can as she passes up and down the world. Her Bible contains her “state records,” which are the guide of her life. For twenty years she did a “roaring trade” by telling fortunes to simpletons and big babies out of the Bible—upside-down at times—of which she could not tell a letter. Since she has been a gipsy Christian queen she has learnt to read some parts of the blessed book. My plan, if followed out thoroughly in all its details, will make all our gipsies “kings” and “queens.” It is surprising that there are people in the world silly enough even at this late day to believe in such beings as the “gipsy kings” and “queens” of backwood romance.

To come back to Yetholm. The aches, pains, and wild visions of the night carried me almost over the wide, wide world, and had it not been for the power of Divine love and the rays of heavenly light I cannot tell where I might have got to ere this.

“The rougher the way, the shorter the stay,”

said Wesley. I paid my bill, and started homeward, and at St. Boswell’s station I made the acquaintance of Thomas Webster, Esq., and his two sweet, interesting little sons, Masters Thomas Scott Cliff and Harold Colin, of Oxenden Towers, Dunse. In the train we sat together, and chatted and whiled away time almost imperceptibly for several hours as we journeyed southward. At Hillfield we separated. He and his sons travelled westward, and I kept speeding along southward and homeward, I think a wiser man; certainly I know more of the gipsies in Scotland and at Yetholm than I ever knew before. I find, among other things, that there are a number of gipsies living among the rocks on the northern coasts of Scotland, more like wild animals than human beings, and as shaggy as winter-coated goats.

My visit to Yetholm brought out the fact more vividly to my mind than ever, that private flickering and fluttering missionary enterprise, apart from compulsory education, sanitation, and proper Government supervision, is powerless, and unable to reclaim our gipsies and their children from heathendom and its black midnight surroundings; and this I have stated all along in my letters, Congress papers, articles in the Graphic and Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, and in my “Gipsy Life,” &c. The case of the poor brickyard girls and boys and canal children proves this in an unmistakable manner beyond all doubt; at any rate, to those who have their eyes and ears open, and hearts and hands ready to help forward the country’s welfare. [329]Some fifty years ago the Rev. John Baird, a godly minister at Yetholm, and a few warm hearted friends, commenced in right good earnest to reform the gipsies at Yetholm. A committee was formed, several hundreds of pounds were collected, steps taken to get the gipsy children to school, and for some years they issued encouraging reports concerning the gipsies. Plenty of proofs were forthcoming to show that the gipsy children could be made meet for heaven by the application of the laws of education, sanitation, and the gospel; they were, as a rule, as well conducted in school and church as other labouring-class children. In course of time the missionary zeal of the committee began to flag, and Mr. Baird handed them over to the magistrates, and he goes on to say: “Take the more respectable individual, and let him follow the occupation of the gipsy, and in a few years he will in all probability be as bad as any of them. It is almost folly and ignorance to say that a wandering gipsy may be a respectable character. The thing seems to be possible and, theoretically, not improbable; but practically the wandering gipsy is almost without exception a disreputable person. His wandering life leads to innumerable evils. In kindness to themselves, therefore, their occupation, were it even a useful one to society, should be put down; but it is not only useless, but positively injurious to themselves and others. Their life is one of petty crime; their death involved in all the gloom of ignorance and despair.”

What are the results to-day of the years of toil and the hundreds of pounds which have been spent upon the gipsy children at Yetholm? Only one gipsy is to be found going to church on Sundays. And whose fault is it? Certainly not the gipsy children’s, nor yet that of Mr. Baird and his friends, but that of the State and the country. Mr. Baird gave proof that education had made some gipsy children into useful servants and good citizens; and why not more? Would to God that our noble Queen, our statesmen, and our philanthropists would listen to the gipsy children’s cry which has been going upward to heaven from our doors during the last three hundred and sixty-eight years, and is still unheard and unheeded by the Christians of England. Their tears, instead of softening our hearts, have turned them into icicles, sneers, and frozen sympathies, and the devilish, sensual gipsy novelists have transformed the bright lively looks of the girls into wicked designs and immoral purposes. Every retarding act and backward movement of those who would keep the poor gipsy children in ignorance will be a thorn in their pillow at the close of life, as the crest of the eternal wave appears in view with savage, bewildering reality. It is a serious thing to drag women and children downhill, and it is one that will not be banished by the artistic touches of dark, sensual, misleading gipsy romance, however finely drawn and dexterously spun.

The Yetholm gipsies, living, roosting, and nestling in their degrading, demoralizing, and squalid manner, have, during the last three centuries, from beneath the shadow of the sacred parish church and within the sound of its heavenly chimes, sent forth into England, Scotland, and the world over two thousand dark missionaries, trained in all the crimes of sin and wrong-doing, to spread misery and moral and eternal death on every hand, without our ever putting out our hands as a nation to arrest or sweeten the stream of iniquity which has been floating by our doors for so long. Good Lord, wake us all up from our sleep of moral death into which we are falling, bound hand and foot by selfish interests—money, greed, sensual pleasures, and fascinating delights.

Gipsying in this country comes up before us in various forms, enough to send a cold, thrilling shudder through one’s nature. A friend whom I know well, in Leicester, told me only the other day that one of her distant relations at Greetham, in Rutlandshire, had SOLD, some year or so ago, his dark-eyed and dark-haired pretty girl of about twelve summers to a gang of gipsies for TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE AND A GALLON OF BEER, and the poor lost creature is now tramping and travelling the country, no one knows where. This poor girl’s mother is living in comfortable service in Leicester. One can hardly imagine a husband and wife, father and mother, so utterly lost to all natural feeling as to sell their child for half a crown; but so it is, and no doubt she is making money for the gipsy scoundrels and inhuman brutes. My heart often bleeds for the little lost gipsy girl, concerning whom slap-dash gipsy song-writers can call forth thrills of momentary pleasurable excitement from sensual gipsy admirers as they pass round the “loving cup.”

I often wonder what kind of song it is the poor child’s inhuman mother sings to while away the pleasurable duties of her station and the silent hours of the night; and while her offspring lies like a dog crouched on a heap of straw, half starved, dressed in rags, filth, and vermin, in some tent at the bottom of some dark lane by the side of a wood, listening with wide-open eyes to the screeching of game and weazels, the howling of the wind, and the beating of the hail and rain against her thin midnight shelter from stormy blasts.

While in Scotland a friend told me that recently he was in a hairdresser’s shop, and while he was undergoing shampooing and a scenting process, a poor, half-frozen, half-naked, Scotch gipsy girl, with dishevelled hair, came, with a small tin can in her hand, begging with tears in her eyes for some hot water. My friend was struck with the poor gipsy girl’s sorrowful, soul-mourning condition and request, and he asked her what she wanted the hot water for. “Please, my good gentleman,” said the girl, tremblingly, “my mother’s hair is frozen to the ground, and I want a little hot water to loosen it with. Mother can’t get up till it is loosened, and there is no one else in the tent to fetch the water and to get her up but me, sir.” What a tale of sorrow did the poor child relate. How sadly true is this of the gipsies and show people, and other travelling children all over our highly favoured and heavenly exalted country to-day. Our gipsies, by their own wrong-doings, lying, thieving, poaching, cheating, fortune-telling, idleness, profanity, sabbath-breaking, and other deadly sins, have bound themselves to the ground under our eyes, and we have stood by with our hands in our pockets, winking, blinking, and chuckling at their heartrending condition. Some thirty thousand gipsy children have, for the last three hundred and fifty years, received from door to door cuffs, kicks, crumbs, crusts, smiles, curses, and flattery, but have never, except in a flickering way, had extended to them the hand of practical help and sympathy. They have lived on our commons, in our lanes, by the side of our woods, in our dark, black alleys, in our prisons and workhouses. The little seedlings of hope that God has planted in the breasts of the poor gipsy children, we have, instead of encouraging them, trampled upon, and the little tender buds and blades as they peeped forth we have trodden down.

The children are lying and dying in the mud, with none to deliver. As a result of our negligence and indifference to the wants of the poor gipsy child, we shall some day have a crop of thistles, hard, sharp, and strong, difficult to handle and more difficult to uproot, think about it lightly as we may. The cries of the gipsy children have filled the earth, and reached heaven for help; but we have barred the school doors against them, and locked in their faces the gates through which they should have been led to health, prosperity, civilization, Christianity, and heaven. Gipsy women’s wails and gipsy children’s cries are going upward and upward; and to-day the gipsy, show, and canal children are at our doors dressed in rags and dirt, with matted hair, and tears in their eyes, beseeching us to take them into our embraces and soul-saving institutions, to lead them heavenward and to God, and still we refuse to listen to their entreaties. Shall we refuse to do so any longer? God grant that there may be a speedy breaking of bars, bolts, and locks that have bound our gipsies, show people, and their children to their debasing customs, and that our noble Queen, Senators, and Lawgivers may open the doors of the blessed institutions with which our seagirt isle is covered to our gipsies and their children without one moment’s delay, before our candlestick is removed and glory departed.

The Englishmen of our England of to-day have it within their power to show to the world how to improve the condition of the gipsy and canal children as no other nation has ever had before, without trampling under foot liberty and civil rights. Shall we with folded hands stand by with the blood of the canal and gipsy children hanging upon our garments, with awful effect, while the lambs of Christ’s flock are groping their way to misery, ruin, and woe? Shall we put out our hand to save the children? It is for my countrymen to answer “Yes” or “No.”

I asked my friend John Harris, the Cornish poet, to kindly help on the cause of the gipsy children, and right gladly he did it; and here is his touching poem. May it sink deep into our hearts!

“The day is done, Zutilla,
And yonder shines a star;
Our camp is on the moorlands,
From busy homes afar.
No church bells murmur near us,
No echoes from the town,
And o’er the lonely common
The night comes slowly down.

“Zutilla, thou art dying!
Once by the riverside
Our tents stood in the sunshine
Upon the wasteland wide.
Then thou wert but a baby,
So beautiful and bright;
I kissed thee in my gladness,
And wept with fond delight.

“Came from the leafy hollow,
A man with hoary hair;
His voice was soft as summer
When lilies scent the air:
This Book he gave, Zutilla,
Against our hour of need,
Which surely is the present;
But oh! we cannot read.

“How pale thou art, Zutilla!
I fear thy hour is come.
Is there a God of mercy?
And will He take thee home?
This Book might tell us plainly
Now in our hour of need,
Not having any teacher:
But oh! we cannot read.

“Gone, gone art thou, Zutilla!
My tears shall flow for thee,
A gipsy’s darling daughter,
The sun and moon to me.
Thy mother’s heart is breaking,
’Tis well it thus should bleed;
For nothing gives me comfort,
Now in my hour of need.

“I know not how to utter
One word of prayer to Him!
Will no one teach the gipsy,
Whose life and death are dim?
Come, come to us, ye upright,
Who walk this favoured sod,
And teach us from your Bible,
And tell us of your God.

“Yes, I am old and feeble,
And sinks life’s flickering spark.
Oh! thousands of my people
Are dying in the dark!
The gipsy children perish,
Like mine, before my eyes:
O come, O come, and teach us
The passage to the skies!

“My wakeful eyes are burning,
My soul is rocked with dread:
O England, rouse thee! rouse thee!
And hasten to the dead.
If thou wilt do thy duty,
Another light shall gleam
Upon the gipsy’s tent-tops
Our fathers have not seen.”

God (Doovel) bless (pÁrik) the (o) brickfield (chikino-tan), boat (paanÉngro), and (Ta) gipsy women (joÓvyaw) and (Ta) children (chaviÉs), and (Ta) may (Te) their (lÉnti) tears (tchingar) be (vel) noticed (lel-veÉna) and (Ta) help (kair-posh) come (avÉl) from (avrÍ) heaven (mi-dÚvelsko) and (Ta) my (meÉro) country (tem). So (AjÁw) be (vel) it (les), and more (kÓmi).

NOTE.

In response to the canal and gipsy children’s prayers, cries, and tears, the only answer coming as yet is as follows: With the assistance of the Government, represented by the Right Hon. Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., President of the Local Government Board; the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella, M.P., Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education; J. T. Hibbert, Esq., M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the local Government Board, Mr. Burt, M.P., introduced the Canal Boats Act (1877, 46 Vict.) Amendment Bill on April 9th, 1883, and it was read the first time. When the Bill came on for the second reading on April 18th, Mr. Salt, M.P., for Stafford, met it with a “blocking” amendment as follows: “After the Second reading of the Canal Boats Act (1877) Amendment Bill, to move that it be referred to the Select Committee on Canals.” The Daily News in a leader states: “Mr. Salt intends to move that the Canal Boats Act (1877) Amendment Bill be referred to a Select Committee. The motion, if carried, would shelve this useful and unpretending Bill for another session.” I was in the Speaker’s gallery, and saw with sorrowful pangs Mr. Salt move his successful check to the Bill. This was no sooner done than Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P. for Leicester, took his hat off to “scotch” the further progress of the Bill. Notwithstanding the entreaties of Earl Stanhope, Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., Mr. Pell, M.P., myself and others, Mr. Salt refused to drop his “blocking” amendment, although Mr. Salt and Mr. Taylor knew full well that any amendment they might propose when the Bill is in Committee before the “House” would be considered. Later on Mr. Warton, M.P. for Bridport, put his universal block on, as he always does when measures for the country’s welfare come to the front and are likely to pass into law. In the week commencing April 30, 1883, no less than twenty-nine “blocks” had emanated from this “honourable member’s” brain to be placed against the legislative action of Parliament for the country’s good.

On Friday, April 27th, the Daily Telegraph, in a leader, states Mr. Algernon Egerton, M.P. for Wigan, has “blocked” the Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill brought forward by Mr. Burt on behalf of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville.

It seems inexplicable that Mr. Taylor, who, as a Member of the “House,” helped me to get the Brickyard Act of 1871 and the Canal Boats Act of 1877 passed, should at the last moment take steps to prevent the success of the Act of 1877 which my Amending Bill would bring about, and with but little cost or inconvenience to all parties. Both Mr. P. A. Taylor and Mr. Salt are friends to the cause I have in hand—at least I hope so; but to check the Bill was a backward move.

To turn aside the Christianizing and civilizing institutions of the country from exerting their influence upon 60,000 poor canal and gipsy children is no light undertaking. It cannot be the cause of the poor canal and gipsy children that they wish to throw cold water upon, but upon my unworthy self, who has had the audacity, against immense odds and under tremendous difficulties, to take the cause of the brickyard, canal, and gipsy children in hand. Time and patience weave trials into pleasures and difficulties into crowns.

In the meantime the children’s cries are going east, west, north, and south, upward and heavenward for help. Shall it be given? They are more in need of it by far than the children of other working classes. Oh, that a speedy answer may come, and the children delivered from the vortex of ruin and the jaws of death by the hand of the most enlighted Government in the world!