Part 3 (1/2)

Difficulty of co with Gipsies--The Cabman--Rommany for French--”Wanderlust”--Gipsy Politeness--The Tinker and the Painting--Secrets of Bat-catching--The Piper of Hamelin, and the Tinker's Opinion of the Story--The Walloon Tinker of Spa--Argot

One summer day in London, in 1871, I was seated alone in an artist's studio Suddenly I heard without, beneath the , thesound of a scissors-grinder's wheel

By me lay a few tools, one of which, a chisel, was broken I took it, went softly to the , and looked down

There was the wheel, including all the apparatus of a travelling tinker

I looked to see if I could discover in the two men who stood by it any trace of the Roed son of the roads, who looked, however, as if a sturdy drinker ht be hidden in his shell, was evidently not my ”affair” He seemed to be the ”Co” of the fir sure--the face to me invisible--which I scrutinised more nearly And the instant I observed his _hat_ I said to myself, ”This looks like it”

For dilapidated, worn, wretched as that hat was, there was in it an atte n, Boheerm of an effort--not even _life_--only the ciliary ot beyond Anglo-Saxondolishman, ever yet had that indefinable touch of the opera-supernumerary in the streets It _was_ a sombrero

”That's the ave hi away, and touched his hat respectfully as I approached

Now the reader is possibly aware that of all difficult tasks one of the uised Gipsy, or even a professed one, to utter a word of Rommany to a man not of the blood Of this all writers on the subject have much to say For it is so black-swanish, I entlearo thus addressed is at once subjected to morbid astonishment and nervous fears, which under his calm countenance and infinite ”cheek” are indeed concealed, but which speedily reduce theuage of men at ith the law; therefore you are either a detective who has acquired it for no healthy purpose, or else you yourself are a scah up in the profession that it behooves all the little fish of outlawdom to beware of you

2 Or else--what is quite as entle to make fun of hie of Roe Certainly, reader, you know that a regular London streeter, say a cab ht, about the tiht puzzler indeed I had hesitated between him and another

”You don't know _your own mind_,” said the disappointed candidate to me

”_Mind your own_ business,” I replied It was a poor palindro--yet it settled him But he swore--oh, of course he did--he swore beautifully

Therefore, being azed earnestly on the revolving wheel

”Do you know,” I said, ”I think a great deal of your business, and take a great interest in it”

”Yes, sir”

”I can tell you all the names of your tools in French You'd like to hear them, wouldn't you?”

”Wery much indeed, sir”

So I took up the chisel ”This,” I said, ”is a _churi_, sometimes called a _chinomescro_”

”That's the French for it, is it, sir?” replied the tinker, gravely Not a muscle of his face urs_, sometimes called _kaulos_”

”Never heerd the words before in my life,” quoth the sedate tinker

”The bellows is a _pudee, sir, is French,” rejoined the tinker In every instance he repeated the words after me, and pronounced theuage But it's quite new to me”

”You wouldn't think now,” I said, affably, ”that _I_ had ever been on the roads!”

The tinker looked at me from my hat to my boots, and solemnly replied--