Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying - George Smith - Страница 3

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Sunday, April 23, 1882, opened with a wet morning. The clouds were thick and heavy. The smoke seemed to hover, struggle and rise again as if life depended on its mounting higher than the patched and broken roofs of London houses. The rain came down drearily, dribbly, and drizzly. It hung upon my garments with saturating tendencies, and I really got wet through before I was aware of it. The roads were very uncomfortable for feet in non-watertight boots. Umbrellas were up. Single “chaps,” and others in “couples” were wending their way across Victoria Park. The school bells were chiming out in all directions “Come to school,” “It is time,” “Do not delay,” “Come to school.” In response to the bell-calls the little prattlers and toddlers were hurrying along to school. Their big sisters, with “jerks and snatches,” frequently called out, “Now, then, come along; we shall be too late; singing will be over, and if it is I’ll tell your mother.”

At Victoria Park Station the platelayers were at work, and when I inquired the cause, I was told that the Queen’s carriages were to pass over the line to Loughton at eleven o’clock “to try the metals,” and to see that the platform was back enough to allow sufficient space for the footboards of the royal carriages. In some cases there was not sufficient space, and the line had to be swung a little to enable the carriages to pass.

At Stratford I had a few minutes to wait, and a little conversation with the stationmaster soon satisfied me that he was an observing and common-sense Christian, with a kind heart and good wishes for the poor gipsy children.

I arrived at Loughton in time to join in the morning service conducted by the Wesleyans in a neat iron chapel. The service was good, plain, and homely, and as such I enjoyed it. Of course, being a stranger in “these parts,” I was eyed o’er with “wondering curiosity.” In the chapel there was a tall old man who sat and stood pensively, with his head bending low, during the services, and whom, without much hesitation, I set down as a gipsy. He did not seem to enjoy the service. On inquiry afterwards, I found that my surmise was correct, and that the tall man was a gipsy Smith, of some seventy winters, who was born under a tent upon Epping Forest, amongst the brambles, furze, and heather, with the clouds for a shelter from the sun’s fierce rays in summer, and the slender tent covering, with the dying embers of a stick fire, to keep body and soul together in the midst of the wintry blasts, drifting hail, snow, and sleet, and keen biting frosts to “nip the toes.”

After climbing the steep and rugged hill, I made my way to find out a cocoa-nut gambler, who once gave me an invitation to call upon him when I happened to pass that way. With much ado and many inquiries I found the man and his wife just preparing to go with a donkey and a heavy load of nuts to some secluded spot a few miles away, to “pick up a little money” for their “wittles.” My visit having ended in moonshine, I now began in earnest to hunt up the gipsies. A few minutes’ wandering among the bushes and by-lanes brought me upon a group of half-starved, dirty, half-naked, lost little gipsy children, who were carrying sticks to their wretched dwellings, which were nothing better than horribly stinking, sickening, muddy wigwams.

On making my way through mud and sink-gutter filth, almost over “boot-tops,” I came upon a duelling which, were I to live to the age of Methuselah, I could never forget.

Sitting upon an old three-legged chair, and with a bottom composed of old rags, cord, and broken rushes, was a bulky, dirty, greasy, idle-looking fellow, who might never have been washed in his life. I put a few questions to him about the weather and other trifling matters; but the answers I got from him were such that I could not understand. To “roker” Romany was a thing he could not do. Mumble and grumble were his scholastic attainments.

At the door stood a poor, old, worn-out pony, which they said was as “dodgy and crafty as any human being. It was a capital animal in a cart, but would not run at fairs with children on its back. Immediately you put a child upon its back it stood like a rock, and the devil could not move it.”

In the room were five children as ragged as wild goats, as filthy as pigs, and quite as ignorant. On an old “squab bed”—the only bed in the room—sat a big, fat, aged gipsy woman, on a par with the man and children. A young gipsy of about eighteen years stood at the bottom of the squab bed enjoying his Sunday dinner. In one hand he held the dirty plate, and the other had to do duty in place of a knife and fork. Of what the dinner was composed I could not imagine. It seemed to be a kind of mixture between meat, soup, fish, broth, roast and fry, thickened with bones and flavoured with snails and bread. Upon a very rickety stool sat a girl with a dirty bare bosom suckling a poor emaciated baby, whose father nobody seemed to know—and, if report be true, the less that is said about paternity the better. In this one little hole, with a boarded floor, covered with dirt and mud at least half an inch thick, one bed teeming with vermin, which I saw with my own eyes, and walls covered with greasy grime, there were a man, woman, girl, young man, and five children, huddling together on a Christian Sabbath, in Christian England, within a stone’s throw of a Christian Church and the Church of England day and Sunday school. None of them had ever been in a day or Sunday school or place of worship in their lives. They were as truly heathens as the most heathenish in the world, and as black as the blackest beings I have ever seen. The only godly ray manifest in this dark abode was that of gratitude and thankfulness. A pleasing trait is this. It was a vein embedded in their nature that only required the touch of sympathy, brotherhood, and kindness to light up the lives of these poor lost creatures living in darkness. Natural beauty I saw none inside; but the marks of sin were everywhere manifest. Just outside this miserable hive, notwithstanding the stench, the bees were buzzing about seeking in vain for honey, the butterflies were winging fruitlessly about trying to find flowers to settle upon; and across the beautiful forest valley the cuckoo was among the trees piping forth its ever beautiful, lovely, enchanting, and never-tiring “cuck-coo,” “cuck-coo,” “cuck-coo;” throstles, linnets, blackbirds, and woodpeckers were hopping about from tree to tree within a stone’s throw, sending forth heavenly strains, echoing and re-echoing in the distance among the wood foliage on this bright spring Sunday afternoon. I could almost hear with Dr. James Hamilton, in his “Pearl of Parables” (Sunday at Home, 1878), a poor gipsy girl singing with tears in her eyes—

“Some angel in the land of love

For love should pity me,

And draw me in like Noah’s dove

From wastes of misery.”

The lark echoes in the air—

“But I would seek on earth below

A space for heaven to win,

To cheer one heart bowed down by woe,

To save one soul from sin.”

I left this hut, after taking a breath of fresh air, for another gipsy dwelling round the corner, picking my way among the masses of filth as well as I could. Here another sight, not quite so sickening, but equally heartrending, presented itself. A gipsy woman was squatting upon the filthy boards, the father was sitting upon a rickety old chair without any bottom in it; i.e., there were a few cords tied across which served to hold up one or two dirty rags, and these were sunk so low that any one sitting upon the chair could feel nothing but the rims, which were not at all comfortable. Round the man and woman were six children of all ages and sizes, partially dressed in filthy rags and old shoes, which seemed to have been picked out of the ashes upon Hackney Marshes, all of which were much too large for their little feet, and were stuffed with rags. One little girl had a pair of cast-off woman’s shoes, possessing little sole and almost less “uppers.”

The gipsy father was partially blind through having been in so many gipsy combats. A kick over the eyes had not only nearly blinded him, but as B. said, “I feel at times as if my senses were nearly gone. Thank the Lord, I can see best when the sun shines clear.” On my approaching nearer to where they were sitting the man got up and kindly offered me his chair, which I accepted, notwithstanding the disagreeable surroundings. On the walls of their dwelling pieces of pictures and old newspapers were pasted. There were parts of The British Workman, Band of Hope Review, Old Jonathan, The Cottager and Artizan, Churchman’s Almanack; in fact, they seemed to have upon the greasy walls a scrap of some of the pictorial publications published by the Wesleyans, Baptists, Church of England, the Unitarians, Congregationalists, the Religious Tract Society, Cassell, Sunday School Union, Haughton and Co., Partridge and Co., Dr. Barnardo, and others. I said to the poor man, “This is a very tumbledown old place.” “Yes,” he said, “people say that it has been built nine hundred years; and I believe it has, for the man who owns it now says he cannot remember it being built.” I said, “How old do you think the man is who owns it?” He answered, “Well, I should think that he is fifty, for he has great grand-children.” Their only table consisted of an old box, upon which, in a wicker basket, there were a young jay and a blackbird which the gipsy woman was trying to rear. As the young birds opened their beaks, almost wide enough to swallow each other, the woman kept thrusting into their mouths large pieces of stinking meat of some kind, about which I did not ask any particulars. These little gipsy attractions and observations being over, I began to inquire about things concerning their present and eternal welfare. I found on inquiry that the only food this family had had to live upon during the last two days had been a threepenny loaf and half an ounce of tea. When I asked them what they did for a living they could scarcely tell me. The man said, “I go out sometimes with a basket and a few oranges in it, and I picks up a bit of a living in this way. Some of the people are pretty good to me. As a rule we begs our clothes. Occasionally I catches a rabbit or picks up a hedgehog. If I can scrape together a shilling to buy oranges I generally manages pretty well for that day. Our firing does not cost us anything, and in summer-time the young uns picks up a lot of birds’ eggs out of the forest, which are very nice for them if they are not too far hatched.” Just at this juncture a practical demonstration took place as to how they dealt with the birds’ eggs. One of the boys, I should think of about seven years, came with a nest of blackbirds’ eggs—poor little fellow he was no doubt hungry, for he had had no Sunday dinner—which he placed into his mother’s hands. The mother was not long before she began to crack them, and into the children’s mouths they went, half hatched as they were, just as she fed the young jay. I really thought that one of the youngsters would have been choked by one of the half-hatched young blackbirds. With a little crushing, cramming, and tapping on the back the poor Sunday dinnerless gipsy child escaped the sad consequences I at one time feared would be the result. To see a woman forcing food of this description down a child’s throat is a sight I never want to see again. Hunger opens a mouth that turns sickening food into dainty morsels. None of these poor gipsy children had ever lisped a godly prayer or read a word in their lives. The father said he would be glad to send the children to school if they would be received there and they could go free. The whole of these children were born in a tent upon a bit of straw among the low bushes of Epping Forest. Some in the depth of severe winter, others in the midst of drenching rains, and even when the larks were singing overhead, with “roughish nurses and midwives” as attendants.

I found that this “gipsy-man” had been a Sunday-school scholar, but somehow or other—he did not seem desirous of saying how—he got among a gang of gipsies in early life. He left his praying mother for the life of a vagabond among tramps, with a relish for hedgehogs, snails, and diseased pork. He said he liked hedgehog-pie better than any other food in the world. “Two hedgehogs will make a good pie,” he said. He also said that he was once with a tribe of gipsy tramps, and he laid a wager that he “could make them all sick of hedgehogs.” They told him he could not. The result was he set off to a place he well knew in the neighbourhood and caught twenty-one hedgehogs. These were all cooked, some in clay and others turned into soup, and all the gipsies who ate them “were made sick, excepting an old woman of the name of Smith.”

He next told me how to cook snails, which he liked very much, and wished he had a dish before him then. The snails, he said, “were boiled, and then put in salt and water, after which they were boiled again, and then were ready for eating.” Feeling desirous of changing the subject, I reverted to his Sunday-school experience, and asked if he could remember anything he once read (he could not now read a sentence) or sung. All he could remember, he said, was “In my father’s house are many mansions,” and a bit of a song—

“Here we suffer grief and pain,

Here we meet to part again;

In heaven we part no more.

Oh! that will be joyful.”

My heart bled, and I felt that I could have wept tears of sorrow as I sat in the midst of this family of our present-day gipsies. In these two tumble-down wooden dwellings there were two men and three women and twelve children growing up in the densest ignorance, barbarism, and sin.

I gave the mother and children some money wherewith to buy some food, and I left them with gratitude beaming out of their dirty faces. In going down the hill, a couple of hundred yards from this hotbed of sin, iniquity, and wretchedness, I came upon a party of about one hundred and fifty beautifully dressed and happy Sunday-school children tripping along joyfully with their teachers by their side to an afternoon service in the church close by. I could almost imagine them to be singing as I looked into their cheery faces, and nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have sung out with them lustily—

“Merrily, merrily, onward we go.”

The five minutes’ trotting down the hill with this youthful encouraging band brought my forty years’ joyous and soul-saving episodes of Sunday-school life vividly before me, which had the soothing effect of temporarily shaking off my late hour’s experiences with the gipsies, and causing my heart to dance for joy.

A little later on I took the main road to High Beach and the “Robin Hood.” I had not got far upon the way before I was accosted by three semi-drunken, “respectable”-looking roughs, asking all sorts of insulting questions; and because I could not point them to a “California,” but rather to a “Bedlam,” I really thought that I should have to “lookout for squalls.” They began in earnest to close round me. By a little manœuvring, and the fortunate appearance of two or three gentlemen, I eluded their clutches.

The road up the hill to the “Robin Hood” was literally crowded with travellers, foolish and gay; cabs and carriages teemed with passengers of the gentle and simple sort, roughs and riffraff, went puffing and panting along. There were the thick and thin, tall and short, weak and strong, all jostling together as on Bank Holidays. I could hardly realize the fact that it was an English Sunday. In one trap, drawn by a poor bony animal scarcely able to crawl, there were fifteen men, women, and children, shouting and screaming as if it were a fair day—wild, mad, and frantic with swill to their heart’s core. The gipsies were in full swing. There were no less than fifty horses and donkeys running, galloping, trotting, and walking, with men, women, and children upon their backs. Half-tipsy girls seemed to have lost all sense of modesty and shame. The long sticks of the gipsies laid heavily upon the bones of the poor animals set the women and girls “a-screeching” and shouting, sounds which did not rise very high before they were turned into God’s curses.

I knew many of the gipsies, and, contrary to what I had expected, I did not receive one cross look. The eldest son of a gipsy, named Pether, to whom I shall refer later on, took me into his tea, gingerbeer, and pop tent; and nothing would satisfy him but that I must have some gingerbeer and cake, and while I was eating he handed me his fat baby to look at. It certainly bade fair to become a bigger man than General Tom Thumb. I touched the baby’s cheek and put a small coin in its tiny hand. I also spoke a word of genuine praise to the young gipsy mother on account of the good start she was making, and afterwards I shook hands with the gipsy pair and bade them good-bye. To Pether’s credit be it said that, although he owns horses, swings, cocoa-nuts, &c., he never employs them on Sundays. His gipsy father had told him more than once that “there is no good got by it. I have noticed it more than once, what’s got by cocoa-nuts, swings, and horses on Sunday, the devil fetches before dinner on Monday.”

Upon the forest, on God’s day of rest, there were no fewer than from five hundred to one thousand gipsy children, not a dozen of whom could read and write a sentence, or had ever been in a place of worship.

In going to my friend’s, the house-dwelling gipsy, for tea, in response to his kind invitation, that we might have a chat together, I called to see a gipsy woman of the name of B— whom I knew, as I also did her parents, who had recently come to live in the place. When I arrived at the wretched, miserable, dirty abode, I found that her gipsy husband had been sent for, and was now “doing fourteen years”—for what offence I did not attempt to find out—and that his place had been filled by another idle scamp; and, if reports be true, he has also been sent for “to do double duty,” and whose place also has been filled up in the social circle with another gipsy. This gipsy woman has entered into a fourth alliance, and, as one of the gipsies recently said, she has really been “churched” this time. I saw much, smelt a deal, but said little; and, after giving the poor child of six a trifle, I made haste to join my friends the gipsies at tea.

When I was invited, my friend Pether said: “You could not mistake the house. Over the door it reads, ‘J. Pether, the Ratcatcher and Butcher.’ If you ask any one in Loughton for ‘Scarecrow,’ ‘Poshcard,’ ‘Shovecard,’ or ‘Jack Scare,’ they will direct you to my house. I am known for miles round.” Of course I had no difficulty in finding my friend, with so many names and titles. On arriving at the door my big friend came hobbling along to open it. If my little hand had been a rough, big, cocoa-nut that he had been going to “shie” with vengeance at somebody’s head, he could not have given it a firmer grip. Fortunately he did not break any bones in it. I had not been long seated upon the bench before his “poorly” wife came downstairs. The best cups and saucers were set on a coverless table, and the cake, which was a little too rich, was placed thereon. By the side of the fireplace upon the floor was their poor crippled son of about sixteen years, who had lost the use of his arms and legs, but had retained his senses. Tea was handed out to us, and I did fairly well. I enjoyed the tea, although I felt pained and sorrowful to see a sharp youth confined at home under such sad circumstances. They did their best to make me happy and comfortable. At our table sat one of Mr. Pether’s sons, who was in the militia. He had a kindly word for almost everybody in the regiment to which he belonged, especially for the Duke of Connaught, who had a kindly word for him. The Duke asked him one day if he would like to join the Line, to which young Pether said “No.” “The Duke is a gentleman, and pleases everybody,” said Pether, the young militiaman. “Verily, this is a truth spoken by a gipsy soldier,” I said to Pether senior. “Yes, governor,” said Mr. Pether; “and the Queen is a good woman, too.” To which I replied, “There could not be a better; she is the best Queen that England ever saw.” This brought a smile upon their faces over our hot gipsy tea.

Tea was now over, and our chat began. The first thing I said to Mr. Pether was, “How is it that you have become a gipsy with so many names?” This question called forth a laugh and a groan. A laugh, because it brought to his mind so many reminiscences of bygone days; and a groan, because his gouty leg had an extra twinge from some cause or other, which caused him to pull a wry face for a minute. I could not help smiling, when with one breath he laughed out, “Ah, ah, ah, ah!” and in the next he cried out, “Oh, oh! it almost makes me sweat.” “Well, to begin at the beginning, sir, my father was a butcher and farmer, and he sent me early to London—I think before I was nine years old—to be with an uncle, who was a butcher. I was with him for a few years, but he was not very kind. He used to put me to the worst and coldest kind of work, winter or summer; and I was often put upon by his man and a young chap he had. The chap used to plague me terribly, and call me all sorts of names; and I was a lad that was tempery and peppery, and would not be put on by anybody. One day the chap begun to leather me with a cow’s tongue, which cuts like a knife, upon the bare skin. He leathered me so much that blood ran down my arms and face. This got my blood up, and while he was bending to pick up something I seized the poleaxe that stood close by and struck him when no one was near with the sharp edge of it upon his head, the same as I would a bullock, and felled him to the ground like an ox. As soon as I saw blood flowing I made sure that I had killed him, and, without waiting to pick up my clothes, I ran off as fast as my legs would carry me, without stopping till I got to Harrow-on-the-Hill. I dirted my clothes and coat and mangled them so that nobody could tell me, and I changed my name to ‘Poshcard’ for a time. I then began to wander about the lanes, and to beg, and to sleep in the barns and under stacks on the roadside. Sometimes I could pick up a job at butchers’, doing what they call ‘running guts’ for sausages and black pudding. My clothes at times were all alive. When anybody gave me an old coat or shirt, socks or boots, I never took them off till they dropped off. I have slept under ricks in the winter till the straw has been frozen to my feet. Hundreds of times I have slept between the cows for warmth, while they have lain down in the sheds and cow-houses. I used to creep in between them softly and snoozle the night away. The warmth of the cows has kept me alive hundreds of times. I have at times almost lived on carrots. When blackberries were ripe I used to eat many of them; in fact, I used to steal peas and beans, or any mortal thing that I came near. Sometimes I fell in with drovers. I have got in the winter-time under a hedge and nibbled a turnip for my Sunday dinner. I was for some time with a farmer, and used to mind his cattle, and he got to like me so much that he used to place confidence in me. He would trust me with anything. One time he sent me to sell a calf for him, but instead of returning with the money I ran away and bought a suit of clothes with it. I durst not face him again after that. For fourteen years I was wandering up and down England in this way, daily expecting to be taken up for murder.

“I then joined a gang of gipsies of the name of Lee, and with them I have lied, lived, stole, and slept, more like a dog than a human being. I used to run donkeys all day, and when the old woman came home from fortune-telling she would give me two pieces of bread and butter from somebody’s table for my dinner and tea which some of the servant girls had given to her. Among the gipsies I used to be reckoned the very devil. I have fought hundreds of times, and was never beaten in my life. The time when I was more nearly beaten than any other was with my brother-in-law, a gipsy. We fought hard and fast, up and down, for nearly an hour, and then we gave it up as both of us being as good as each other. I have had both my arms broken, legs broken, shoulder-blades broken, and kicked over my head till I have been senseless, in gipsy rows. Oh! sir, I could tell you a lot more, and I will do so sometime.”

This terrible recital of facts—of the cruelty, hardships, wrong-doing of present-day gipsy life—almost caused my hair to stand on an end whilst he related the horrors of backwood and daylight gipsyism in our midst.

I asked Mr. Pether if the gipsies were on the increase in the country so far as he knew. He answered—

“I should think they are very much. Gipsies seem to be in the lanes everywhere. I have seen as many as five hundred tents and vans in the forest before now at one time. There are not so many now, as you know; but they have spread all over the country, because the rangers would not allow the gipsies to stay upon the forest all night. Some of the gipsies have made heaps of money by fortune-telling. Lord bless you! I knew the family of gipsy Smiths, they seemed to have so much money that they did not know what to do with it. They seemed to have gold and diamond rings upon all their fingers. They took their money to America, and I have not heard what has become of them since. Some of the family are left about the forest now as poor as rats. The gipsies are a rum lot, I can assure you. I do not know a dozen gipsies to-day who can read and write, and none of them ever go, or think of going, to church or chapel.” “Have you ever been in a place of worship since you ran away from home?” “No,” said “Scare,” “except when I went with my old woman to be wed; and thank God I can show the ‘marriage lines.’ Not many of the gipsies can show their ‘marriage lines,’ I can assure you. I have not been in either church or chapel, except then, for nearly fifty years.” I said, “Did you ever pray?” “No,” said “Scare,” “but I swears thousands of times. Mother prays for me and that has to do. She’s a good old creature.”

I said, “Now Mr. Pether, from what cause did you receive the name of ‘Scare’?” “Well, to tell you the truth,” said Mr. “Scare,” “at the edge of the forest there was a little low public-house, kept by a man and his wife, which we gipsies used to visit. In course of time the man died, and the old woman used to always be crying her eyes up about the loss of her poor ‘Bill;’ at least, she seemed to be always crying about him, which I knew was not real—she did not care a rap about the old man—so I thought I would have a lark with the old girl. In the yard there were a lot of fowls, and just before the old girl went to bed—and I knew which bed she slept in—I put up the window and turned one of the fowls into the room and then pulled it gently down again, and I then stood back in the yard. Presently the old girl, I could see by the light, was making for her bedroom, which was on the ground floor. No sooner had the old girl opened the door than the fowl began ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ and ‘flusker’ and ‘flapper’ about the room. The old lady was so frightened that she dropped the candle upon the floor and ran out in the yard calling out ‘Murder!’ ‘murder!’ ‘murder!’ Of course I dared not be seen and sneaked away. Early next morning I went to the house and called for some beer. No sooner had I entered than the old girl told me that she had seen her husband’s ghost on the bed, and it had almost frightened her wild. It had made every hair upon her head stand upright. It was her husband’s ghost, she was sure it was, she said; and nobody could make her believe it was not; and from that night the old woman would not sleep in the room again. She very soon left the public-house, and one of my friends took it. From this circumstance I have gone in the name of ‘Jack Scare.’” “Well, what have you to say about the name ‘Scarecrow,’ by which you are known?” “Scarecrow,” said Mr. Pether, “was given to me after I had fetched, in the dead of the night, a bough of the tree upon which a man had hung himself a few days before. It arose in this way. A man hung himself in a wood through some girl, and after he was cut down and buried a gipsy I knew begged or bought his clothes for a little—I could not say what the amount was, I think five shillings—and wore them. Chaff, jokes, and sneers with that gipsy for wearing the dead man’s clothes resulted in a bet being made for five shillings as to whether I dare, or dare not, visit the spot where the man was hung at midnight hour, and bring some token or proof from the place as having been there. I went and fetched a bough of the very same tree, and from that circumstance I have been called ‘scarecrow’ or ‘dare-devil.’ ‘Poshcard’ or ‘Shovecard’ was given to me because I was always a good hand at cheating with cards.” Posh among the gipsies and in Romany means “half,” and I suppose they really looked upon Pether as having half gipsy blood in his veins.

“Well, how are you getting on now?” “Well, I am getting on pretty well, thank God. I never work my horse on Sundays, and I do not cheat the same as I used to do. Some days I earn £6 or £7, and then again I shall be for days and days and not earn sixpence. I also go a rat-catching and butchering for people, and they pays me pretty well; and sometimes I fetches a hare or two. I am not particular if partridges or pheasants come in my way. If you will let me know the next time you are this way I will have a first-rate hare for you.” Of course I thanked him, but told my friend that I was not partial to hares.

“Well now, Mr. Pether, let us come back again to the time when you ran away, after felling the chap with the poleaxe. Did you kill the man?” “No,” said Pether, “I have found out since that I did not kill him, but I gave him a terrible scalp. He is dead now, poor chap. I have wished many thousands of times since that I had not struck him, though he did wrong in leathering me with a cow’s tongue.”

“How did your friends find you out at last?” “Well,” said Pether, “after I ran away from home my mother advertised for me all over the country, spending scores of pounds to no purpose. On account of my changing my clothes and name, and travelling with gipsies and tramps, and becoming as one of them, they could never find me out, till I had been away nearly eighteen years. How I was found out arose as follows. One day I was sitting in a beershop with some gipsies, when a man came in who knew me, and he seemed to look, and look and eye me over, head and foot, from top to bottom, as he never had done before. While he was looking at me, it seemed to strike me at once that I was at last found out for the murder I had always thought that I had committed. He went away for a little time out of the public-house, and as it has been told me since, he went to the telegraph office to send a telegram to my brother-in-law, who was in London, not many miles away, to come down by the next train, for they had found out who they thought to be their ‘Jack.’ He was not away very long, and I was in twenty minds to have run out of the house; but as he did not come back in a few minutes, I thought I was wrong in judging that I had been found out. Lord bless you, sir, did not I open my eyes when he came in again and brought one or two men with him, and sat down and called for some beer. My legs and knees began to knock together; I was all of a tremble, and I got up to go out of the house, but they called for some beer and would not let me leave the place. For the life of me I could not make it all out. Sometimes I imagined the new-comers were detectives in disguise. They joked and chaffed and seemed quite merry. I can assure you, sir, that I was not merry. I got up several times to try to get out of the house, and to sneak away. He ordered some dinner, and would have no ‘nay,’ but that I must join them. I tried to eat with them, but I can assure you, sir, it was not much that I could either eat or drink. Presently, after dinner, another man came into the room and sat down and called for some beer. I did not know the man. It has turned out since that the last comer was no other than my brother-in-law. It flashed across me that I was at last found out, and no mistake. I was a doomed man; and this surmise seemed to be doubly true when he took out of his pocket a newspaper and began to read an advertisement giving the description of me at the time I ran away. They now called me by my own name, and asked the landlord to allow me to have a wash, which he readily granted. When this was over and I was ready, they said, ‘Now, Jack, we shall want you to go with us.’ Of course there was nothing for it but to go. The worst was come, and I thought I must screw up courage and face it out as well as I could. On our way we called at the telegraph office, where one of the men sent something by telegraph. I did not know what. I have since heard that it was a telegram to my mother, stating that they had found her son ‘Jack,’ and they were on the way to her house with him. On the way through London to go, as I thought, to the police-station, we turned off the main street to go up a by-street. For the life of me I could not tell where this was, except that they were going to change my clothes, or put ‘steel buckles’ upon my wrists. We went into a tidy sort of a little house, which I thought was the home of one of the detectives who was with us. I was asked to sit upon the old sofa, and the men sat round the fire. For a little while all was as still as death. Presently I heard someone coming downstairs. The footstep did not sound like that of a man. In a minute there stood before me a woman between fifty and sixty years old. I thought I had seen the face somewhere, but could not tell where. The voice seemed to be a voice that I had heard somewhere, times back.

“The mystery was soon solved, the secret was soon out. As she looked into my face, she cried out, ‘Art thou my son John, who ran away from his place nearly twenty years ago, and for whom I have prayed every day since that the Lord would bring you back to me before I died?’ And then she came a little nearer, and looked into my face a little closer, and cried out, ‘Thou art my son, John; bless the dear good Lord for preserving thee all these years.’ I said, ‘Are you my mother?’ tremblingly. And she took hold of me and put her arms round me, and clasped me closely to her, and she cried and sobbed out for a minute or two, and then, with tears streaming down her face upon my shoulder, said, while trembling and almost fainting, ‘I am thy mother, my son John; let me kiss thee.’ And she kissed me, and I kissed her. I cried, and she cried; I thought we were not going to be parted again. We were in each other’s arms for a few moments, and the man who brought the newspaper to the public-house to recognize me, made himself known to me as my brother-in-law. Some of my brothers came in the evening—and an evening it was. I shall never forget our meeting while I live.” “And you could have sung from your heart, Pether, ‘Come let us be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.’” “Yes I could. I always felt, and do so still feel, that when I am gipsying, as you sometimes see me at ‘Robin Hood,’ my mother’s prayers are heard by God. She is a good creature, and is alive and lives with my sister at Battersea. I often go to see her. She is a good creature.” Mr. Pether, while narrating his troubles, difficulties, hairbreadth escapes, broke out frequently into sobs and cries almost like a child.

I bade my friends the gipsies good-bye and, after giving the poor crippled boy something to please him, I started to go to the station, but found out that I should have an hour to wait. I therefore turned into a Wesleyan Chapel to enjoy a partial service, at the close of which the choir and the congregation, including a gipsy Smith and his wife, sung with tear-fetching expression and feeling—

“Jerusalem my happy home,

Name ever dear to me;

When shall my labours have an end,

In joy and peace with thee?”

After this impressive service time, steam and “shanks’s pony” carried and wafted me back to my friends in Victoria Park, none the worse for my Sunday ramble among the gipsies.