As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my (165: 5)
friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a
troop of gipsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my
friend was in some doubt whether he should not exert the
justice of the peace[120] upon such a band of lawless vagrants;
but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary (10)
counsellor on these occasions, and fearing that his poultry
might fare the worse for it, he let the thought drop; but
at the same time gave me a particular account of the mischiefs
they do in the country, in stealing people's goods
and spoiling their servants. "If a stray piece of linen (15)
hangs upon an hedge," says Sir Roger, "they are sure to
have it; if a hog loses his way in the fields, it is ten to
one but he becomes their prey; our geese cannot live in
peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity,
his hen-roost is sure to pay for it. They generally straggle
into these parts about this time of the year, and set the
heads of our servant-maids so agog for husbands that we
do not expect to have any business done as it should be
whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairy-maid (166: 5)
who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every
summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest
young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend,
the butler, has been fool enough to be seduced by them;
and, though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon, (10)
every time his fortune is told him, generally shuts himself
up in the pantry with an old gipsy for above half an hour
once in a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things they
live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all
those that apply themselves to them. You see, now (15)
and then, some handsome young jades among them;
the [wenches] have very often white teeth and black
eyes."
[120] Exert his authority as justice of the peace.
Sir Roger, observing that I listened with great attention
to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, (20)
told me that if I would they should tell us our fortunes.
As I was very well pleased with the knight's proposal,
we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A
Cassandra of the crew, after having examined my lines[121]
very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a (25)
corner; that I was a good woman's man; with some
other particulars which I do not think proper to relate.
My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing
his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled
it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle
that could be made in it; when one of them, who was
older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he (167: 5)
had a widow in his line of life[122]; upon which the knight
cried, "Go, go, you are an idle baggage!" and at the
same time smiled upon me. The gipsy, finding he was
not displeased in his heart, told him, after a farther inquiry
into his hand, that his true love was constant, and (10)
that she should dream of him to-night. My old friend
cried "Pish!" and bid her go on. The gipsy told him
that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and
that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The
knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her (15)
go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer
of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't
that simper about the mouth for nothing--." The uncouth
gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the
darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. (20)
To be short, the knight left the money with her that he
had crossed her hand with, and got up again on his
horse.
[121] The lines or wrinkles in the palm of the hand supposed to
indicate the fortune.
[122] The line beginning at the middle of the wrist and sweeping
round the base of the thumb. As this is the line upon which are based
predictions as to length of life and not as to marriage relations, Mr.
Spectator probably did not report the gipsy correctly.
As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me that he
knew several sensible people who believed these gipsies (25)
now and then foretold very strange things; and for half
an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary.
In the height of his good humour, meeting a common beggar
upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to
relieve him, he found his pocket was picked; that being (168: 5)
a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very
dextrous.
I might here entertain my reader with historical remarks
on this idle, profligate people, who infest all the
countries of Europe, and live in the midst of governments (10)
in a kind of commonwealth by themselves. But instead
of entering into observations of this nature, I shall fill
the remaining part of my paper with a story which is
still fresh in Holland, and was printed in one of our
monthly accounts about twenty years ago: (15)
"As the _trekschuyt_, or hackney boat, which carries passengers
from Leyden to Amsterdam, was putting off, a boy running along
the side of the canal desired to be taken in; which the master of
the boat refused, because the lad had not quite money enough to
pay the usual fare. An eminent merchant, being pleased with the (20)
looks of the boy and secretly touched with compassion towards
him, paid the money for him, and ordered him to be taken on
board.
"Upon talking with him afterwards, he found that he could speak
readily in three or four languages, and learned upon farther (25)
examination that he had been stolen away when he was a child, by a
gypsy, and had rambled ever since with a gang of those strollers
up and down several parts of Europe. It happened that the merchant,
whose heart seems to have inclined towards the boy by a secret
kind of instinct, had himself lost a child some years before. (30)
The parents, after a long search for him, gave him for drowned[123]
in one of the canals with which that country abounds; and the
mother was so afflicted at the loss of a fine boy, who was her only
son, that she died for grief of it.
[123] Gave him up for drowned.
"Upon laying together all particulars, and examining the (169: 5)
several moles and marks by which the mother used to describe the
child when he was first missing, the boy proved to be the son of the
merchant whose heart had so unaccountably melted at the sight of
him. The lad was very well pleased to find a father who was so
rich, and likely to leave him a good estate: the father, on the (10)
other hand, was not a little delighted to see a son return to him,
whom he had given for lost, with such a strength of constitution,
sharpness of understanding, and skill in languages."
Here the printed story leaves off; but if I may give
credit to reports, our linguist having received such extraordinary (15)
rudiments towards a good education, was
afterwards trained up in everything that becomes a gentleman;
wearing off by little and little all the vicious habits
and practices that he had been used to in the course of his
peregrinations. Nay, it is said that he has since been (20)
employed in foreign courts upon national business, with
great reputation to himself and honour to those who sent
him, and that he has visited several countries as a public
minister, in which he formerly wandered as a gipsy.
C. (25)
XXIV. THE SPECTATOR DECIDES TO RETURN
TO LONDON
[No. 131. Tuesday, July 31, 1711. ADDISON.]
Ipsae rursum concedite silvae.