It has long been the general belief that the gipsy race, which is found
every where else, has never yet penetrated into America; but the opinion
is erroneous. There is a family on Staten-Island whose history and habits
prove their Zingaro descent, despite the counter evidence of their white
skins, patches of which may be seen through the rents of their tatters,
like intervals of blue sky in a clouded empyrean.
The patriarch of the horde was in his lifetime reputed an Englishman,
although upon this point no intelligence exists in any parish register or
book of heraldry--a matter the less to be regretted that his birth is not
likely to be disputed by rival nations or cities. All that is certainly
known of him is, that he made his appearance on the island about forty
years ago, an incarnation of laziness and pauperism, accompanied by a
biped of the feminine gender, whom, as God made her, we are content
to call a woman: they evinced no desire to hold fellowship with their
kind, but immediately plunged into the woods, where they pertinaciously
hid whatever talents and merits they possessed. Probably the world
used them ill, and like Timon they had left it in disgust. They built
themselves a hut of brushwood, and lived, unknowing and unknown, upon
the wild products of the soil and the sea-shore, the world forgetting
and the world forgot. No one was favoured with any notice of their
former history; they wrought not for hire, nor did they seek to render
themselves in the slightest degree useful to their fellow-creatures. They
were satisfied with a bare, mysterious existence, the objects of wonder
and pity; and only proved themselves human by increasing the population
of Staten-Land with ten sons and daughters.
In time the he-patriarch died, and his fame died with him; but not till
he had so indoctrinated his hopeful family, that they have ever since
followed his praiseworthy example. A short time since we paid these
Children of the Mist a visit at their residence, profiting by one of a
thousand changes of abode which brought them within an easy walk of the
Quarantine-Ground. Others may seek objects of interest abroad; we are
content with what may be found near home; and in this singular family
we found a happy practical illustration of the Golden Age, which poets
so much regret, and agrarian politicians so devoutly hope and expect
to restore. By the margin of a stagnant swamp, rife with malaria and
intermittent fever, embosomed in thick woods, stood a pen of rough
boards, obtained heaven knows how, about ten feet square, into which
about fifty specimens of animal life, human and canine, were crowded.
The den was roofed over, and refused entrance to the sun, but was by no
means so inhospitable to the rain. The four winds of heaven sought and
found free ingress and egress through the chinks; the floor was not;
and altogether we have seen much better appointed pig-styes. We first
discovered our proximity to this Temple of the Winds by the greeting of a
herd of sorry curs, who made a great noise, but retreated snarling, and
with averted tails, at the first exhibition of a stone or a stick, as the
dogs of the aborigines are wont to do. A shrill, cracked, but clear voice
from within, uplifted in energetic objurgation, stilled the clamour, and
we entered upon a scene that beggars and defies description. We had seen
poverty before, but had never an adequate conception of its extreme until
now.
A bundle of rags, endowed with suspicious and alarming powers of
locomotion, advanced to do the honours of the mansion. An unearthly
squeak, that would have driven a parrot of any ear distracted, proclaimed
that the thing was human; and after close inspection we made out a set
of features which we could only have supposed to belong to Calvin Edson
or the Witch of Endor. The head surmounted a withered atomy, from which
every muscular fibre seemed to have dried away. There was nothing left
for Decay to prey upon: a particle more of waste, and the fabric must
have evaporated, or been scattered with the first puff, like a pinch of
snuff. This was the worthy mother of the brood. Age could not make her
head whiter. She must have been more than a century old, and yet hearing,
vision, speech, every faculty, was unimpaired, and she was as brisk as
any of the horde. According to all appearances, Time had lost all power
over her, and she may yet live longer than the everlasting pyramids.
Fancy a mummy stalking from its case, and you have some idea of this
spectral apparition.
Around the den were arranged without arrangement four rude bedsteads,
guiltless then and for ever of beds, or any succedaneum therefor; those
being unnecessary and enervating luxuries, in the opinion of the
inmates. Not one of these was born in a bed, or had ever pressed one, and
why should they not do as they had ever done? The only purpose of the
frames seemed to be to keep them from dying on the bare earth. The whole
score and a half of humanities might have possessed some four or five
threadbare and tattered blankets, such a stock of clothing as might have
furnished forth one respectable scarecrow, and perhaps half a shirt among
them; but of the latter item we are somewhat uncertain, as we considered
any particular scrutiny especially indelicate. The hut was literally full
of trumpery, the use of most of which it were difficult even to guess.
The following, as nearly as memory serves us, is a correct inventory:--
An old worn-out saddle; three steel-traps; fifteen dogs, bitches, and
puppies; about a crate full of damaged crockery and pottery; an iron pot,
without a bale or cover, and two legs off; a tin kettle, with three holes
in the bottom; a fish-spear, an axe, a dozen fishing-rods and tackle; as
many rags as would set up a paper mill; about a peck of clams, a damaged
bucket, and a great variety of other things nameless ans indescribable.
These true philosophers all appeared to enjoy the most robust health,
with one exception, who was shaking with a paroxysm of ague on one of the
frames before mentioned. The men were stout, hearty fellows, who might
do their country good service at the tail of a plough or the end of a
musket; but their ambition does not soar so high. They literally take no
thought for to-morrow, though they very well know what a day must bring
forth. They justly consider themselves
----“out of Fortune’s power;
He that is down can fall no lower.”
Once in a great while they may be persuaded to perform a day’s labour,
but these are rare and painful occasions, always followed by regret and
repentance; and when their immediate wants are supplied, they return to
the luxurious and indolent repose, which is their second nature, and
which they enjoy in a perfection only appreciable by the Neapolitan
lazzaroni. When they have thus been compelled to pass a night under a
roof, it has been remarked that no human logic can persuade one of them
to submit to the abhorred contact of soap and water, or to sleep in a
bed, suppose any person could be found willing so to accommodate them.
They own no boats, and they neither hire nor borrow them. Such property
requires care and trouble, and rowing is laborious. A cow was once the
apex of their ambition; but hunger knocks often at their door, and was
fatal to poor Brindle. They are not rich enough to buy a gun. The conies,
partridges, snapping-tortoises, frogs, squirrels, and such small deer,
are their flocks and herds, and the earth produces wild artichokes and
other esculent roots. As for their religion, they believe in beef and
bread, and go to church, like parasitical insects, as often as they
are carried. They believe that the earth is flat, and that the city of
New York and the Narrows are its limits. To be hung up in a cage in
the sunshine, with licence to scratch themselves, and to be well fed,
constitutes their notion of heaven; and the county alms-house, where
able-bodied people are constrained to work, is the purgatory of their
imagination, or something worse. They think it is better to sleep than
to be awake, to lie than to sit, to sit than to stand, to stand than to
walk, and to walk than to run. Dancing is to them an incomprehensible
abomination. They own no lord, they heed no law. They have nothing,
and they want nothing. To cold, heat, rain, &c., they are perfectly
indifferent, and their only known evil is pain, which comes to them only
in the shape of hunger and intermittent fever. Nerves and delicacy they
never heard of. Thus have they ever lived, and thus they will die.
The women at the time of our visit differed from the men only in attire,
a superior volubility, a natural, rough-hewn coquetry, and the possession
of certain brass trinkets, faded ribbons, and other fantastic fineries.
None of them were either young or handsome enough to mark them as the
victims of man’s villany. The smaller fry about their wretched cabin
attest that they have not in the least neglected the first command of
God to man, though no priest or preacher can say that he has received a
wedding fee on account of either of them. Their usual employment is to
loll upon fences and gather berries, and they are also said to be skilful
in roots and herbs. Some of them sometimes go to service for a time; but
they soon return to their lair, like a sow to her wallowing in the mire.
The alms-house has also afforded them an asylum in cases of emergency,
but they invariably escape from it as soon as there is any work to be
done. They toil not, neither do they spin; and assuredly Solomon, with
all his wisdom, never dreamed of such a thing as one of these!
Many have asked, as we did, and many more will ask, “How do these people
live?” Ask Him who feeds the ravens, for no one else can answer. That
they do not work, is certain; that they neither beg nor steal, is to
be inferred from the fact that their fellow Staten-landers have never
accused them, and that they have never undergone the rebuke of the law.
They are as harmless and inoffensive as they are useless. They are
proverbially good-natured and honest; they do not get drunk, or abuse
tobacco; for although some of them have a relish for these luxuries, it
would cost too much trouble to earn the price of them. Otherwise, they
are the very Yahoos of Gulliver.
Some philosophers have taught that content is the grand desideratum, the
greatest good of earthly felicity. The contentment of savages and of
negro slaves is brought to support their position. It is true that these
are happy under their painful and degrading yoke; but what of that? Simon
Stylites was no doubt happy on his pillow of torment: an ox, on the same
principle, and for the same reason, is happier still, and the life of an
oyster is bliss superlative. “The royal family of Staten-Island” are an
example before our eyes to show how closely contentment may be allied
with the extremes of degradation.--_From the Knickerbocker._