Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying. Rambles among our Gipsies and their children in their tents and vans онлайн

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A tall fellow, almost like two six feet laths nailed together, now came near, and began to abuse the poor woman in a most fearful manner for having been away from the cocoa-nut stall attending to the needs of her child. The swearing was most blood-curdling and horrifying. I left this establishment to witness the cruel treatment the poor donkeys were receiving at the hands of these vagabond gipsies, which is almost beyond description. The thrashing, kicking, and striking with sharp pointed sticks, to make the poor donkeys go faster with their loads of big and little children on their backs, were enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

I now turned from this scene of human depravity to the Forest Hotel to recruit my inner man; this, after half an hour waiting, was accomplished in a gipsy fashion, and with much scrambling. While entering a few notes in my book, a gentleman, apparently of position and education, wheeled up on his tricycle opposite to my window. He had not long dismounted, lighted his pipe, and sauntered about for a rest, before a gipsy woman wanted to make friends with him, I suppose to tell his fortune. Fortunately he was proof against her “witching eyes,” forced smiles, and “My dear good gentleman,” and turned away from her in disgust. She did not understand rebuffs and scowling looks, and went away with her forced smile of gipsydom hanging upon her lips and in her eyes among the crowd to try her “practised” hand upon some one else not quite so wide-awake as this gentleman upon the tricycle.