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

49 страница из 70

Turning from the shows I began again to visit the vans. In one van owned by a Mr. B. there were a man, woman, and nine children, four of whom were of school age. The woman had been a Sunday-school teacher in her early days, but, alas! in an evil hour, she had listened to the voice of the charmer, and down she began to travel on the path to ruin, and she is still travelling with post haste, unless God in His goodness and mercy hath opened her eyes. She told me that she would have sent four of the children to school last winter while they were staying with their van at Brentwood, but the school authorities would not allow them without an undertaking that the children should be sent for one year. They were on Chigwell Common all last winter, and could have sent their children to school. She said they were often a month in a place, and would be glad to send the children to school if means were adopted whereby the children could go as other children go. None of them except the poor woman could tell a letter. She had been brought up in a Church of England Sunday school, and could repeat the creeds, &c. “Sometimes,” she said, “I teach the children to say their prayers; but what use is it among all those bad children and bad folks? It is like mockery to teach children to pray when all about are swearing. I often have a good cry over my Sunday dinner,” said the poor woman, “when I hear the church bells ringing. The happy days of my childhood seem to rise up before me, and my Sunday-school hours, and the sweet tunes we used to sing seem to ring in my ears.”