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

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The women were putting the little gipsies to bed, and their evening prayers in many cases were oaths. They had never been taught to lisp the evening prayer—

“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,

Bless Thy little lamb to-night;

Through the darkness be Thou near me,

Keep me safe till morning light.”

They threw off their outer garments, rolled under some old, dirty, filthy rags at one end of their little tent, crouching together like so many pigs, and snoozed and snored away till morning, except when they were trampled upon or wakened by their drunken gipsy parents. It is horrible to think that not one of this number, between six and seven hundred men, women, and children—so far as I have been able to make out—ever attended a place of worship on Sundays, or offered a prayer to God at eventide. Sin! sin! wretchedness, misery, and degradation from the year’s beginning to the year’s end! Would to God that a comet from His throne, as they sit under the starlight of heaven, would flash and flash upon their mental vision till they asked themselves the question, “Whither are we bound?” Christian England!