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

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“God of my life, whose gracious power

Through varied deaths my soul hath led,

Or turned aside the fatal hour,

Or lifted up my sinking head.”

It would have been helpful if I could have sung out in this miserable abode, for such it was to me—

“My song shall wake with opening light,

And cheer the dark and silent night.”

I tossed about nearly all night, and at seven o’clock I turned out to get an early breakfast, and to make my way back to “Wanstead Flats” to have a last peep at my gipsy friends. I arrived about eight o’clock. Some of the show folks and show keepers must have had but little sleep, for I found them moving off the Flats for a run out to their country seats, leaving behind them the seeds of sin, sown by ignorance, fostered by an evil heart, and watered by oaths and curses.

I turned in to have another chat with my gipsy friends, who had taken to house-dwelling, and to listen to their pretty little girl singing as only children can sing

“Whither, pilgrims, are you going?”

which caused me to undergo a process of screwing up my feeling, and winking and blinking to avoid any sign of weakness becoming visible.