Morning journal and courier., 1889-08-31
LIFE AMONG TEE GIPsRys.

LIFE AMONG THE GIPsRYs.
 A Most Interesting Letter-The Way
 They Conduct Their Funerals and
 Burlals- When a Gipsey Dies that Is
 HIS End.
 CAMP ON LAKE SEHAao, Me-, Aug. 26. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 A twenty mile drive from old Portland town through the lovely valley of the Pre- sumscott, or an equal journey from the rail- way station at the southern end of Lake Se- bago, in which you will wind along the lakes eastern shore through many an olden ham, let, will bring you to little group of an- cient buildings clustered on either side of a brook about an old mill. This spot, in tho old days called "Dingley's," is now without name, save that known by countryside folk as "Radaux's Old Mill" It was here the Hawthornes once lived. Beautiful as is the quaint place itself, the surroundings are pie turesque and romantic in the extreme. Lake Sebago is worth the fondest picturing. It is one of the most beautiful of Maine's countless inland seas. Laying your mit- tened right hand back downward upon your desk, you would fairly have it's contour be- fore you-your wrist, were it little, standing for its southern boundaries; the tips of your clumped fingers for its widensd northern ex- treme; and your thumb lying just where the witching Jordan Bay reaches for miles in- land to the northeast, between which and your hand the long, narrow Cape Raymond pushes down to the southwest, it's splendid point breaking into the romantic Squaw and Fry Islands. A great chain of lakes is ac- cessible to the north through the winding mazes of the Songo river; and lakes and riv- CT have furnished fruitful theme for the poet and artist for more than a century. | Dense forests and lofty promontories add a ! marvellous beauty to the cove indented shores of Sebago.
 It is the paradise of tishers of land locked 1 salmon; and thousands of summer wander. CTS come here, with never a one to know of the beauty and interest hid about the little nest by Radaux's Mill. Below the lake are the deserted bed and locks of the old canal, where wondrous affairs of commerce and wonderful canal boat shippers were rife in the old days. Still below foams and dashee the little Presumsoott on its way to Casco Bay. Around to the right, to the east and the northeast, are pond and lake innumera-
 ble. Forests of pine still stand between the | farms, and show in these autumn nearing days marvellous banks of green, on which l are flung in Evid colors the crimson of the dogwood and maple, or the paler splatehes
 of oak and the delicate yellow of the poplar l Lake and field, stream and fallow, forest and river, winding road and sunny hamlet, feas the eye on every hand. To-day 1t seems ar
 enchanted region of still life in man ant
 nature, touched and tinted in tenderest fash
 ion by heaven and the first frost fires tna
 gleam across the land. The more rugged
 and the grander outlook lies away off ther,
 to the north. Across the gleaming waters 0
 Ssbago and the beetling crags rise the darl
 ridges of Bald mountains; wheeling to tn
 northeast you are confronted by Rattlesnak
 Mountain and Mount Pleasant; while thre
 score miles to the western north, as if
 startling phantom of awful polar heights
 half caught at times, but ever weird ant
 of Kearsage and Mount Washington.
 This is the spot where the gentle Flaw
 thorne passed nearly eight years of his life the most formative period, with the window |, of his heart and soul wide open to heaven
 It is also a spot which my friends, the gir sies, love dearly. There are two reasons fo
 the latter. Gipsies more than any other liv ing folk long for oloseness to all that tender and winsome in nature; and the combine with that affection thrift whic is matchless among lowly classes in America , Roundabout through all this enchantin
 region there is such sumptuous plenty anon countryside folk that the easy going farmer . and farm wives annually welcome the tawn wanderers, while dickering, tinkering, hors | E1.k knlls H. 4 l the great gain of the Romany. This feelin of hospitality is 80 marked that this cam t nest among the pines Is given and accepte t free of rent, the first instance of the kind
 have ever known in my pilgrimings wit
 gipsies; for invariably farmers take adval l | tage of the gipsy's fear of Claw" to sxa, , l extortionate prices for camp privileges. an | the gipsies of the American roads of to-ds will never pitch their tents until they posse 9 formal acknowledgement of their right 6 l occupancy. But beautiful as was this cam
 among the pines, the very path that Ie
 from the highway to it under the odoro, p boughs seemed possessed of an added hus f and solemnity; and while the faces of n l Romany friends brightened as approache |, | there was @ reticenoe of manner and sof . ness of speech on the part of those vi can1e forward to greet me, which to- @ without words that the eternal silence h.
 
 been enough there were surer signs. Eve
 one of the vagabonds was in camp. Eve - horse was securely picketed. Each hood, .t tent save one was empty of humans, and Il occupants of all, particularly the wome were gathered in and about one mean ar @ shabby tent where their Company" as 6 the gipsy custom, served to comfort tho a who mourned. Besides this glance show a me that near this dilapidated tent were t . indubitable proofs of death in gipsy cam d A cart, "wholmed" as they call 1t, that 1t turned upside down, as Is often done f e shelter in one night encampment, @ hs ble forge and 8 sadly battered grinder 'e wheel, with the stone and fittings remove ?. were gathered together near the tent at t l. edge of the oircling pines for barbaric Ct . emony which knew would occur that nigf 't It all meant this: The tinker of the ban k "Lazy Zeke," whom had known for @ aus ,r ter of a century, had been gathered to
 Sanscrit fathers. They had buried him u
 der the velvety brown of the forest tul a over there an hundred yards, this very da .. the entire camp had put aside dickering al
 dukkering out of respect for the dead a Id living; and the last rite, that of burning t of effects of the dead, would occur when mig G. closed in upon the forest camp.
 "Lazy Zeke" was gipsy ne'er-do.we s- That sort of man is an unusual one amo ed the Romany. Ethical1y under the unwr a. ten but inviolable communism of the ra ds as dead gipsy he was as good as any i
 one among them. So they were all extolli UT his virtues, though in life guzzler, spel it's thrift and the noblest of all liars; and i he the dead Irish soapegrace whose frie1 ,ru could still uproariously mourn at the WI :" as 8 "squsre drinker," because "any n