Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-07

TOO trifin' fur anybody's mindin'. let alone
sech mighty folkst' 1 remember of one in
stance among many where IN positive des-
! peration in an attempt to give a group OF
friendly Gipses some faint idea of God as
we conceive Him, and, indeed, OF discerning
| il there was the faiutest idea in any one of
| their minds of God of their own mental
creation, L lost my patience and cried out in
vexatiOn: "Oh, you vagabonds! such people
deserve no God"
NOT WORTHY A GOD.
''That's jess hit. That's jess hit;" several
replied instantly, and with exasperating
'Tan't like for hus secL things be-" And
whether the rascals said it with race
knowledge of hopeless outlawry, with de-
spondent consciousness of impossibility of
knowing what we regard as of the supremest
importance TO know, or to close an argument
concerning a matter no human has yet made
clear or acceptable to the Romany, to me
there was pathetic fnality in'their renun-
citation L could never wholly dispel.
1t is not fair to say these folk are blasphe-
nous in their stern and unrelenting refusal
to accept what you and know no other pos
sibility than to embrace. Instead, it would
be nearer right to set them down as the one
race on earth absolutely incapable of initia-
tive formulation of the idea itself OF God.
1t is common to hear the teachers and lead
ers say that no people exist who have not in
herently an instructive reverence for some
form of primal creative power, or some sort
of Supreme Being. But here is one which
1 assert to be absolutely incapable of even
the most trifling submission to deity. Ger
tainly no one who has the most meager
knowledge of Gipsies will deny their intelli-
gence. No other human beings live who
are naturally SO gifted with all-suficient in
tellects. But so tar as l am able to judge,
they do not know how to think God; and
the idea of a Savior, and the plan of re-
demption as revealed and taught. are posi-
lively so startling burlesque on reason aud
evidence by things by them known, seen
and experienced, that no person can secure
and retain their confidence and respect who
will persist in presenting such ideas and
propositions to them.
NO FUTURE STATE.
As have shown in preceding article,
there is no such thing as Gipsy belief in
future state. AS life with them is consid-
cred no better than accident death is the
end. will not say that they resist the idea
of future existence. They have no belief
about the matter whatever, and their resent
ment comes when you insist upon their hav-
ing any. If there is such a state, well and
good. If not, still we'll and good. They do
not know anything beyond the facts that
physical hurt or disease and old age bring
death. Death necessitates putting the re-
mains of the dead away in the ground.
When the earth covers them they see no
further. Their concerns, material and
ethical, are invariably with the living.
On these lines they are luminous, but
lowly, order of agnostics. They seldom
speak of the dead. In the 200 or 300
Gipsy ballads have collected, there is not
a line, sentence or thought, expressing faith
in, or even hope for, reunion with the dead,
even in Gipsy lovers widest rawlings for
his lost other-heart idol. The nearest ap-
proach 10 such a sentiment is expressed not
toward humans, but of animals, and con-
spicuously of the horse. l have witnessed
Gipsy grief more poignant at the loss of
loved horse than 1 ever saw expressed over
the death of father, mother, child, husband
or wife; and on all occasions the loss of one
of these priced animals begets an awe and
silence in Gipsy camp most strange and
inexplicable
THE WORSHIP OF VIRTUE.
There are few who can believe any good
possible among so taithless and hopeless q
people. But there is good among them, and
of kind the Christian world might better
develop with very great consistency and
profit. While Gipsies are without faith, or
even law, as we know it, no people live who
more vigorously follow, in fact and to the
ultimate of spirit, the highest and purest
code of physical and moral observance.
They universally revere the marriage rela-
ton. 1 say universally, and use the word
unqualifedly. There is not an exception.
The religious faculty as we develop it, and
sometimes distort it, being wholly lacking
in these nomads, another seems to have
taken its place. That is virtue worship.
All this begins back of the sucking
babe at its mothers breast. 1t is
bred and inbred in prenatal assimilated
loyalty. The tenthome government and
surveillance are such that Gipsy children
grow unconsciously and irrevocably into
hereditarily virtuous lives and loves Be-
lieve it or not, Gipsy men and youths re-
gard virtue as noble perfection in men as
in sweetheart or wife. and some idea OF the
awful sacredness of that primal require
ment in woman may be had, when the fact
is stated that any GipsY maiden found, on
marriage, to have been unchaste, is visited
with the most horrible fate that can by any
possibility come to her in this life-utter
and endless expatriation; and more than
once the lives of such have been sacrificed
with the calm and unvarying approval of
parents and friends; while such thing as
disloyalty OF husband to wife, or wife to
husband, after marriage, has yet to be re-
corded of Gipsy on the European or Amer
ican continent. EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.