Morning journal and courier., 1890-03-01
MIR. wAKEMAN,s JOURNKYINGs.

At B0fCel000-T0o G1p010o OI Sp0l0-
 some of Their Oharacteristics-Faot
 Learned at an Encampment-Pletar-
 esque scenes-Nature's Panoramic
 vlews-Some StatlssIcs-The Kair
 Rs1ahs-Gipsy Jugxlory.
 BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 1.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 It is now over fifty years since the English missionary, George Borrow, in his fruitless effort to circulate the Protestant Bible among the gitani or eipsies of Spain, got into all sorts of difficulties with the Spanish au- thorities for his, to them, inexplicable and apparently evil disposed consorting with these irrspressible vagrants, and his half mysterious and always stubborn and defiant attitude towards existing customs, laws and beliefs. His confession was frank one that no soul among this outlaw race was in any degree converted or evangeli1ed by his ef- forts among them. Indeed one may go far ther and state tho concise fact that in all his wanderings both in Spain and England he never affected the conversion of . gipsy, or came upon gipsy chrlstianized by any oth- CT persons efforts. To one possessing any real knowledge of this race, the Romany, 1t need scarcely be urged that his failure came not 90 much from what ought to be failure in any like effort to elevate the lowly, that is, the presentation of a stony and unwel- come theologlc fact to an empty and yearn- ing stomach, as from the universal and un- deniable fact that all gipsies are an unchange- able race of agnostics. They cannot depart from that rank of spiritual vaouity and sod denness without at once ceasing to be gip- sies. Borrow, however, made intelligible to least what he was able to find out about Spanish gipsies. Since his time no one pos sessing Romany knowledge has ventured to treat of the subject, just as Irving has made Granada and the Alhambra supposititiously impossible subjects for later writer's pens. But there is still 8 difference in which find good cause for chapter upon Spanish Rip- sies. Irving wrote of facts in stone and mortar. set as firmly in Spanish and Noorish history. Borrow wrote against tremendous odds of the Spanish portion of race whose chief characteristic is wandering and change. Except in few general race characteristics, the gipsies of Spain to-day are no more the gipsiss of Spain of upwards a half century ago than is the gipsy money-prince, Smith, of Honiton, England, like his father who plaited osier baskets and sold pewter spoons among the peasants of Devonshire, or that splendid specimen of man and gipsy, the honestly rich Levi Stanley, of Ohio, like his | ignorant progenitors among the donkeys and rags of Kirk. Yetholm, the Scottish gipsy Mecca of the Oheviot hills; or indeed than you are like the long haired, jaundiced, Ain. 1 ty-hearted bigots, your forefathers, mayhap, l who hung the innocent wretches, your other forefathers, upon Gallsws-hill in Salsm.
 Tho fact made dearest and plainest to me sonal study of tho Romany race is, that no ono interested in these strange people should | fail to recognize that even the most earnest writer of from half . century to two csntu- ries ago, wrote from within lesser horizons of | observation than are granted to any earnest observer of today; and that the gipsies of those days, like tho peasants of those days, were 50 wretched Q lot that any description of them then must necessarily be untrue of them now. Change, progress, evolution, are true of all peoples, of all trades, professions, arts, almost of all religions. That won derful evolution has been in progress among | my friends, the gipsies, shall most sturdily I claim, for know 1t; and nowhere on earth
 has 1t been moro marked and far-reaching than 1t has been in this semi-barbaric land, whore almost all else would seem to have ret rograded or stood still.
 In 1877 my acquaintance had progressed 50 far and favorably with gipsies, and their
 trust in me as an unvaryingly kindly dis posed friend, had in many ways grown 50 se- cure that, at an encampmsnt on the banks of
 the Desplaines river in Illinois, was unex-
 pectsdly, and with some curious rites, ad-
 mitted to gipsy brotherhood; that Is, was
 made "gorgio ohal, ]" or non-gipsy broth J CT. At that m0mentous ceremony was
 placed in possession of three Romany words,
 which, in nearly every one of the United
 States, along tho hedges of England, in the
 lowlands of Scotland, among the Rlens oi
 Ireland. in tho canons of Gaba, through the
 Rhine valleys and BavariH sllages, in ths Y; streets of Paris or t.- klled lanes o1