The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1902-08-06
THE GYPSIEs

The fortune telling Gypsy has come
among u.s. She is hardly as picturesque
as the Gypsy of England or Scotland,
| the true Romany described by Scott in
/ Guy Mannering, typifed by the immor-
tai Meg Merrilles in which character
! Charlotte Cushman used to thrill the
! audiences of an earlier generation. She
| will still tell the fortune of the gaping
| yokel, or the half-timid hysterical girl,
| if she can find yokel or girl. If she
can't, she will easily find fools enough,
half believing, half skeptical, who will
cross her palm with silver, will listen
to her jargon, and will read into her
gibberish, things which she never said
but which will be translated into signs
and portents and fulhllments.
Human nature is prone to folly, and
the knavish side of humanity finds it
an easy prey, whether educated or I'M
educated. 1t takes years to eradicate
superstition. In fact superstition re-
mains firmly imbedded, ready to blaze
forth in spite of all the education and
all the experience TIE highest and most
civilized races have had.
We have our signs of luck" practi-
cally our lucky days, our dies fasti ct
nefasti" as much as the old Roman
about the moon, which have descended
to us from the days of Baal and of Ash
taroth. Some of us don't like to spill
the salt. Some OF us repeat lucky at
cards, unlucky III love- and Charles
Dana Gibson gave us an illustration of
the superstition in an illustration in
Life" the other day. We educate our
selves and eliminate all superstition
and all creeds from our minds, and
forthwith proceed to gaze with open
moutheI wonder upon Blavatsky's
cracked tea-cups, and broken China
which came hurting through the air
from the upper Businesses of the Hima-
layas where Mahatmas and their Chic
las dwelt in endless contemplation of
the unSnownable, the understand
able and the unfndable,
Others of us have stripped the cloak
of superstition from US and forthwith
proceed to believe that the Davenport
brothers were helped by spirits to play
guitars and accordions when their
hands were tied, that Mr.. Home hoated
from one window of a five-stOry house
TO another deviation this used to be
called, and rank Lumbug it was dubbed
by gross and materialistic minds. The
whole farragO of spiritualism has taken
the place of superstition and no one
would dare to say that a sphitualist
YVES superstitious or theosophist no
better than a self-deceived Gypsy, nor
that under the crust and veneer of all
Of us their Turks lot the primeval dread
of the unknown which seeks alienation
in various ways, and which forms the
basis of religious belief as is argued
by Buckle and Lecky and thousands Of
others. If you can scratch the Russian
and find the Tartar, as Taueyrand or
some one else said, you can certainly
scratch the cultivated mind and find
primeval superstition, the offspring of
fear and hope Why should you not do
so? 1t does not take a long war to
show that the gentlest and most loving
Of human beings can develop the pri-
meval beast with all his or its unpleas-
ant characteristics.
But we have been drifting away from
our Gypsies In spite of the fact that
they don't camp out and steal chickens
and game they will reap a neat little
harvest from our superstitious com
munity, unless the High Sheriff and the
police department get after them, which
they are likely to do. Legally the gypsy
will be condemned. Inwardly the gypsy
will be believed in We are really a set
of humbugs, and are fit subjects for
satire, as we have been from the time
of AristOphanes to now.