when in those arms, with your dear face close to mine, 1 will tell you the only mother I ever knew-all the particulars of my story, and Harry's life of hardship and bitter despair during our separation. Until then every moment of my life will be devoted to him and to thanking God for bringing us together again. "We have heard nothing of papa or know nothing of how the world murmurs over a runaway bride. Shut in this old house down by the sea, we have only each other, and seem shut out from the world and all future sadness or trouble. The happiest woman who ever lived is the one who signs herself, with a heart full of love, "HILDEGARDE RARIDEN." HISTORICAL AMERICAN FLAGS. AT the commencement of the American Revolution there was a variety of flags displayed in the revolted colonies. The Union flags mentioned so frequently in the newspapers of 1774 were the ordinary English ensigns bearing the Union Jack. These generally bore some patriotic motto, such as "Liberty," "Liberty and Property" and "Liberty and Union." After the battle of Lexington the Connecticut troops displayed on their standard the arms of the colony, with the motto "Qui transtulit sustinet," and later by an Act of the Provincial Congress, the regiments were distinguished by the colors of their flags-as for the Seventh, blue; and for the Eighth, orange. The early ships of New York are said to have displayed a beaver, the device of the New Netherlands, on their ensigns. It is uncertain what flag, if any, was used by the Americans at Bunker Hill. The flag displayed by Putnam, of Prospect Hill, on July 18th following, was red, with "Qui transtulit sustinet" on one side, and on the other side an "Appeal to Heaven." This last motto was adopted April 29th, 1776, by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts as the one to be borne on the flag of the Congress of the colony, a white flag with a green pine-tree. What flag Arnold carried in his expedition to the Canadas is not known. The first armed vessel commissioned by Washington sailed under the "Pine Tree Flag." The first republican flag unfurled in the Southern States was blue, with a white cresent on the upper corner next to the staff, designed by Colonel William Moultrie, of Charleston, at the request of the Council of Safety, and was hoisted on the fortification of that city in September, 1775. The flag displayed on the east bastion of Fort Sullivan, afterward called Moultrie, on June 28th, 1776, was the same, with the word Liberty on it. On the west bastion waved the flag called the "Great Union," first raised by Washington at Cambridge, January 2d, 1776. They consisted of thirteen alternate red and white stripes of the present flag of the United States, with the cross of St. George and St. Andrew emblazoned on the blue cotton in the place of the stars. This flag was carried also by the fleet under the command of Commodore Esek Hopkins when it sailed from the Delaware Capes, February 17th, 1776. Hopkins had the device of a rattlesnake in the attitude of striking, with the motto, "Don't Tread on Me." This emblem was suggested, probably, by the cuts displayed in the newspapers at the time, which presented a snake divided into thirteen parts, each bearing the abbreviation of a colony with the motto beneath: "Join or Die," typifying the necessity of union. The snake was represented generally with thirteen rattles. Sometimes it was coiled around the pine-tree at its base, and sometimes depicted at full length on a field of thirteen alternate red and white and red and blue stripes. GYPSIES AND THEIR FRIENDS. ONE day, 450 years ago, or thereabout, there knocked at the gates of the City of Lüneburg, on the Elbe, as strange a rabble rout as had ever been seen by German burgher. There were 300 of them, men and women, accompanied by an extraordinary number of children. They were dusky of skin, with jet-black hair and eyes; they wore strange garments, they were unwashed and dirty even beyond the liberal limits tolerated by the cold-water-fearing citizens of Lüneburg; they had with them horses, donkeys, and carts; they were led by two men whom they described as Duke and Count. These two alone were dressed in some kind of splendor, and rode richly caparisoned horses; they were most courteous in manner; they seemed careful to conciliate; they talked among themselves a strange language, and they understood the language of the country. All they asked was permission to camp for a few days outside the gates. All the Lueneburgers turned out to gaze open-mouthed at these pilgrims, while the Duke and Count told the authorities their tale, which was wild and romantic; even had they invented a story to suit their own objects, no other could so well have enlisted the sympathies of a credulous, kindly, uncritical and soft-hearted folk. Many years before, they explained, while the tears of penitence stood in the eyes of all but the youngest children, they had been a Christian community, living in orthodoxy, and therefore happiness, in a far-off country known as Egypt. The Lueneburgers had heard of Egypt. Crusades had not been out of fashion more than 200 years, and people still told of dreadful things done in Egypt as well as in the Holy Land. Egypt, indeed, was about as well known to medieval Europe as it was to the Israelites under the Judges. The strangers came from Egypt. It was the land of the phoenix. It was not far from the dominions of Prester John. It was the country of the Saracen and the Infidel. They were, then, a happy Christian flock. To their valley came the Saracens, an execrable race, worshiping Mahound. Yielding, in an evil hour, to the threats and persecutions of their conquerors, they-here they turned their faces and wept aloud-they abjured Christ. But thereafter they had no rest or peace, and a remorse so deep fell upon their souls that they were fain to arise, leave their homes, and journey to Rome in hope of getting reconciliation with the Church. They were graciously received by the Pope, who promised to admit them back into the fold after seven years of penitential wandering. They had letters of credit from King Sigismund-would the Lueneburgers kindly look at them ?-granting safe conduct and recommending them to the protection of all honest people. The Lueneberg folk were touched at the recital of so much suffering in a cause so good; they granted the request of the strangers. They allowed them to encamp; they watched in curiosity while the black tents were pitched, the naked babies rolled out on the grass, the donkeys tethered, and the brass kettle slung over the newly-kindled fire; then they went home. The next day the strangers visited the town. In the evening a good many things were missed, especially those unconsidered trifles which a housewife may leave about her doorway. Poultry became suddenly scarce; eggs doubled in price; it was rumored that purses had been lost while their owners gazed at the strangers; cherished cups of silver were not to be found. Could it be that these Christian penitents, these remorseful backsliders, these seekers after holiness, these interesting pilgrims, so gentle of speech, so courteous and humble, were cut-purses and thieves? The next day there remained no longer any doubt about | people went to see them, we are told, than ever crowded the matter at all, because the gentle strangers were taken to the Fair of Laudet. in the act, red-handed. While the Lueneburgers took counsel, in their leisurely way, how to meet a case so uncommon, the pilgrims suddenly decamped, leaving nothing behind them but the ashes of their fires and the picked bones of the purloined poultry. Then Dogberry called unto him his brother Verges, and they fell to thanking God that they were rid of knaves. This was the first historical appearance of gypsies. It was a curious place to appear in. The mouth of the Elbe is a long way from Egypt, even if you travel by sea, which does not appear to have been the case; and a journey on land not only would have been infinitely more fatiguing, but would, one would think, have led to some notice on the road before reaching Lueneburg. There, however, the gypsies certainly are first heard of, and henceforth history has plenty to say about their doings. From Lueneburg they went to Hamburg, Luebeck, Rostock, Griefswald, traveling in an easterly direction. They are mentioned as having appeared in Saxony, where they were driven a way, as at Lueneburg, for their thievish propensities. They traveled through Switzerland, headed by their great Duke Michael, and pretending to have been expelled from Egypt by the Turks. Their story Nearly all had their ears pierced, and in each ear were one or two rings of silver, which they pointed to as the sign of noble birth. The men were very black, with frizzled hair; the women were the ugliest and blackest creatures ever seen, with hair like a horse's tail, and no other covering than a single shaggy robe, tied at the shoulders with a cloth or cord. In the company were fortune-tellers, who looked into the hands of people, told them what had happened, and what was going to happen, so introducing discord into many families. The worst was, that while they were thus engaged they contrived, either by magic or by the help of the devil, or by pure skill, to empty the pockets of everybody. They remained at St. Denis for a month, when they re AN OLD GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. in these early years, though it varied in particulars, remained the same in essentials. In Provence they called themselves Saracens; in Swabia they were Egyptians, doomed to everlasting wanderings for having refused hospitality to the Virgin and Joseph; at Bâle, where they exhibited letters of safe conduct from the Pope, they were also Egyptians. Always the Land of the Nile; always the same pretense, or it may be reminiscence, of sojourn in Egypt; always, to soothe the suspicions of priests, faithful and submissive sons of the Church. From the very first their real character was apparent. They lie, cheat and steal at Lueneberg; they lie and steal everywhero; they tell fortunes and cut purses, they buy and sell horses, they poison pigs, they rob and plunder, they wander and they will not work. They first came to Paris in the year 1427, when more ceived peremptory orders to quit for the usual reason. Lacroix gives able. This striking gypsy face is, moreover, very remarkable, because, in the many medieval pictures which illustrate Jewish life and persecutions, the Semitic face is scarcely ever cau, ht at all; and yet the Jewish features would seem at first more marked than those of the Rommany. After this wandering chieftain follow his people: the women on horses and donkeys, with little naked children in baskets; troops of boys and girls on foot; there are dogs, there are cats, there are baskets; you have a tribe complete as it was 300 years ago. In the sixteenth century trouble began for the Roman folk. By this time their character was perfectly well known. They were called Bohemians, Heathen, Gitanos, Pharaohites, Robbers, Tartars and Zigeuner. They had abandoned the old lying story of the penitential wanderings; they were outcasts; their hand was against every man's hand; their customs were the same then as they are bonds; they received into their ranks all comers without | in wild mountain retreats, such as those in which Don question; they were predatory in their habits; they would Quixote retired to lament his Dulcinea. The gypsies do no manner of work. left the roads and sought the mountains. When the order was forgotten they came out again. What they are now, and have been for generations to Spain, Barrow has told us. In France they were ordered to leave the country by Francis I., by Charles IX., and by Louis XIII., in succession. Here they seemed to have gradually amalgamated with the matois, mercelots and gueux, the tramps and beggars. Duke Michael and Count Andrew gave way to "le grand Cosre," the chief of all the truands; they found hospitality and shelter in the Cours des Miracles of Paris, Lyons and Bordeaux; and, with their brother-rogues, they made the yearly pilgrimage to pay homage and tribute to their chief at Ste. Anne d'Auray, in Brittany. In Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden repeated Acts were passed for their expulsion. In Germany the persecution against them was the longest and the most severe. It is not a hundred years since forty Hungarian gypsies were quartered alive, broken on the wheel and otherwise put to horrible deaths, on a charge of murder and cannibalism, for which another 150 were put in chains. But, like the Jews, whatever persecutions were instituted against them, their numbers did not decrease. If Hungary refused to receive them they tried Poland; if Poland ordered them away they marched over the frontier into Russia. Maria Therese tried to make them settle down. She caught 80,000, and ordered them by the strictest injunctions to live in houses and work. We have not heard how the experiment succeeded. In general, however, the persecution was a bloodless one. There was a good deal of whipping at the cart's tail, and a few hangings, but as a rule the injunction was simply what it is now-to move on. "Pack and be out of this forthwith! D'you know you have no business here?" So wearily they went away, Yet soon were camped in t'other lane; And soon the kettle boiled again." There were exceptions. In Flanders, a gypsy who was found in the country after Charles V.'s edicts, was sentenced to bave his nose slit, his head shaven, his beard cut off, to be well flogged, and then to be driven across the frontier. One poor wretch, who had suffered these accumulated buffets three times, came back with a request that they would be good enough to hang him. And in the same country gypsy women were known to give themselves up with a despairing entreaty that they might be put to death, even by the stake and the fire. But the Inquisition did not interfere with them, as being too poor and contemptible; and in religious persecutions the gypsies were kindly allowed by all sides to have no religion at all. The English gypsies are first described in an anonymous work published in 1612. The author, S. R., dates their appearance in the country to the beginning of the sixteenth century, when, as he says, "Certain Egyptians banished their country, belike not for their good conditions, arrived here in England, who, for quaint tricks and devices not known here at that time among us, were esteemed, and had unjust admiration, insomuch that many of our English loiterers joined with them, and in time learned their crafty cozening." vent their eating the flesh; doctored and dealt in horses. They were suspected in Elizabeth's reign of harboring priests; they were confounded by the statutes with the English tramps-those Abraham men and Pikers who still exist, despised by the Roman folk, under the name of Chorodies and Kora-mengre; they are described in the "Adventures of Merritun Latrun." As early as 1522 they were ordered to quit the country, and a fine-enormous for that time-of forty pounds was imposed on those who should import them. The last fact is suggestive, showing that they were in some popularity. No doubt the dancing of the girls and the palmistry of the women were the chief attractive qualities of the gypsies. In the last century they were suspected of stealing chil. dren; and in 1740 two men were sentenced to be hanged, and two women burned in the hand, for kidnapping a wretched girl named Elizabeth Canning, who had hidden herself for a very good and sufficient reason, and on her return to the social circle which she adorned, made up a story of kidnapping. It is satisfactory to know that, for perjury, she was sent to His Majesty's plantations. The English gypsies have had the honor of producing several men of mark, especially in the annals of the P. R. They have also produced-at least, we like to think soone great, very great man, John Bunyan. What else can the author of "The Pilgrim's Progress" mean when he says, "My father belonged to that rank which is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land"? Such, briefly told, are the annals of the gypsies. They are a separate, distinct, and persecuted race, like the Jews. Like them, too, they have their own language, their own facial and cranial peculiarities; like them, they are scattered over the whole of the world. Professor Palmer met them in Moab, and talked Rommany beside the black tents of the Bedawin. In Egypt, their pretended home, Mr. Leland found three distinct tribes of this people, though they could not or would not understand his Rommany. Like the Jews, too, they come from Egypt; everybody has noticed the resemblance, only it must not be carried too far. The Rommany is a pariah, and descended from pariahs; the Jew is an aristocrat. If the Rommany ever had a place of their own in the world, it has been forgotten; the Jew never loses sight of his heritage among the hills of Judah. The Rommany has no vestige of religion, except when a little has been infused into him by his modern friends; from the Jew have come the two chief religions of the world. At best, the Rommany is but a mockery of the Jew. Mr. Leland seems to go too far when he says: "The poor gypsies would seem to a humorist to have been created by the devil, whose name they almost use for God, a living parody and satanic burlesque of all that human faith, doubt, or wisdom have ever accomplished in their highest forms. . . . All over the world this black and God-wanting shadow dances behind the solid Theism. of the 'People.' . . . How often have we heard that the preservation of the Jews is a phenomenon without equal? And yet they both live-the sad and sober Jew, the gay and tipsy gypsy, Shemite and Aryan-the one so ridiculously like and unlike the other that we may almost wonder whether Humor does not enter into the Divine purpose, and have its place in the destiny of man." There have been other races kept apart from the world They rode through the country headed by Giles Hather, and preserved, a separate caste. The Cagots of France their king, and Callot, their queen. They went about in lived for centuries beside their countrymen, and neither bands of thirty to ninety families, with light carts and married nor consorted with them. They had their own donkeys; they told fortunes; stole any little thing that place in church, their own door of entrance, their own lay about; killed pigs with a poison which did not pre-holy water, their own place of burial; they married only with each other, were marked by certain physical peculiarities, especially a malformation of the ear, had their places of resort, their dances, their songs, and their cus toms. The Cagots, much more strongly than the gypsies, resembled the Jews. For they were a sedentary people; their occupations took them among the rest of mankind, from whom they were separated by no lack of common interests, but solely by the barrier of an ineradicable prejudice. It seemed as if the distinction was so strongly rooted that it would endure until the last Cagot was placed in the Cagot's corner of the churchyard. But Cagotterie has passed away, and is forgotten save in proverbs. And in the same way the gypsies are gradually disappearing before influences which doom them to destruction. The Crystal Palace, with the city of villas round it, covers the spot where, thirty years ago, the King of the gypsies held his court; the "Potteries" of Latimer Road are gone, and there is a station of the District Railway in their place. I believe that the Shaftesbury Estate covers the fields where the gypsies loved ten years ago to pitch their Winter tents. The inclosure of commons, the reclamation of waste land, the improvements in farming, and, above all, the rural police, are rapidly driving these nomads off the roads and into the towns, where they will soon enough be absorbed in the population round them.. Already the old black blood has been crossed and recrossed; the pure gypsy is as scarce as a black swan; the old customs have been prevented; the old language has been nearly lost; the traditions are forgotten, and, more extraordinary still, among these godless tribes there had been awakened the semblance-call it the first rudimentary glimpse of religious belief; and they like to be buried in consecrated ground. It is the beginning of the end, and in a few more years the gypsy encampment, picturesque with its tents, its bits of color standing out against the green hedge, its wood-fire smoke curling up among the trees, and its bright-eyed girls, will be a memory and tradition of the past. Where did the gypsies really come from? In what country was the cradle of this race of wanderers? A question which has been answered in a hundred ways; the wildest theories have been advanced, and on the slenderest grounds. They wandered from the province of Zeugitana in Africa; they were fugitives from the City of Singara in Mesopotamia, driven out by Julian the Apos tate; they came from Mount Caucasus; their name, "Zigeuner," is a corruption of Sarscener; they are the Canaanites whom Joshua dispossessed; they are Egypt. ians; they are Amorites. All these theories are based upon their names. Other origins are assigned them from the peculiarities of their customs and language; they are fakirs; they are the remains of Attila's Huns; they are the descendants of Cain; they are German Jews, who, during the dreadful persecution of the fourteenth century, betook themselves to the woods and remained there till the troubled times passed over; they are Tartars, separated from Timur's hosts about the beginning of the fifteenth century; they are Circassians, driven away from their homes by this very Timur with his Tartars; they arc Bohemians; they are Sudras from India. All these opinions and many more are enumerated at length in Grellman, and quoted by everybody who has written on the subject. As we write these lines, we read that M. Bataillard, who has made the gypsies his study for many years, has in the press a paper in which he attributes altogether a new origin to them. Mr. Charles Leland's opinion is that they are the descendants of a vast number of Hindoos of the primitive tribes of Hindoostan, who were expelled or emigrated from that country early in the fourteenth century, and that they were identical with the two castes of the Doms and Nats-the latter being at the present day the real gypsies of India. The people have drawn around them a whole literature of inquiry and research. The names of Simson, Borrow, Pott, Grellmann, Liebech, Paspati, Smidt, which are readiest to our hand, have been quite recently supplemented by the addition of Mr. Charles Leland and Professor E. H. Palmer. Rommany literature is like the Homeric ballads, inasmuch as it is entirely oral-unlike the Iliad, it is extremely limited in extent. Borrow, in his latest work, gives a few songs and pieces in verse, but the Rommany folk are not given to poetry. On the other hand, they are full of proverbs, parables, and quaint stories, of which Mr. Leland has collected a great number. For instance: "When I was sitting in the forest under great trees, I asked a little bird to bring me a little bread, but it went away and I never saw it again. Then I asked a great bird to bring me a cup of brandy, but it flew away after the other. I never asked the tree overhead for anything, but when the wind came it threw down to me a hundred ripe nuts." The gypsy, observe, does not think of working for his bread, or his brandy, or his nuts. He asks in vain for the first two, and the third he gets without asking. The moral of this parable seems to be that luck is everything. Here are two others, each with its own moral appended : "Once the cat went to see her cousin, the hare. And there came a hunter, and the cat scrambled up the hill, further up, up a tree; and there she found a bird's nest. But the hare ran down the hill, far down into the country. "Bad luck sends a poor man further down, but it causes a great man to rise still more. "On a day a poor man had a dog that used to steal things and carry them home for his master-meat, money, watches and spoons. A gentleman bought the dog, and made a great deal of money by showing him at fairs. "Where rich men can make money honestly, poor men have to steal." More of the wisdom of the Egyptians has been collected by Mr. Barrow. Here is some of it: "My father, why were worms made? My son, that moles might live by eating them. My father, why were moles made? My son, that you and I might live by catching them. My father, why were you and I made? My son, that worms might live by eating us. "The true way to be a wise man is to hear, see and bear in mind. "What good is there in the Rommany tongue? There is plenty, plenty of good in it; plenty of our people would have been transported or hung but for the old, poor, Roman language. A word in Rommany said in time to a little girl, and carried to the camp, has caused a great purse of money and other things which had been stolen to be stowed under ground; so that when the constables came they could find nothing, and had not only to let the gypsy they had taken up go his way, but also to beg his pardon. "The man who has not the whip-hand of his tongue and his temper is not fit to go into company. "It is not a wise thing to say you have been wrong. If you allow you have been wrong, people will say you may be a very honest fellow, but you are certainly a very great fool." Add to these pithy sayings some of the proverbs and clearer phrases collected by Mr. Leland. They are as wise as Captain Burton's Syrian Proverbs: "When the wind is high move your tent to the other side of the hedge; i.e., change your side according to the circumstances. "Never buy a handkerchief or choose a wife by candle-light. "Nice reeds make nice baskets. |