A GYPSY KITCHEN. "It's like a kiss, good for nothing unless divided between two. "Don't ask for a thing when you can't get it. "It is always the largest fish that falls back into the water. "There may be adversity in a large house as well as in a small one. "Keep it a secret in your own heart and nobody will know it. "Clean water never came from a dirty place. "Behind bad luck comes good luck. "There is a sweet sleep at the end of a long road. "Wait till the moon rises. "An ass that carries you is better than a horse that throws you off." The result is small, when the most ardent admirer of the gypsies has set down all he knows and he learned from them. They have few traditions, and those of no importance; their literature is the very scantiest that ever adorned a people, and their proverbs, thongh some of them, as we have seen, are good, amount, when they are all written down, to no more than Sancho Panza would reel off in the course of a ten minutes' sitting on the seat of Justice in Barataria. Their latest admirers, Messrs. Leland and Palmer, doubtless feeling that the belongings of gypsydom wanted completeness, have attempted to remedy this baldness by the creation of a purely Rommany literature. poet who married, not all at once, but in succession, no fewer than three servant-girls. Partly to escape the obvious ridicule which attached to sa literal an obedience to the well-known Horatian advice, this divine bard gave out that his third wife was a genius, and published verses, written by himself, under his wife's name. No one failed to see through the trick, but the poet's vanity was gratified. This is not quite what Charles Leland, Professor Palmer, and Miss Janet Tuckey have done, but it is something like it. We could almost have wished that they had published these volumes as a professed collection of genuine Rommany songs, translated by three Gorgios. Then we might have had a very pretty controversy like that over Ossian. It may not yet be too late. Meantime they have produced a book full of their own poems in Rommany and English, which reminds one of Sterne's celebrated tale from the collections of Slawkenbergius, inasmuch as it is impossible to tell whether the English or the Rommany was written first. Let us take one as an example of the poetry a gypsy might make-if he was not a gypsy, and knew how. It is a spirited little sketch by that learned pundit, who, when he is not reading Sinaitic inscriptions, loves to sit on the grass and talk to the Rommany folk: "Mebbe you've heard it's the Rommany way To say that religion lies; But I know it's all true what the parsons say, HUNGARIAN GYPSIES ON THE MOVE. "I was campin' out in a field one night, "Then I says, 'I'll take a look around,' And then in the dim half light I found That the donkey was standin' safe and sound, A-grazin' outside the tent. "'Come up,' I says, says I to the moke, An' he allus knew me when I spoke, "But this 'ere time, and I needn't say That I thought it rather rum, Though he stood as still as a lump of clay, Yet the furder he seemed to get away The nigher I tried to come. "At last he wandered out of sight, And I knew when day came round, That the donkey I'd followed all through the night Was the Devil himself-for when 'twas light I saw my own in the pound. "It's a wrong idea most folks have got, That Rommany chaps like me Haven't any dear God to look after the lot; This is a real story, told by a gypsy in Suffolk, who firmly believed that he had actually seen the devil in the likeness of his own donkey. Why not? This little volume of verse is full of good reading. The three writers' seem to have divided their work on a regular plan. Miss Tuckey took the sentiment. She tells how the lady of the Gorgios, the Queen, sent knitted socks and blankets for the twins born in Windsor Park. She touches the fountain of tears, and tries, not unsuccessfully, to show how these ignorant wanderers may feel what beauty, picturesqueness and pathos lie along their lives. It is overdone, perhaps; if gypsies talked and felt as Miss Tuckey does, they would not be gypsies any longer. Professor Palmer, on the other hand, gives his gypsies as they are, without any varnish. The Roman folk, with him, are the grownup children which Leland calls them. One of them has his hatchet taken from him, and cries over it like a child over a toy. They tell their tricks and cheateries to each other, and look for applause: "Oh! where have you been, my bonny lad ? And I cheated » swell, "But-hang them magistrates, I say! By my dead father this I swears: If I knew that? Ah, there's the rub; I couldn't speak for the defense, "He oughter proved a hali bi, Said where he'd been and what about? They'd hang him if they found that out." I think these verses unrivaled in their suggestiveness, especially the last. Mr. Leland's contributions to this unique volume partake of Professor Palmer's realism and Miss Tuckey's sentiment. He is the philosopher of Rommany; he thinks, which no gypsy ever did yet. Thus, is this a likely sort of thing to find in Rommany? The gypsies, turned out of one encampment, make themselves equally happy in another. "And as they settled down below, I could but think upon the bliss "Twould be to many men I know, To move as lightly 'out of this.' Out of this life of morning calls,' And weary work and wasted breath; When they are always 'bored to death."" Charles Leland tells his stories-racy stories, too, most of them—with the entrain and vigor which belong to him, but he adds to the gypsy narrative that indescribable touch which marks the Gorgio. He has not been able to escape from himself. We can scarcely hope that the Rommany folk will take this book to themselves and assimilate its contents. That would be a literary phenomenon without a parallel. Poems have been written in the Creole patois of Mauritius, Bourbon, and Trinidad, but the negroes and mulattoes have not taken to singing them. Still the work deserves to live as a monument of literary ingenuity, and a tribute to the possibilities of the Rommany tongue. Before many years the book will be a funeral monument, a sepulchre in which the language of an extinct race will lie enshrined. Our grandchildren will never see the gypsy tent; that kettle which suggests unbounded richness of flavor-slung up over the fire of sticks; the barefooted, brown little children; the black-eyed "juvas ”; the old crone who hobbled to the front, equally ready with a blessing or a curse; the donkey and the cart. What will they sigh after, those bereaved grandchildren, when their civilization sits heavy as lead upon them, heavier than it is upon us? In these times, when the "world is too much with us,” we can turn our thoughts to the careless rovers who have no care about getting or spending, who live for the day, and perish like the leaves; but in what vague envy will posterity take refuge? Perhaps there will be no more leafy lanes allowed by farmers; perhaps there will be no forest glades in England; certainly, and without any green spaces left uncultivated; perhaps there will be no doubt, there will be no more tramps, Abraham men, land of shadows where the soulless Autolycus chants his routers, or Rommany folk. They will all belong to that ditty. WORK is a necessity in one way or another to all of us. Overwork is of our own making, and, like all self-imposed burdens, is beyond our strength. THE GRAVE OF CHARLOTTE TEMPLE. AMONG the countless throng who daily pass and repass Trinity Church, New York, how many know that within a few feet of the crowded thoroughfare of Broadway is a grave which covers all that remains of a once beautiful and fascinating woman, the record of whose sorrows has dimmed the eyes of thousands. No date of birth, no indication of family, and no date of death appear on the stone that covers the grave of Charlotte Temple, whose tragic story, once the theme of every circle, is probably unknown to the greater number of young readers. The most beautiful girl in New York-so it is claimedhad attracted the attention of a young officer, a member of one of England's oldest and proudest families, who, with his regiment, entered the city when the British entered New York after the battle of Long Island. Charlotte, then only seventeen, was wooed and won by the young officer. He deserted, and then-the old story-she soon after died of a broken heart. A little daughter which she left was tenderly cared for, and at a proper age was taken to England, had a fortune of $10,000 settled upon her by the head of her father's family, the late Earl of Derby, grandfather of the present Lord Stanley. She, like a true daughter and true woman, returned to New York and erected the monument that now marks the mother's grave. The inscription upon it was engraved upon a solid tablet of brass, an inch in thickness, heavily plated with silver, and thus it read: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLOTTE TEMPLE, AGED 19 YEARS. While living in Echizen, on the west coast of Japan, in 1870, I accompanied a party of fishermen to their grounds, and watched the mermaids at their work. Spite of the cold and wind, the women stripped to the waist, being covered below with a short garment of woven straw. Those who went among the rocks, where the boat could not follow, had each a basket strapped to her back, and a knife in her belt. Deftly plunging into the deep water, they remained under a full minute. Sliding their knives under the shells they tossed them into their baskets, and after a short time swam to the boats and emptied their loads. When the boats could follow them the sculls were shipped, and the waiting-men relieved the divers of their spoil as fast as they came up. LONGEVITY OF THE OYSTER. THE two oysters in question measure, one seven inches long and three and a half wide, the other seven and a half inches long and four inches wide. The shells are quite heavy, and for their size the oysters are not so large as might be inferred; but they were eaten, and the verdict was that one was good and the other fair. The age of an oyster may be reckoned by counting the lines in the de lines truly indicate the layers or annual shell growths, being really the anterior extremity of the annual shell deposits. Now, in the upper groove there were five of these annual The filial duty performed, she returned to England and pression or groove of the hinge of the bivalve. These lived a life of unobtrusive piety and usefulness. The plate placed upon the stone that marked the grave was supposed to be of solid silver, and tempted the cupidity of certain vandals, who, with hammers and chisels, succeeded in prying it from the slab. They were never detected. Many years afterward some good Samaritan caused the simple name of Charlotte Temple to be cut underneath the excavation. There it may be seen, within a few feet of Broadway, by any one who will take the trouble to look through the iron-railing. THE EAR-SHELL AND THE WOMEN-DIVERS OF THE daily food of 35,000,000 of people who inhabit the Japanese archipelago is fish and cereals. Animal flesh is not a regular article of diet. Millet in the north, rice in the south, with fish for the staple. The good daily food of Ebisu, who was once a fisherman. His idol is found in most houses among the lower classes. All is fish that comes to the Japanese net. Rare is the living thing in the sea that is not put to use. Shark's flesh is chopped into a kind of paste, and sliced carp is eaten raw. Shell-fish are delicacies, and the awabi, or “sea-ear," is a favorite article of fresh and dried food. It is something like an immense clam, except that it has but one shell, and fastens itself to the rocks below tidewater. Through a row of holes which perforate the shoulder or convex ridge of the shell, it sends out its tentacles, and breathes. From the fact that it holds on to the rock with its stomach, which also serves as a foot, it is called a gastero-pod. Cleansed of its fleshy pulp, the "ear-shell" is often seen in our country, the iridescent surface being used for inlaying fine articles, and for making buttons. It is "mother-o'-pearl," though in this case the mother has no layer-lines in a quarter of an inch, and in the lower groove there were, as nearly as we could make out, three lines and a third of a line in a quarter of an inch, which would give thirty of these annual lines for the upper groove and thirty in the lower groove, all of which would tally with the tradition that the bivalve was thirty years old. Two points are' established by the above: First, the great longevity of the oyster-the specimens were in excellent condition, and there was nothing about them to disprove the belief that if allowed to lie undisturbed they might have lived and grown ten years longer-and second, that an oyster may be good and palatable food at a great age. CHINESE BEDS.-There are two kinds of Chinese beds, and both are arranged for a complete shutting in by means of hanging-curtains and tapestry. The expensive kind is like a sort of cage, having a flat wooden roof, just the size of the bed proper, supported at a height of about eight feet from the floor on four corner posts and two intermediate ones. Then there is a sort of frieze, or entablature work running around horizontally, above and below, so that when you are in bed you are safely penned in a The carvsort of cage, and cannot possibly tumble out. ings on these beds are sometimes very rich, and they cost much; but the ordinary and cheaper kind is made of two frames of wood, shaped something like the skeleton of an old-fashioned "settle," which are stood up on the floor, facing each other. A mattress is placed on the projecting parts of these frames, and a couple of slight sticks across the top; then curtains and hangings shut all in. Inside there is a cotton quilt, laid on the mattress frame. The occupant of the bed lies on this, having a little roll of stuff for the head, and for a covering a thick cotton quilt. |