The word “Gipsy” seems to have a magic thread running through it, beginning at the tip end of “G” and ending with the tail end of “y.” Geese have tried to gobble it, ducks swallow it, hens scratched after it, peacocks pecked it, dandy cocks crowed over it, foxes have hid it, dogs have fought for it, cats have sworn and spit over it, pigs have tried to gulp it as the daintiest morsel, parrots have chatted about it, hawks, eagles, jackdaws, magpies, ravens, and crows have tried to carry it away as a precious jewel, and in the end all have put it down as a thing they could neither carry nor swallow; and after all, when it has been stripped of its dowdy colours, what has it been? Only a “scamp,” in many cases, reared and fostered among thieves, pickpockets, and blackguards, in our back slums and sink gutters. Strip the 20,000 men, women, and children of the word “Gipsy,” moving about our country under the artificial and unreal association connected with Gipsy life, so-called, of the “red cloaks,” “silver buttons,” “pretty little feet,” “small hands,” “bewitching eyes,” “long black hair,” in nine cases out of ten in name only, and you, at a glance, see the class of people you have been neglecting, consequently sending to ruin and misery through fear on the one hand and lavishing smiles on the other. In all ages there have been people silly enough to be led away by sights, sounds, colours, and unrealities, to follow a course of life for which they are not suited, either by education, position, or tastes. No one acts the part of a butterfly among school-boys better than the black-eyed Gipsy girl has done among “fast-goers,” swells, and fops. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she has trotted them out to perfection and then left them in the lurch, and those, when they have come to their senses, and had their eyes opened to the stern facts of a Gipsy’s life, have said to themselves, “What fools we have been, to be sure,” and they would have given any amount to have undone the past. The praise, flattery, and looks bestowed upon the “bewitching deceivers,” when they have been labouring under the sense of infatuation and fascination instead of reason, has made them in the presence of friends hang down their heads like a willow, and to escape, if possible, the company of their “old chums” by all sorts of manœuvres. Hubert Petalengro—a gentleman, and a rich member of a long family—conceived the idea, after falling madly in love with a dark-eyed beauty, so-called, of turning Gipsy and tasting for himself—not in fiction and romance—the charms of tent life, as he thought, in reality passing through the “first,” “second,” and “third degrees.” At first, it was ideal and fascinating enough in all conscience; it was a pity Brother Petalengro did not have a foretaste of it by spending a month in a Gipsy’s tent in the depth of winter, with no balance at his banker’s, and compelled to wear Gipsy clothing, and make