Nor did they seek to compensate by recreation for long hours of labour. The young people showed a certain skill in games like knuckle-bones or pitch-and-toss, and took a slight interest in boxing and wrestling but seldom practised them. Only on rare occasions did they and their elders play cards or visit music-halls, and the gramophones which several families possessed were little heard. If they danced it was when there was a prospect of extorting baksheesh from visitors, and the ill-remembered tales and songs which they sold to collectors of such curiosities seemed to be rather what they had heard others tell or sing than what they cherished for their own amusement. Unlike many of their brethren they were not entertainers, and they had no strong desire to be themselves entertained. Judged from a trade-union point of view, or even from that of a picture-palace proprietor, this excessive devotion to work would be regarded as a symptom of savagery; yet, as increasing productiveness and wealth, it might with equal justice be taken as a sign of advanced civilization. In one respect, however, the Gypsies were undoubtedly primitive, and that was in their faith in parliaments. When day had faded into night and toil had ceased, if they were not eating their irregular meals or drinking glasses of tea made in samovars whose hours of work were scarcely less than their own, the coppersmiths were holding interminable divans. In wet or cold weather parliament assembled within a tent; but on warm evenings sessions were held in the open air, the members sitting in a ring cross-legged on the ground or lolling on beds of eiderdown. Although the children were kept at a distance these meetings were not councils of elders, since the young men as well as the old were present. Their wives and daughters sat apart engaged in womanly occupations, for there was in the tribe no need to blow a “trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.”