The discussions were as solemn as those of the mother of parliaments at Westminster, and much more sincere, although they were neither opened with prayer nor encumbered by any decorative formalities. If the chief was chairman—and he sometimes enthroned himself upon an upturned cauldron—his services were seldom required either to keep order, which was amply secured by the native dignity of the members, or to direct a debate that had no tendency to stray from the one subject which was uppermost in all their minds. Generalities that had no concrete application to their trade did not interest them, and they would have refused to send a representative to the congress which was held in Hungary in 1879 to deliberate on the common interests of Gypsies everywhere. Sometimes when Russians visited the camp the coppersmiths would listen so eagerly to long accounts of events in the outside world that it seemed as though the divan was their newspaper or club, and stood to them in the same relation as the “crack i’ the kirkyard” to Scottish farm-folk a century ago, or as his favourite public-house to the British workman. But in truth only those facts really interested them which affected their work and industry, and most of what they heard passed in at one ear and out at the other. They were greedy for knowledge of the wealth of nations, the size of cities, or the trades by which towns prospered; they collected scraps of paper on which chance acquaintances had scribbled the addresses of factories; and in fact all their conversation and all their thoughts were concerned with the problem of work and where to find it. 6. THE PHOTOGRAPH. {32}