occupation of peeling potatoes. The Queen is much darker. Indeed her visage has assumed a saffron hue, and amongst her own people she must have been regarded as a very prepossessing specimen twenty years ago. The King received me with the utmost courtesy, and on being informed of the object of my visit insisted on me taking a chair while he squatted on the carpet. His Majesty was not only ready but eager to supply the information which I required. May I be favoured with your name? Oh, certainly—George Smith. “It strikes me I have heard that name before,” was the comment which instinctively came to the lips, but I refrained. “Ah, you may say that is a common name for a Bohemian like me to bear, but I can tell you that the Smith’s are as old a tribe as the Stanleys, the Lovells, the Hernes, and the Coopers.” “What is the extent of your family here?” “Well, the occupants of this tent and that covered cart which you see outside are myself and my wife, four daughters, and their two female cousins, and four sons there”—and he pointed with his finger to a group of strapping young fellows who had just entered the camp. “Can you trace your descent far back?” “Oh, yes.” At this point his Royal Consort exclaimed with evident pride, “I can remember my great grandmother. She and her tribe never lived out of tents.” The King: “You see, sir, its a kind of a mystery where we came from. Some say we are from the Rekkybites (Rechabites), and others say as how we are the lost tribes. It has been a great puzzle as to where we have originated.” “Do you speak the gipsy language?” “Yes, to be sure. We talk Romany.” And as if to convince me of the truth of his assertion he addressed a few words to the Queen in that mysterious lingo which I regret not to have been able to follow. “It is said that, like the Red men, you gipsies are being civilised out of being.” “Its this way, sir. There’s good and bad among us. Some wander about the country, and by their depredations get a character that’s not very nice; but now we are more prosperous than the generality of our class.” “May I enquire what is your principal source of income?” “Oh, bless you, I and my sons do a great deal in the way of horse dealing; and we don’t employ our idle time, like some of the strollers, in tinkering. We go to Ireland very often and buy horses for the French Army, and the English Government as well.” “Will you allow me to ask whether you practice fortune-telling at all?” “Well, the fact is we don’t go in for that. But if ladies insist, we don’t object to do it. My wife and the girls tell fortunes when they are asked.” “Given the mysteries of gipsy life, and the curiosity of the public, I suppose your camp is crowded every day since your arrival?” “Why, sir, on Whit-Monday we were so full as almost to be suffocated. The people came in droves, and the entrance was blocked up with them all the time.”