{16} It is not only puzzling, but provoking to decide how to treat a writer like Mr. Leland, for sometimes he shows a great deal of knowledge of his subject, and sometimes apparently nothing of it—one assertion contradicting another on the same question. What in reality has an antipathy between birds, or the idea of “people of self-conscious culture and the man and factory,” or the destiny of the American Indians to do with the destiny of the Gipsies? For he says, “Gipsies in England are passing away as rapidly as Indians in North America” (_The English Gipsies_, _Pref. X._). As a native of the United States, Mr. Leland must know that these Indians become extinct, and of the Gipsies in England that although there are comparatively few “dwellers in tents” of full blood, so called, there are many, many thousands of more or less mixed blood following various callings, or in various positions in life, as he has frequently admitted. The distinction between “old-fashioned” Gipsies and other members of the tribe is but trifling with the subject. The following extracts from _The English Gipsies and their Language_ are interesting:— “Other writers have had much to say of their incredible distrust of _Gorgios_ and unwillingness to impart their language, but I have always found them obliging and communicative” (Pref. V.).—“In every part of the world it is extremely difficult to get Romany words even from intelligent Gipsies, _although they may be willing with all their heart to communicate them_” (p. 17).—“Now the reader is possibly aware that of all difficult tasks, one of the most difficult is to induce a disguised Gipsy, or even a professed one, to utter a word of Romany to a man not of the blood” (p. 37).—“Be it remembered, reader, that in Germany, at the present day, the mere fact of being a Gipsy is still treated as a crime” (p. 74).—“Though the language of the Gipsies has been kept a great secret for centuries, still a few words have in England oozed out here and there from some unguarded crevice” (p. 78).—“The very fact that they hide as much as they can of their Gipsy life and nature from the _Gorgios_ would of itself indicate the depths of singularity concealed beneath their apparent life” (p. 153).—“Behind it all . . . . the fierce spirit of social exile from the world in which they lived . . . and the joyous consciousness of a secret tongue and hidden ways” (p. 156).—“A feeling of free-masonry, and of guarding a social secret, long after they leave the roads and become highly reputable members of society. But they have a secret, and no one can know them who has not penetrated it” (p. 174).