But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have been invited to write, and I have not yet even begun upon these. Our close friendship dated no further back than 1881—the year in which died the great Romany Rye. Indeed, it was owing to Borrow’s death, coupled with Groome’s interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi Lovell, whom the eloquent Romany preacher “Gipsy Smith” has lately been expiating upon to immense audiences, that I first became acquainted with Groome. Although he has himself in some magazine told the story, it seems necessary for me to retell it here, for I know of no better way of giving the readers of _The Athenæum_ a picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my mind. It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years before went down to Oulton, as he told me, “to die,” achieved death. And it devolved upon me as the chief friend of his latest years to write an obituary notice of him in _The Athenæum_. Among the many interesting letters that it brought me from strangers was one from Groome, whose name was familiar to me as the author of the article ‘Gypsies’ in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ But besides this I had read ‘In Gypsy Tents,’ a picture of the very kind of gipsies I knew myself, those of East Anglia—a picture whose photographic truth had quite startled me. Howsoever much of matter of fact may be worked into ‘Lavengro’ (and to no one did Borrow talk with so little reticence upon this delicate subject as to me during many a stroll about Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park), I am certain that his first-hand knowledge of gipsy life was quite superficial compared with Groome’s during the nine years or so that he was brought into contact with them in Great Britain and on the Continent. Hence a book like ‘In Gypsy Tents’ has for a student of Romany subjects an interest altogether different from that which Borrow’s books command; for while Borrow, the man of genius, throws by the very necessities of his temperament the colours of romance around his gipsies, the characters of ‘In Gypsy Tents,’ depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as realistic as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of gipsy lore at his command is simply overwhelming.