True gypsies are a most exclusive race, but there have been numerous intermarriages with Gentiles, and even at a single fair or other gypsy gathering a discriminating observer will soon discover almost as many social grades as in a non-gypsy community, and several degrees of racial admixture; at the top of the scale, Romanies of interesting personality, at the bottom, Chorodies, “low, wandering outcasts,” with little or no gypsy blood in their veins, and whose hair has been described as reminiscent of the material of which cheap mops are composed, and whose habits are disgustingly dirty. Unfortunately for the reputation of the real gypsy, many people who have not thought it worth while to look into the matter, are unaware that these differences exist, and consequently class all together as “gypsies.” The language of the Chorodies is a conglomeration of Romany, bad English and slang, differing widely from the “gentle Romany” of the true gypsy. I have said that gypsies are exclusive,—this is especially noticeable in the way the Romany tongue is kept secret by them. It is scarcely ever displayed, although it may be occasionally used in public for strategic reasons; even a knowledge of it will be denied by them when interrogated by one who appears inquisitive; it is nevertheless spoken, little or much by thousands in England to-day. It is a curious but indisputable fact that among true gypsies as well as Romany half-breeds, the Oriental characteristics—black hair, dark eyes, swarthy skin, peculiar cast of features, and lithe body—are usually much more evident in the women than in the men, in girls than boys. A good type of English gypsy girl is Dōsha (see Frontispiece), whose portrait exhibits all these peculiarities most distinctly; the facial angle, the carriage of the head, even the angle of the body, and, one might almost say, the “hang” of the clothes, are Oriental. [Illustration: “DŌSHA.”] There is, too, something extraordinarily mystical about the eyes, and no great exercise of the imagination is needed to enable one to credit their possessor with occult powers. The directness and fixity of gaze are such as haunt one and render it easy to understand how for centuries gypsies have been regarded as endowed with strange gifts. At the present time, such a belief is to a great extent pooh-poohed,—ostensibly so, at least,—but until we of the West have arrived at a vastly greater knowledge than we now possess, of telepathy, hypnotism and allied sciences, it will be well that we restrain our dogmatism and altogether withhold our sneers in matters occult. It does not necessarily follow that we should place reliance on such gypsy arts as fortune telling, neither can it, on the other hand, be denied that there is in this, and their implied power of clairvoyance, a fundamental something we do not understand.