A large proportion of the articles hawked around by gypsy vans at the present time are not of gypsy manufacture, as machine-made tinware and other goods yield a greater profit; individual tent-dwelling hawkers, however, still carry a fair variety of home-made stuff, such as clothes-pegs, toys, grass mats and baskets, meat skewers, wire flower-baskets, etc. I was recently at a country fair which attracted the usual gypsy proprietors of shows, stalls and the like, and amongst them I got into conversation with an old man of sixty to seventy years of age. He was a man of more than the average intelligence of his class and had at one time been a travelling photographer. “Yes,” said he in reply to a question of mine, “I made a good bit of money photographing at one time, but there isn’t much to be done at it now, I’ve still got my cameras and lenses and things in the van, but I never use them.” “But things are slack in the pleasure line during all the winter months, aren’t they?” I inquired. “Yes,” he replied, “it’s as much as most of us do in the summer to make enough to carry us through, but d’ye know,” he continued in a confidential manner, “there’s a good living to be got, and could be got by a lot of our people if they’d only go into it. I’m too old to start afresh now, but any man with a livin’ wagon, as could work at tinkering, furniture repairing and china riveting, do a bit of photography when it came along, and wouldn’t turn up his nose at stray odd jobs such as putting in window-sash lines, seeing to paraffin lamps and the like, and travelled around the out-of-the-way places, what you’d call remote districts, would make sure of a good living all the year round. Mind you, it would be a hard life,—it couldn’t be much harder than some of us have at this game,—but it would pay, and there’s many a gypsy with ability to do it—only he don’t.” In the early days of photography the arrival of the Photographic Van, otherwise “Saloon,” for its periodical stay in the village or town, was eagerly awaited as the only opportunity to have a “likeness taken” for, perhaps, months. In some of the home counties certainly, and in others possibly, the only professional portrait photographers doing work at popular prices were, at one time, the Romany operator-proprietors of these travelling portrait saloons, and most excellent work was turned out too. I have in my possession family portraits taken upwards of half a century ago by these gypsy artists, which would put to shame similar work but ten years old. One of these, taken in 1858 on glass, blacked at the back, framed in what is known as a “mat and preserver,” fitted into the well-known plush-lined wood case, is in a condition as absolutely fresh and perfect as on the day it was taken, and was the work of a typical Tachey Romany, a man of fine physique and handsome features, who travelled Hertfordshire and adjoining counties.