It is not necessary to our purpose to explain at length other variations of the patrin, nor to describe numerous signs in everyday use by the gypsies, which have more of the nature of family secrets and which if divulged would add little of interest, for obviously the pateran may be varied indefinitely, and each family make a code of its own. The practice of making a simple device in the sand or dust at the roadside, the tying or affixing of pieces of rag to bushes, and numerous other means of imparting information might be described, but would amount to little more than repetitions in various forms of the signs already noticed. All these devices would appear to have been instituted with the dual purpose of giving desired information to their own people and of rendering it impossible for the Gentiles to arrive at any certain knowledge concerning them. True Romany folk, as a race, have kept aloof from the Gentiles or non-gypsy people; even now that the latter are often on friendly terms with them, they are treated in various ways as being without the pale, and so jealous are gypsies of their own tongue that they seldom speak it in the hearing of the gorgios unless it be for the purpose of keeping something secret from them. Although they do not despise postal facilities, they have also ways of their own for transmitting intelligence, among which natural object signals and symbols have a place. [Illustration: “To me men are what they are. They wear no masks with me.” MILNES.] In other ways, really in every way, excepting where met by laws which can be neither broken nor circumvented, gypsies live their own life apart, and whether in childhood they have, or have not received education with non-gypsy children, they have, as adults, all the apparently ineradicable and unchangeable Romany attributes and tastes, with physical powers well developed by the simple, open-air life, and although they are not subjected to the same mental exercises as many of the town dwellers, some of their faculties become highly developed, and by no means always in an undesirable direction. A gypsy might not show to advantage if questioned on abstruse scientific matters, but he would be able to gain a good living and realize comfort in places where his scientific master would perish miserably from starvation; he would be able to point out a hare or a rabbit at such a distance that it would be an unrecognizable speck in the landscape to a keen-eyed gorgio. Comparisons of this nature might be multiplied _ad libitum_, but while it would be both foolish and unfair to attempt to belittle the achievements of the city worker or scholar, it must be admitted that they very frequently gain immensely in one direction but lose heavily in the other.