Those boys sat up. I said, “We are going to talk about gipsy life.” I talked to them about the origin of my people. There’s not a man living in the world who knows the origin of my people. I can trace my people back to India, but they didn’t come from India. We are one of the oldest races in the world, so old that nobody knows how old. I talked to them about the origin of the gipsies, and I don’t know it, but I knew more about it than they did. I talked to them about our language, and I gave them specimens of it, and there I was on sure ground. It is a beautiful language, full of poetry and music. Then I talked about the way the gipsies get their living—and other people’s; and for thirty minutes those Munsters hardly knew if they were on the chairs or on the floor—and I purposely made them laugh. They had just come out of the hell of the trenches. They had that haunted, weary, hungry look, and if only I could make them laugh and forget the hell out of which they had just climbed it was religion, and I wasn’t wasting time. When I had been talking for thirty minutes, I stopped, and said, “Boys, there’s a lot more to this story. Would you like some more?” “Yes,” they shouted. “Come back to-morrow,” I said. I was fishing in unlikely waters, and if you leave off when fish are hungry they will come back for more. For six nights I told those boys gipsy stories. I took them out into the woods. We went out amongst the rabbits. I told the boys the rabbits got very fond of me—so fond that they used to go home with me! I took them through the clover-fields on a June day and made them smell the perfume. I took them among the buttercups. I told them it was the Finger of Love and the Smile of Infinite Wisdom that put the spots upon the pansy and the deep blue in the violet. And then we went out among the birds and we saw God taking songs from the lips of a seraph and wrapping them round with feathers. And the boys saw Jesus in every buttercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. I took them amongst the gipsy tents, amongst the woodlands and dells of the old camping-grounds. They walked with Him and they talked with Him. I didn’t use the usual Church language, but I used the language of God in Nature and the boys heard Him. Towards the end of the week one of those Munster boys came and touched me and said, “Your Riverence! Your Riverence!” he says. “You’re a gentleman.” I _knew_ I had got that boy.