What is it ?" "They say that the Gipsies' church was made of pork, and the dogs ate it." Long, loud, and joyously affirmative was the peal of laughter with which the Gipsies welcomed this characteristic story.
So far as research and the analogy of living tribes of the same race can establish a fact, it would seem that the Gipsies were, previous to their quitting India, not people of high caste, but wandering Pariahs, outcasts, foes to the Brahmins, and unbelievers.

All the Pariahs are not free-thinkers, but in India, the Church, as in Italy, loses no time in making of all detected free-thinkers Pariahs.

Thus we are told, in the introduction to the English translation of that very curious book, "The Tales of the Gooroo Simple," which should be read by every scholar, that all the true literature of the country--that which has life, and freedom, and humour--comes from the Pariahs.

And was it different in those days, when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise, Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, often wanting bread and dreading fire, but asking for nothing but freedom?
The more I have conversed intimately with Gipsies, the more have I been struck by the fact, that my mingled experiences of European education and of life in the Far West of America have given me a basis of mutual intelligence which had otherwise been utterly wanting.

I, myself, have known in a wild country what it is to be half-starved for many days--to feel that all my thoughts and intellectual exertions, hour by hour, were all becoming centered on one subject--how to get something to eat.