Now the _patteran_ which I have drawn, like the Koua of the Chinese or the mystical _Swastika_ of the Buddhists, embraces the long line of life, or of the infinite and the short, or broken lines of the finite, and, therefore, as an ancient magical Eastern sign, would be most appropriately inscribed as a _sikker-paskero dromescro_--or hand post--to show the wandering Rommany how to proceed on their way of life.
[Svastika: ill27.jpg] That the ordinary Christian Cross should be called by the English Gipsies a _trin bongo drum_--or the three cross roads--is not remarkable when we consider that their only association with it is that of a "wayshower," as Germans would call it.

To you, reader, it may be that it points the way of eternal life; to the benighted Rommany-English-Hindoo, it indicates nothing more than the same old weary track of daily travel; of wayfare and warfare with the world, seeking food and too often finding none; living for petty joys and driven by dire need; lying down with poverty and rising with hunger, ignorant in his very wretchedness of a thousand things which he _ought_ to want, and not knowing enough to miss them.
Just as the reader a thousand, or perhaps only a hundred, years hence--should a copy of this work be then extant--may pity the writer of these lines for his ignorance of the charming comforts, as yet unborn, which will render _his_ physical condition so delightful.

To thee, oh, future reader, I am what the Gipsy is to me! Wait, my dear boy of the Future--wait--till _you_ get to heaven! Which is a long way off from the Gipsies.

Let us return.

We had spoken _of patteran_, or of crosses by the way-side, and this led naturally enough to speaking of Him who died on the Cross, and of wandering.