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THE GIPSY TINKER.
Difficulty of coming to an Understanding with Gipsies .-- The Cabman .-- Rommany for French.--"Wanderlust."-- Gipsy Politeness .-- The Tinker and the Painting .-- Secrets of Bat-catching .-- The Piper of Hamelin, and the Tinker's Opinion of the Story .-- The Walloon Tinker of Spa .-- Argot.
One summer day in London, in 1871, I was seated alone in an artist's studio.

Suddenly I heard without, beneath the window, the murmur of two voices, and the sleepy, hissing, grating sound of a scissors-grinder's wheel.
By me lay a few tools, one of which, a chisel, was broken.

I took it, went softly to the window, and looked down.
There was the wheel, including all the apparatus of a travelling tinker.
I looked to see if I could discover in the two men who stood by it any trace of the Rommany.

One, a fat, short, mind-his-own-business, ragged son of the roads, who looked, however, as if a sturdy drinker might be hidden in his shell, was evidently not my "affair." He seemed to be the "Co." of the firm.
But by him, and officiating at the wheeling smithy, stood a taller figure--the face to me invisible--which I scrutinised more nearly.