Part 29

"Perhaps you are a boro drabengro" (a great physician).

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

"It was away among the rocks that he fell into the reeds, half in the water, and kept still till they went by."

"If any one is ill among you, I may be of use."

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

"And what a wind! It blows as if the good Lord were singing! Kushti chirus se atch a-kerri." (This is a pleasant day to be at home.)

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

"I thought you were a doctor, for you were going about in the town with the one who sells medicine. I heard of it."

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

"Do not hurry away! Come again and see us. I think the Coopers are all out in Ohio."

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

The cold wind and slight rain seemed refreshing and even welcome, as I went out into the cold air. The captain showed me his stock of fourteen horses and mules, and we interchanged views as to the best method of managing certain maladies in such stock. I had been most kindly entertained; indeed, with the home kindliness which good people in the country show to some hitherto unseen and unknown relative who descends to them from the great world of the city. Not but that my friends did not know cities and men as well as Ulysses, but even Ulysses sometimes met with a marvel. In after days I became quite familiar with the several families who made the camp, and visited them in sunshine. But they always occur to me in memory as in a deep Rembrandt picture, a wonderful picture, and their voices as in vocal chiaroscuro; singing to the wind without and the rain on the tent,--

Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!

IV. HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA

This chapter was written by my niece through marriage, Miss Elizabeth Robins. It is a part of an article which was published in "The Century," and it sets forth certain wanderings in seeking old houses in the city of Philadelphia.

All along the lower part of Race Street, saith the lady, are wholesale stores and warehouses of every description. Some carts belonging to one of them had just been unloaded. The stevedores who do this--all negroes--were resting while they waited for the next load. They were great powerful men, selected for their strength, and were of many hues, from cafe au lait, or coffee much milked, up to the browned or black-scorched berry itself, while the very athletae were coal-black. They wore blue overalls, and on their heads they had thrown old coffee-bags, which, resting on their foreheads, passed behind their ears and hung loosely down their backs. It was in fact the haik or bag-cloak of the East, and it made a wonderfully effective Arab costume. One of them was half leaning, half sitting, on a pile of bags; his Herculean arms were folded, and he had unconsciously assumed an air of dignity and defiance. He might have passed for an African chief. When we see such men in Egypt or other sunny countries outre mer, we become artistically eloquent; but it rarely occurs to sketchers and word-painters to do much business in the home-market.

The mixture of races in our cities is rapidly increasing, and we hardly notice it. Yet it is coming to pass that a large part of our population is German and Irish, and that our streets within ten years have become fuller of Italian fruit dealers and organ-grinders, so that Cives sum Romanus (I am a Roman citizen), when abroad, now means either "I possess a monkey" or "I sell pea-nuts." Jews from Jerusalem peddle pocket-books on our sidewalks, Chinamen are monoplizing our washing and ironing, while among laboring classes are thousands of Scandinavians, Bohemians, and other Slaves. The prim provincial element which predominated in my younger years is yielding before this influx of foreigners, and Quaker monotony and stern conservatism are vanishing, while Philadelphia becomes year by year more cosmopolite.

As we left the handsome negroes and continued our walk on Water Street an Italian passed us. He was indeed very dirty and dilapidated; his clothes were of the poorest, and he carried a rag-picker's bag over his shoulder; but his face, as he turned it towards us, was really beautiful.

"Siete Italiano?" (Are you an Italian?) asked my uncle.

"Si, signore" (Yes, sir), he answered, showing all his white teeth, and opening his big brown eyes very wide.

"E come lei piace questo paese?" (And how do you like this country?)

"Not at all. It is too cold," was his frank answer, and laughing good-humoredly he continued his search through the gutters. He would have made a good model for an artist, for he had what we do not always see in Italians, the real southern beauty of face and expression. Two or three weeks after this encounter, we were astonished at meeting on Chestnut Street a little man, decently dressed, who at once manifested the most extraordinary and extravagant symptoms of delighted recognition. Never saw I mortal so grin-full, so bowing. As we went on and crossed the street, and looked back, he was waving his hat in the air with one hand, while he made gestures of delight with the other. It was the little Italian rag-picker.

Then along and afar, till we met a woman, decently enough dressed, with jet-black eyes and hair, and looking not unlike a gypsy. "A Romany!" I cried with delight. Her red shawl made me think of gypsies, and when I caught her eye I saw the indescrible flash of the kalorat, or black blood. It is very curious that Hindus, Persians, and gypsies have in common an expression of the eye which distinguishes them from all other Oriental races, and chief in this expression is the Romany. Captain Newbold, who first investigated the gypsies of Egypt, declares that, however disguised, he could always detect them by their glance, which is unlike that of any other human being, though something resembling it is often seen in the ruder type of the rural American. I believe myself that there is something in the gypsy eye which is inexplicable, and which enables its possessor to see farther through that strange mill-stone, the human soul, than I can explain. Any one who has ever seen an old fortune-teller of "the people" keeping some simple-minded maiden by the hand, while she holds her by her glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, with a basilisk stare, will agree with me. As Scheele de Vere writes, "It must not be forgotten that the human eye has, beyond question, often a power which far transcends the ordinary purposes of sight, and approaches the boundaries of magic."

But one glance, and my companion whispered, "Answer me in Romany when I speak, and don't seem to notice her." And then, in loud tone, he remarked, while looking across the street,--

"Adovo's a kushto puro rinkeno ker adoi." (That is a nice old pretty house there.)

"Avali, rya" (Yes, sir), I replied.

There was a perceptible movement by the woman in the red shawl to keep within ear-shot of us. Mine uncle resumed,--

"Boro kushto covva se ta rakker a jib te kek Gorgio iinella." (It's nice to talk a language that no Gentile knows.)