innkeeper, and, provided our landlord's principles were sound, did not take any notice of the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more inconvenient because the better the host was, the worse generally were his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his friends would take up with coarse diet and an hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was upon the road I dreaded entering into an house of any one that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.

Since my stay at Sir Roger's in the country, I daily find more instances of this narrow party-humor. Being upon a bowling-green at a neighboring market-town the other day (for that is the place where the gentlemen of one side. meet once a week), I observed a stranger among them of a better presence and genteeler behavior than ordinary; but was much surprised that, notwithstanding he was a very fair better,1 nobody would take him up. But, upon inquiry, I found that he was one who had given a disagreeable vote in a former parliament, for which reason there was not a man upon that bowling-green who would have so much correspondence with him as to win his money of him.

Among other instances of this nature, I must not omit one which concerns myself. Will Wimble was the other day relating several strange stories, that he had picked up nobody knows where, of a certain great man, and upon my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such things in the country, which had never been so much as whispered in the town, Will stopped short in the thread of his discourse, and after dinner asked my friend Sir Roger in his ear if he was sure that I was not a fanatic.

It gives me a serious concern to see such a spirit of dissension in the country; not only as it destroys virtue and common sense, and renders us in a manner barbarians

'There is a lack of euphony from a repetition of "better," as well as some confusion of thought from its use in a different sense.

towards one another, but as it perpetuates our animosities, widens our breaches, and transmits our present passions and prejudices to our posterity. For my own part, I am sometimes afraid that I discover the seeds of a civil war 1 in these our divisions, and therefore cannot but bewail, as in their first principles, the miseries and calamities of our children. C.

'What was the last civil war in England before Addison wrote ? Did the American Revolution arise from any such cause as Addison feared?

XXIV.

GYPSIES.

[Spectator No. 130. Monday, July 30, 1711. Addison.j

Semperque recentes

Convectare juvat praedas, et vivere rapto.

VIRGIL.

As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a troop of gypsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt whether he should not exert the justice of the peace1 upon such a band of lawless vagrants; but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary counsellor on these occasions,2 and fearing that his poultry might fare the worse for it, he let the thought drop; but at the same time gave me a particular account of the mischiefs they do in the country, in stealing people's goods and spoiling their servants. "If a stray piece of linen hangs upon an hedge," says Sir Roger, "they are sure to have it; if the hog loses his way in the fields, it is ten to one but he becomes their prey; our geese cannot live in peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay for it. They generally straggle into these parts about this time of the year, and set the heads of our servant-maids so agog for husbands that we do not expect to have any business done as it should be whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairymaid who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend, the butler, has been fool enough to be seduced by them;

'Exercise his authority as justice of the peace.

2

* Why?

and, though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon every time his fortune is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gypsy for above half an hour once in a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those that apply themselves to them. You see, now and then, some handsome young jades among them; the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes."

Sir Roger, observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that if I would they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the knight's proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra 1 of the crew, after having examined my lines 2 very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good woman's man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he had a widow in his line of life; 3 upon which the knight cried, “Go, go, you are an idle baggage"; and at the same time smiled upon me. The gypsy, finding he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a farther inquiry into his hand, that his true love was constant, and that she should dream of him to-night; my old friend cried "Pish!" and bid her go on. The gypsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says

the gypsy,

"that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty

1 Show why this term is inappropriate.

2 The wrinkles in the palm of the hand.

3

The wrinkle beginning near the wrist, halfway across the palm, and sweeping around between the thumb and forefinger.

woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—. The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed her hand with, and got up again on his horse.

As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me that he knew several sensible people who believed these gypsies now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good humor, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him he found his pocket was picked;1 that being a kind of palmistry 2 at which this race of vermin 3 are very dextrous. I might here entertain my reader with historical remarks on this idle, profligate people, who infest all the countries of Europe, and live in the midst of governments in a kind of commonwealth by themselves. But instead

of entering into observations of this nature, I shall fill the remaining part of my paper with a story which is still fresh *in Holland, and was printed in one of our monthly accounts about twenty years ago:

"As the trekschuyt, or hackney boat, which carries passengers from Leyden to Amsterdam, was putting off, a boy running along the side of the canal desired to be taken in: which the master of the boat refused, because the lad had not quite money enough to pay the usual fare. An eminent merchant being pleased with the looks of the boy, and secretly touched with compassion towards him, paid the money for him, and ordered him to be taken on board.

"Upon talking with him afterwards, he found that he

'Had been picked.

2 Another pun.

See note 10, p. 27, and note 3, p. 41.

* See note 2, p. 75. Addison refers, of course, to the gypsies.

* Six or seven cents.