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MEMOIR OF 



in season, or out of season, no one of them in 

 distress ever appealed to him in vain. 



Nor did the wandering tribes of gipsies that 

 were wont to sojourn a while on the waste spots 

 in his parish — that race of Ishmael of whom it 

 is said, " his hand shall be against every man, 

 and every man's hand against him," form an 

 exception to that rule. 



Instead of persecuting them as trespassers 

 and plunderers, by impounding their donkeys, 

 compelling them to strike their tents at a 

 moment's notice, driving them and their children 

 from pillar to post, and treating them more like 

 wolves than human beings, he never failed to 

 protect and befriend them whenever he thought 

 they were unmercifully or even unfairly used. 

 It was one of the old gipsy regulations of the 

 Kirk Yetholme tribe. Sir Walter Scott tells us, 

 to respect, in their depredations, the property 

 of their benefactors ; so these North Devon 

 gipsies, in return for Russell's kindness, were 

 always scrupulously careful to give him no 

 cause to complain of their presence, or regret 

 his own forbearance ; and whatever their short- 

 comings may have been with respect to other 

 property, his, at least, never suffered from their 

 depredations in any way. Often has he been 

 heard to say, "to the best of his belief he 

 never lost a head of poultry, nor even an eg 

 by the hands of the gipsies." 





