FREDERICK S. ARNOLD. 115 



It may not be known to every one, but most Gypsies 

 keep a hude-mush or servant to do all their drudgery. 

 The servant gets his keep and some small wage. He is 

 sometimes Romany himself, as in the case of the black 

 Gypsy mentioned above, who worked for the Wells. 

 But he is more often of lower class, American, "poor- 

 white" extraction. I even once knew a member of a 

 good, lower-middle-class Dutchess County family who 

 worked for the Gypsies for years and had learned a good 

 deal of their language. And old Mr. Smith, when I 

 visited his camp on top of the Palisades near Guttenberg, 

 complained that it was through the Oorjio hude-muslies 

 (gentile servants) that the knowledge of the dark lan- 

 guage got out in the world and the old secret leaked 

 away. Still the Ramani are so careful to keep their 

 language to themselves, and some of the Gorjio servants 

 are so stupid withal, that in years of service some never 

 learn a word. 



"You couldn't larn him a word o' that language," 

 said Plato Buckland, "in a thousand years. He ain't 

 got the head." That Gypsy-lore has passed from these 

 hude-mushes, and in other ways into the lower ranks of 

 society is, however, true. Gypsy words creep into slang, 

 Gypsy ways are adopted by tramps, peddlers, and so 

 forth, not of the blood, and Gypsy superstition spreads 

 and keeps alive the old witchcraft and shamanism which 

 now survives only in the dregs of society, though all our 

 ancestors confessed it once. 



Talking about their life, the subject of their morality 

 suggests itself. In this respect I believe the Romany 

 will compare very well with the lower classes of society. 

 Intemperance has always been his besetting sin, as of the 

 Dom in India, but his life in the open air enables him to 

 endure hard diinking. The American Ramani whom I 

 have personally observed are, I believe, much more tem- 

 perate, honester and better every way than those I have 



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