The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of curiosity and fear.  Nothing more alien could come into the New England life than this tatterdemalion band.  It was hardly credible that here were actually people who lived out-doors, who slept in their covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air; it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and the remote times of the story-books; and John took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing horses and robbing hen-roosts and cornfields, for the mysterious race who for thousands of years have done these same things in all lands, by right of their pure blood and ancient lineage.  John was afraid to approach the camp when any of the scowling and villainous men were lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took more courage when only women and children were visible.  The swarthy, black-haired women in dirty calico frocks were anything but attractive, but they spoke softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him into bringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course of the season.  In front of the tent were planted in the ground three poles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle.  This was the kitchen, and it was sufficient.  The fuel for the fire was the driftwood of the stream.  John noted that it did not require to be sawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the “chores” about this establishment were reduced to the minimum.  And an older person than John might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid neither rent nor taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature.  It seemed to the boy that affairs would go more smoothly in the world if everybody would live in this simple manner.  Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, why it is that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians.

XIX

A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY

One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music from the swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church much frequented by the common people.  An unexpected and exceedingly pretty sight rewarded me.

It was All Souls’ Day.  In Italy almost every day is set apart for some festival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I suppose that when leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint ready to claim the 29th of February.  Whatever the day was to the elders, the evening was devoted to the children.  The first thing I noticed was, that the quaint old church was lighted up with innumerable wax tapers,—­an uncommon sight, for the darkness of a Catholic church in the evening is usually relieved only by a candle here and there, and by a blazing pyramid of them on the high altar.  The use of gas is held to be a vulgar thing all over Europe, and especially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.