Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/168

 IIOYLAND S BENEVOLENCE. 143

have been desirous to enlighten their ignorance, and ameliorate their condition. Among them, Mr. Hoy- land, of the Society of Friends, has been persevering in this mission of mercy. He has visited their en campments, and sought to gain influence over them for good. A gray haired woman of more than eighty years of age, told him she had many children, and nearly fifty grandchildren, not one of whom had ever been taught to read. He embodied the result of his observations in a volume published in 18 1C, which contains much interesting information, and is itself a monument of that true benevolence, which, in the despised homeless wanderers among the highways and hedges, recognizes the possessors of an immortal soul.

��Gipsy ! see, with fading light, How the camp-fire blazes bright, Where thy roving people steal Gladly to their evening meal. Tawny urchins, torn and bare, And the wrinkled crone is there, Who pretends, with scowling eye Into fate s decrees to pry, And the credulous to show Golden fortunes, free from woe.

AVhy, beneath the hedge-row lone, Sit st thou on that broken stone, Heedless of the whoop and call To their merry festival ?

�� �