A ROMANY LAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19418, 28 August 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

A ROMANY LAD.

BY MATANGA.

TRAVEL TO GOOD PURPOSE.

His name is Smith. It is a good name, but meaning little in an age when motor traffic has sent the shoeing forge into a back street and machines threaten to abolish manual strength and dexterity. Besides, the clan has multiplied so enormously that one more or less doesn't count. Was there not good reason for the bride entering it by marriage being mourned as having joined the great majority ? Have not various companies of tho clan acknowledged the peril of anonymity that lies in possession of a name claimed by a multitude that no man can number ? They have sought refuge from obscurity by sundry transliterations of the name; some of them have gone so far as to employ the artful service of a hyphen, tried by a dash, as it were, to escape from smothering under a mass of poor relations. But he is plain Smith.

Yet not so plain, perhaps. For ho has another name, a front name. But even this lacks lustre. It cannot by any artifice be proved a Christian name. It belongs to Egypt. His people in the East are called Egyptians, and the term is not meant to give them honour. Nor can the name they go by in one part of Europe—Pharaoh's people—save them from disregard, for the Pharaohs are so long dead that they have lost their power to exact respect. Even the French preference for calling this people Bohemiens is unavailing as a testimonial. But for Borrow, they might be unsung. No less pretentious an equipment in nomenclature can be imagined than that possessed by Gipsy Smith. Sterling Simplicity. And yofc, what a name, when the man behind it is discovered! It is honoured in six continents as one of magic charm, not for itself but for him. So potent is its charm that others have coveted it, and one at least has tried to filch if, in the vain thought that Aesop's fable of the ass in the lion's skin was no longer fixed in popular memory. The lion's skin is just the image for this name—nothing without the lion in it. Yet, dressed in any other tailoring, its wearer might have been hampered not a little. To have been called, say, Augustus Montmorency Fitzpipkin would have been a palpable drawback. With his close-fitting name, Gipsy Smith moves about, adorned with no trappings to hide the sterljng simplicity of his character, and purpose. To call him "Mr." seems a profanation, for he has joined the number of those elect whose names are familiar in our mouths as household words and are spoken of accordingly without interloping prefix. He might have been a " Reverend," perhaps a "Eight Reverend," but he has refused orders as, in his case, unbecoming. This plain man with the bewraying name is not one at whom to stare. Scarcely hitting the average height, dressing without display, bearing himself among his fellows as if he had no claim to honour a whit better than theirs, he might be passed in Queen Street without remark, dnd fts would have it so. The>:o have been some ambassadors so given to rich apparel and long retinue that they have been mistaken for the monarch entrusting them with office. His loyal service is of another and a nobler sort. Strength and Poise. See him as he sits where words of appreciative welcome are spoken. The firm, rounded face, swarthy with the sunshine that for centuries has played freely on the visage of his sauntering ancestry, is set in easy composure. Beneath the dark moustache, clipped but untouched by any cavalier care for fashion—its very presence, in a day when young men sha/e with thoroughness and old men fear to let any tell-tale grey peep out upon the face, speaks a mind without affectation—the lips are still. Even the bright brown eyes arc quiet. They might be windows in a cloister.

Nowhere is there any sign of aught bnt> strength at peace: no pose, but quiet poise, So might another swarthy maa, the King of Gipsy Smith's heart, have sat at ease in a little boat near Galilee's shore and gazed at the crowd thronging the beach to hear Him speak. When this man speaks the sense of quiet strength is felt again. If ever fever clutched him, it must have hurried shuddering 'away. There must be depths :n him that no storm can ever reach. But the surface is all aquiver as if caressed by currents of living air. The eyes grow wondrously alert. The head nods ever so slightly in emphasis of some phrase in a smoothiy-flowing sentence, and after the sentence has reached a stressed climax will continue to nod in a solemn silence, once, twice, thrice. The hands, short-fingered,-sturdy, disciplined, come often to the face as if to steady its featured emotion, and anon open at arm's length in a gesture of entreaty. Sometimes those hands are lifted high, sometimes stretched out as if they would take all the world into their wooing compass. But most of all is there thrust out, in emphasis of courageous admonition, this or that hand, with extended forefinger, and then von are persuaded that the utter truth, white-hot in the speaker's heart, has been sped on its way with the conviction that nothing can be urged against it. In all this there is no trick of studied artifice, only the natural expression of an obviously sincere soul. The Tears of Things. The voice is vigorous and vibrant like the Bands, and just as artlessly disciplined. Tender tones abound. Laughter lingers in it at times, a gentle laughter that is winsomely infectious. This is no Dominican friar, readier to argue than to love, and itching to light a bonfire of vanities, but one of the Lord's merry men let loose upon the world by St. Francis. The fun of life has not been wasted upon him. It keeps him sane. As in the long ago, he is a Romany lad, with a smile lurking ever near his lips. He knows that a laugh may be a Te Deum, instead of the crackling of thorns under a pot. But you shall not listen to Gipsy Smith without discovering that " the tears of things " are very real, and. that he has heard them dropping hard by the throne of the Eternal. Over three years of grim experience in the war brought the dire truth of men's need nearer to him than Hver; but he has not lost heart, and what he has seen in nearly fifty years of more wonderful travel and work than ever any others of his people have seen makes him no weeping prophet, but a manful bringer of good tidings. That he will make friends everywhere in the Dominion for himself and his mission goes without saying.