NOT THE MAN FOR GALWAY. 303 



MEMOIR OF A GENTLEMAN WHO WOULD NOT DO FOR 

 GALWAY 



" I am descended from a line of traders, and by birth 

 as genuine a cockney as ever listened to Bow-bells. 

 My mother's nonage was passed in St. Mary Axe, 

 and my father was a dry-salter in Tooley Street. He was 

 third of the same name that there had dwelt and prospered. 

 They were a thrifty and punctilious race ; and it was a 

 family boast that, for seventy years, a bill bearing the 

 acceptance of Daniel Dawkins had never been in the 

 hands of the notary. There is virtue in a good name, 

 'tis said, and theirs was current for ten thousand. 



" I was an only child, and from the cradle evinced an 

 indolent and dreamy temperament, which was ill adapted 

 to withstand the worry of trade, and all the annoyances 

 entailed on traffic. I hated trouble ; hardly knew the 

 difference between pearl-ashes and pearl-barley ; could 

 never comprehend tare-and-trett, and had, moreover, 

 literary propensities. How one in whose veins the blood 

 of the Dawkinses circulated could be so deplorably 

 uncommercial, is a puzzle ; but I was, I suppose, ' fore- 

 doomed my father's soul to cross,' and an unhappy 

 tutor ruined me beyond recovery. 



" My Gamaliel was a Scotch gentleman of unblemished 

 lineage, remarkable for soiled linen and classical research, 

 who had emigrated from a highland valley with an 

 unpronounceable name, to hold a secondary situation 

 in a city academy, where the progeny of Love Lane 

 and Little Britain received the rudiments of polite letters 

 The extra hours of the gifted Celt were, for the considera- 

 tion of ten pounds annual fee, ' to be paid quarterly, 



