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64   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

father," he asked Francis ; " I have said I am very sorry." Francis immediately replied from Walter Scott, " I think this would do

'And if I live to be a man

My Father's death revenged shall be.

" Thank you," said the little boy, and added it to his letter.

And again, in the first year of his going to school at age five, the maid who went to fetch him home found a group of boys teasing him. Francis -kept them all at bay with his arm straight out

"Come one, come all, this rock shall 9y,

From its firm base, as soon as I."

Another day about this same time his mother took him into a field where the servants were trying to catch some geese. Francis immediately ran amongst them and seizing the old gander by the neck brought him to his mother, muttering to himself the lines of Chevy Chase

" Thou art the most courageous knight

That ever I did see."

On another occasion Francis fell off his pony into a very muddy ditch, and, as he was dragged out by his legs, he sputtered out halfchoked with mud to his brother Darwin the lines of Hudibras

" I am not now in Fortune's power

He that is down can fall no lower."

As his mother depicts him for us in the first half-dozen years of his life Francis was a boy of mettle, full of strangely assorted knowledge, but naturally rather shy. A pretty story is told in Mrs Wheler's Reminiscences, which brings together two noteworthy English characters. Mrs Fry (see Plate XLVII) was a second cousin of Hudson Gurney, whose wife, Margaret Barclay, was a great-aunt of Francis Galton. Hudson Gurney was himself son of Agatha Barclay, first cousin of Lucy Barclay, Francis Galton's grandmother'. Aunt Gurney's house in St James's Square was the centre from which the young Galtons became acquainted with London life, and here they met Mrs Fry-" a very striking person, tall and dignified and yet so kind and motherly, one felt one could open one's heart at once to her." In 1824 Mrs Fry came to Birmingham and went to stay with

1 Mrs Fry was also a granddaughter of Catherine Barclay, who was sister to the first Lucy Barclay and to David Barclay of Youngsbury (see Pedigree Plate C). Thus she was second cousin to Tertius Galton.


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