n cases not yet unpacked. He died suddenly, to my great
financial loss; for he was very fond of me, offering himself sponsor and
giving his name to a son of mine; and as a rich old bachelor he used, to
make humorously half promises of benefits to come. In fact, he had
called in his lawyer to take instructions for a new will, and partly at
least had erased or destroyed the old one of a twelve years agone, when,
one raw and wintry morning, he insisted upon seeing a lady from and to
her carriage without his hat (punctilio being his _forte_ and his
fault), caught cold, took to his bed, and was dead in four days!
Accordingly a relative with whom he had not been on the best of terms
for years, administered to his half will, and succeeded to his
possessions. Such is life and its futile expectations.

Walter Hawkins had many peculiarities: one was this. At great cost he
was long building for himself a tomb at Kensal Green, which he would not
let me see till it was finished: he then triumphantly exhibited to my
astonished eyes a domed marble temple with four bronze angels blowing
trumpets east, west, north, and south,--and waited for my approval,
which honestly I could not give. I heard nothing more of this small
mausoleum, for he was a taciturn man: but when, some year or two after,
I went to his funeral and looked in vain for the temple-tomb, I found it
had vanished, and in its stead was a plain marble slab with his simple
name and birthday on it, and a blank left for the date of his death.
Manifestly he had repented of the vaingloriousness of those herald
angels and their dome; and practically took the hint of my dispraise in
the adoption of that humbler tombstone.

Here is another characteristic trait: some navvy had found an old rusty
anchor near the Thames Tunnel, one of Brunel's ruinous follies,--now, as
we all know, finished and utilised by a railway. This anchor, a small
one, probably lost by some "jolly young waterman," Mr. Hawkins
maintained was Roman; and he had made for it a superb crimson case lined
with satin, which hung on his drawing-room wall at Hammersmith as a
decoration. He was also proud of possessing the paw of the Arctic bear
which had attacked Captain Parry, but from which he escaped, as also did
the bear, for no one is said to have shot the beast: however, there was
the paw in proof: and there were divers other uncommon properties.

One of the most curious matters about my friend was this: the anagram