A MILLIONAIRE.
I shall revert to old Skinner Row in reference to the career of an
individual which may be said to have commenced there about the year
1782. The incidents which I shall detail are not of an amatory or very
sentimental nature, but nevertheless, truly extraordinary. To a Dublin,
or even an Irish reader, it is unnecessary to offer an assurance of
their truth, or to mention the individual's name. Only one error in
reference to him has had currency, and that to a very limited extent. It
arose, in all probability, from envy or malice, and consisted in
describing him as a person of very imperfect education, of plebeian
manners and disposition, and of almost menial avocations. He might have
been truly described as well-informed, unaffectedly courteous,
unobtrusive of his own opinions, and tolerant of the opinions of others,
whilst his business transactions were marked by diligence, integrity,
and intelligence. The proprietor of a very extensive establishment in a
central situation in Dublin, where bookselling and auctions of libraries
were carried on, had advertised for an assistant; and the situation
attracted the attention of many competitors, of whom the individual
alluded to was one. He was young and active, and sought a personal
interview with Mr. V. the advertiser. He was informed that the latter
had gone up to Skinner Row, to my father's house, where he would be
engaged for upwards of an hour. The applicant hurried off to the narrow,
crowded, and inconvenient locality. The footway was disproportionally
raised above the carriage road, and at the very door of the house to
which he was going, he accidentally slipped and fell. In a disabled
condition, he was raised and carried in, and it was ascertained that his
ankle was dislocated. His sufferings excited great sympathy. He was
conveyed to a bedroom, and surgical aid was procured. Mr. V. manifested
great interest in the young man, and came frequently to see him. After
several weeks elapsed his cure was effected, and the situation which he
sought was given to him. He expressed the deepest gratitude to my father
for the kindness he had experienced, and the acquaintance which
commenced in the painful accident referred to, ripened ultimately into a
very close intimacy. He gained the confidence of Mr. V., who conferred
many marks of his esteem, and on the retirement of that gentleman from
business, he became, to a great extent, his successor. All his
undertakings prospered, and he acquired the reputation of being
extremely wealthy. A rumour was circulated that, between the leaves of
some books which he had purchased, he had found several bank notes of
considerable value, but that report was groundless. In addition to
extensive bookselling, he had formed a connection with the house of Bish
and Co., of Cornhill, by which he was enabled to do a profitable
business in bills on London amongst the Dublin traders, for at that time
the facilities of letters of credit were very little known. He also
dealt largely in the tickets and shares of the State Lotteries which,
three or four times in the year, stimulated the community into legalized
gambling. One evening in the year 1794, my father had occasion to call
upon him, and found him unusually dissatisfied. He said that Bish's
people had made a great mistake in sending him several whole tickets
instead of quarters, eighths, or sixteenths, and that three tickets had
been left on his hands, involving a loss of sixty pounds. There was not
sufficient time to communicate with London before the drawing day, and
he could only warn them against committing a similar error on the next
occasion. However, in about a week after, my father ascertained that the
mistake had eventuated in one of the tickets turning out a prize for
twenty thousand pounds. Bish was no longer censured by the man whose
wealth, previously considerable, had received a great and unexpected
augmentation. The writer of fiction would hesitate before he would adopt
a young man lying on the flagway of a city in which he was a complete
stranger, with a dislocated ankle, as the material for a future
_millionaire_. The person to whom this narrative refers was not English,
Irish, or Scotch. He was a Manxman, who left his native island to seek
in Dublin, what he most completely found, a fortune. He died a member of
Parliament for an Irish county. Three of his sons attained to similar
positions, and one of them was elevated to the House of Peers. Their
positions were honourably and worthily acquired.