He might be a dreamer, this slightly built, pock-marked young man with the keen eyes, and resolute, soldierly gait, who haunted Grafton Street so persistently through the spring and early summer of 1785. But he had an astonishingly practical turn for making his dreams come true. The time was to come when the dream of French aid for Ireland was to materialise through his instrumentality, in an expedition composed of fifteen thousand of the finest troops of the Republic, incomparably equipped, and commanded by one of the foremost generals in Europe. The secret of his success was that he always knew perfectly what he wanted, and having decided on the best road to reach his goal, walked it with that light but resolute soldier’s step of his, humming a gay tune, and allowing nothing to turn him aside. Having ascertained, now, that the house where his lady dwelt, and to which he desired an introduction, belonged to a rich old clergyman, called Fanning, and that the lady herself was the Rev. Mr. Fanning’s grandaughter, he contrived to make the acquaintance of her brother, and “as _he_ played well on the violin, and I was myself a musical man, we grew intimate, the more so as it may well be supposed I neglected no fair means to recommend myself to him and the rest of the family with whom I soon grew a favourite. My affairs now advanced prosperously; my wife and I grew more passionately fond of each other; and in a short time I proposed to her to marry me without asking consent of any one, knowing well that it would be in vain to expect it; she accepted the proposal as frankly as I made it, and one beautiful morning in the month of July we ran off together and were married. I carried her out of town to Maynooth for a few days, and when the first _éclat_ of passion had subsided, we were forgiven on all sides, and settled in lodgings near my wife’s grandfather.” It non-plussed the Duke of Wellington at a later date, to think of Tone arriving in Paris “with a hundred guineas in his pocket, unknown and unrecommended,” and, by mere force of personality, obtaining from the French Government the wherewithal to overturn the British Government in Ireland. But I doubt if that achievement was any more remarkable in its own way than to find him, as we do now, winning the pearl of all women—and a happiness such as it is given to few mortals to taste—with nothing better to back up his suit than his flute—on which, we are given to understand, he was an indifferent, if enthusiastic performer!