My name is Geoffrey Bacon, and I have reason to believe that I was born at a place in Essex called (appropriately enough) Dedham.  My family is one of the oldest in the county, and (of course) highly respectable; but as the question is often put to me by friends, and will naturally suggest itself to my readers, I may as well observe, once for all, that I am not a descendent of the Lord Keeper Bacon, albeit, if he had had any children, I have no doubt I should have been.

My poor mother died in giving me birth; my father followed her when I was ten years old, leaving me with his blessing (nothing else), to the care of his aunt, Miss Ophelia Bacon, by whom I was brought up and educated.  She was very good to me, but though I was far from being intentionally ungrateful, I fear that I did not repay her goodness as it deserved.  The dear old lady had made up her mind that I should be a doctor, and though I would rather have been a farmer or a country gentleman (the latter for choice), I made no objection; and so long as I remained at school she had no reason to complain of my conduct.  I satisfied my masters and passed my preliminary examination creditably and without difficulty, to my aunt’s great delight.  She protested that she was proud of me, and rewarded my diligence and cleverness with a five-pound note.  But after I became a student at Guy’s I gave her much trouble, and got myself into some sad scrapes.  I spent her present, and something more, in hiring mounts, for I was passionately fond of riding, especially to hounds, and ran into debt with a neighboring livery-stable keeper to the tune of twenty pounds.  I would sometimes borrow the greengrocer’s pony, for I was not particular what I rode, so long as it had four legs.  When I could obtain a mount neither for love nor on credit, I went after the harriers on foot.  The result, as touching my health and growth, was all that could be desired.  As touching my studies, however, it was less satisfactory.  I was spun twice, both in my anatomy and physiology.  Miss Ophelia, though sorely grieved, was very indulgent, and had she lived, I am afraid that I should never have got my diploma.  But when I was twenty-one and she seventy-five, my dear aunt died, leaving me all her property (which made an income of about four hundred a year), with the proviso that unless, within three years of her death, I obtained the double qualification, the whole of her estate was to pass to Guy’s Hospital.  In the mean time the trustees were empowered to make me an allowance of two guineas a week and defray all my hospital expenses.

On this, partly because I was loath to lose so goodly a heritage, partly, I hope, from worthier motives, I buckled-to in real earnest, and before I was four-and-twenty I could write after my name the much coveted capitals M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.  All this while I had not once crossed a horse or looked at a hound, yet the ruling passion was still strong, and being very much of Mr. Jorrock’s opinion that all time not spent in hunting is lost, I resolved, before “settling down” or taking up any position which might be incompatible with indulgence in my favorite amusement, to devote a few years of my life to fox-hunting.  At twenty-four a man does not give much thought to the future—­at any rate I did not.