How to get a table of MySQL database as a matrix variable in R

It seems that the dbReadTable() method provided by RMySQL could not
get rid of the headers, neither the index column... So

1. Can I use read.table() method to get a table of MySQL database?

From the help document the argument of 'file' of read.table() method

could be a connection...

2. How can I obtain a matrix from the database table contains all
elements except the headers and the index column?

Thanks a lot.

Regards,

Willie