given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.[1]
The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
king of Great Ireland, France and Britain, to have him made a peer in
his own country, Tom saying he should be ashamed to appear there without
being a lord as well as all his acquaintance.

The prince's passion, which was greatly inflamed by Tom's description of
her highness Bob's charms, would not let him stay for a proper set of
ladies from Pekin to carry to wait on his bride, so he took a dozen of
the wives of the first merchants in Canton, and two dozen virgins as
maids of honour, who however were disqualified for their employments
before his highness got to St. Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
to an English duke.

Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.

As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,