When Mr. Hill's clerk went to demand payment of the note, O'Neill's head
was full of the ball which he was to give that evening. He was much
surprised at the unexpected appearance of the note: he had not ready
money by him to pay it; and, after swearing a good deal at the clerk,
and complaining of this ungenerous and ungentleman-like behaviour in
the grocer and the tanner, he told the clerk to be gone, and not to be
bothering him at such an unseasonable time; that he could not have the
money then, and did not deserve to have it at all.

This language and conduct were rather new to the English clerk's
mercantile ears: we cannot wonder that it should seem to him, as he said
to his master, more the language of a madman than a man of business.
This want of punctuality in money transactions, and this mode of
treating contracts as matters of favour and affection, might not have
damned the fame of our hero in his own country, where such conduct is,
alas! too common; but he was now in a kingdom where the manners and
customs are so directly opposite, that he could meet with no allowance
for his national faults. It would be well for his countrymen if they
were made, even by a few mortifications, somewhat sensible of this
important difference in the habits of Irish and English traders, before
they come to settle in England.

But, to proceed with our story. On the night of Mr. O'Neill's grand
ball, as he was seeing his fair partner, the perfumer's daughter, safe
home, he felt himself tapped on the shoulder by no friendly hand. When
he was told that he was the king's prisoner, he vociferated with sundry
strange oaths, which we forbear to repeat, "No, I am not the king's
prisoner! I am the prisoner of that shabby rascally tanner, Jonathan
Hill. None but he would arrest a gentleman, in this way, for a trifle