With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
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.
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