ilst pursuing this last and jovial vocation that he was
fortunate enough to run away with an Heiress of considerable Fortune. He
managed it by a sort of Rough and Ready process they call over there an
Abduction, two or three of the Wild Irishes being killed while he was
getting the young lady on the car to take her away to be married; and
she, happening to be a Ward in Chancery, he fell into Contempt, and was
committed to Newgate in the City of Dublin, where he might have lain
till his heels rotted off, but for the Favourable Renown into which he
grew by his Bold and Gallant Feat of Abduction, and which brought him
into such sympathetic notice, that interest was made with the Chancellor
to purge him of his contempt, and he was honourably Discharged therefrom
by means of escaping from Newgate at night by means of a Silver Key
agreed upon betwixt him and the Warden. By the way, he had the sagacity
at this time to conceal his being an Englishman, and passed very easily
by the name of O'Hagan. A subscription was made for him among the
Quality after his Enlargement, and he was charitably advised to push his
fortune among the Saxons in England, his good friends little suspecting
that he had already pushed his Fortune there, at different times, to a
very pretty tune. But for his unfortunate--or rather fortunate, for
him--collision with justice, he might have obtained employment as a
Tithe Proctor with some of the dignified and non-resident Established
Clergy in Ireland, who were very anxious to have able and Unscrupulous
Men to collect their Dues for 'em; but the Sister Isle being, on several
accounts, too hot for Mr. Hodge, Von Hoogius, O'Hagan, he took shipping
with a purse full of guineas, collected for him by his kind friends, for
Liverpool in Lancashire. Here he prospered indifferently for a time, now
as a Schoolmaster, now as a Quack Doctor, under his old High Dutch
alias, and now as an Agent for the crimping of children for the West
India plantations, which last traffic I have ever held, for reasons
personal, to be utterly Indefensible and Abominable. A Bill of
Indictment before the Grand Jury speedily, however, put an end to the
chaplain's dealings in flesh and blood; so he made what haste he could
to town, where squandering what means he had with him in Riot and
Unthrift, and being unluckily recognised by an old acquaintance in the
Tailoring line, he was arrested on civil process, and clapped into the
Fleet Prison. But