credit that was run up to such an exorbitant height.

I remember a shopkeeper who one time took the liberty (foolish liberty!)
with himself, in public company in a coffee-house, to say that he was
broke. 'I assure you,' says he, 'that I am broke, and to-morrow I
resolve to shut up my shop, and call my creditors together.' His meaning
was, that he had a brother just dead in his house, and the next day was
to be buried, when, in civility to the deceased, he kept his shop shut;
and several people whom he dealt with, and owed money to, were the next
day invited to the funeral, so that he did actually shut up his shop,
and call some of his creditors together.

But he sorely repented the jest which he put upon himself. 'Are you
broke?' says one of his friends to him, that was in the coffee-house;
'then I wish I had the little money you owe me' (which however, it
seems, was not much). Says the other, still carrying on his jest, 'I
shall pay nobody, till, as I told you, I have called my people
together.' The other did not reach his jest, which at best was but a
dull one, but he reached that part of it that concerned himself, and
seeing him continue carelessly sitting in the shop, slipped out, and,
fetching a couple of sergeants, arrested him. The other was a little
surprised; but however, the debt being no great sum, he paid it, and
when he found his mistake, told his friends what he meant by his being
broke.

But it did not end there; for other people of his neighbours, who were
then in the coffee-house, and heard his discourse, and had thought
nothing more of it, yet in the morning seeing his shop shut, concluded
the thing was so indeed, and immediately it went over the whole street
that such a one was broke; from thence it went to the Exchange, and from
thence into the country, among all his dealers, who came up in a throng
and a fright to look after him. In a word, he had as much to do to
prevent his breaking as any man need to desire, and if he had not had
very good friends as well as a very good bottom, he had inevitably been
ruined and undone.

So small a rumour will overset a tradesman, if he is not very careful of
himself; and if a word in jest from himself, which though indeed no man
that had considered things, or thought before he spoke, would have said
(and, on the other hand, no man who had been wise and thinking would
have taken as it was taken)--I say, if a word taken from the tradesman's
own mouth could be s