with rage and indignation at
him; but after a little while he insisted again, and asked me what
answer I would make him, at which I smiled, and asked him, if he were in
earnest? He grew angry then, and asked me if I laughed at him, and if I
thought to laugh him out of his money? I then asked him, if he really
did expect I should swear that I would pay him the next week, as I
proposed to promise? He told me, yes, he did, and I should swear it, or
pay him before he went out of my warehouse.

I wondered, indeed, at the discourse, and at the folly of the merchant,
who, I understood afterwards, was a foreigner; and though I thought he
had been in jest at first, when he assured me he was not, I was curious
to hear the issue, which at first he was loth to go on with, because he
knew it would bring about all the rest; but I pressed him to know--so he
told me that the merchant carried it to such a height as put him into a
furious passion, and, knowing he must break some time or other, he was
resolved to put an end to his being insulted in that manner; so at last
he rose up in a rage, told the merchant, that as no honest man could
take such an oath, unless he had the money by him to pay it, so no
honest man could ask such a thing of him; and that, since he must have
an answer, his answer was, he would not swear such an oath for him, nor
any man living, and if he would not be satisfied without it, he might do
his worst--and so turned from him; and knowing the man was a
considerable creditor, and might do him a mischief, he resolved to shut
up that very night, and did so, carrying all his valuable goods with him
into the Mint, and the next day he heard that his angry creditor waylaid
him the same afternoon to arrest him, but he was too quick for him; and,
as he said, though it almost broke his heart to shut up his shop, yet
that being delivered from the insulting temper of his creditor, and the
perpetual perplexities of want of money to pay people when they dunned
him, and, above all, from the necessity of making solemn promises for
trifling sums, and then breaking them again, was to him like a load
taken off his back when he was weary, and could stand under it no
longer; it was a terror to him, he said, to be continually lying,
breaking faith with all mankind, and making promises which he could not
perform.

This necessarily brings me to observe here, and it is a little for the
ease of the tradesman's mind in such severe cases,