redit. A guinea might be owing, and Sheridan, seldom
remembering his purse, had but a shilling, which even in a court of
Irish law seemed too small a compromise to offer. Black looked the
horizon, stormy the offing, and night was coming on, whilst the port of
consignment was now within thirty minutes' sail. Suddenly a sight of joy
was described. Driving before the wind, on bare poles, was a well-known
friend of Sheridan's, Richardson, famed for various talent, but also for
an invincible headlong necessity of disputing. To pull the check-string,
to take his friend on board, and to rush into fierce polemic
conversation was the work of a moment for Sheridan. He well understood
with this familiar friend how to bring on a hot dispute. In three
minutes it raged, yard-arm to yard-arm. Both grew warm. Sheridan grew
purple with rage. Violently interrupting Richardson, he said: 'And these
are your real sentiments?' Richardson with solemnity and artificial
restraint replied: 'Most solemnly they are.' 'And you stand to them, and
will maintain them?' 'I will,' said Richardson, with menacing solemnity
and even mournfulness. 'I will to my dying day.' 'Then,' said Sheridan
furiously, 'I'm hanged if I'll stay another minute with a man capable of
such abominable opinions!' Bang went the door, out he bounced, and
Richardson, keeping his seat, pursued him with triumphant explosions.
'Ah, wretch! what? you can't bear the truth. You're obliged to hate the
truth. That is why you cut and run before it. Huzza! Mr. Sheridan, M.
P. for Stafford, runs like a hare for fear that he should hear the
truth.' Precisely so, the truth it was that he ran from. The truth at
this particular moment was too painful to his heart. Sheridan had fled;
the awful truth amounted to eighteen shillings.

Yes, virtuous Richardson, you were right; truth it was that he fled
from; truth had just then become too painful to his infirm mind,
although it was useless to tell him so, as by this time he was out of
hearing. 'Yes,' said Richardson meditatively to himself, 'the truth has
at last become insupportable to this unhappy man.' Right, it _had_ so.
And in one minute more it became insupportable even to the virtuous
Richardson, when the coachman revealed the odious extent of the truth,
viz., that the fare now amounted to two-and-twenty shillings.

As I hate everything that the people love, and above all the odious
levity with which they adopt every groundless anecdote, espec