CHAP. V. Tom’s Education.—His Manner of Life with his Mistress, whose History is introduced here in a short Narrative.

It was Tom’s peculiar beauty, and size that saved his life, for his Mistress had Eyes, and chose him out of ten, so that he was a kind of tythe Cat, and survived the unhappy fate of his brothers, and sisters by decimation, proving to the disgrace of Methodists, that even among Cats, one in ten may be saved, though according to their illustrious tenets, that will not be the portion of one in ten of themselves. However Tom grew up and gave earnest of being a most promising youth, having gone thro’ all the gambols and feats of childhood, peculiar to those of his kind, and to the great satisfaction of all who knew him, or had the honour of his acquaintance.—His Mistress, however was inexcuseable in point of tenderness, who not being sufficiently pleased with his beauty, thought the cutting off his Ears would be an abundant addition to that article; a barbarous instance of her love for him, but in consequence of her resolution Tom lost his Ears, for having done no crime to deserve amputation, when thousands walk the Streets with their ears on, who have a thousand times deserved to lose them. His mistress, whose name was Mrs. Clotilda-Skin-Flint, began to take another more cruel thought into her head, and that was to deprive him of his manhood, by equipping him for the Opera, and was advised to put this dreadful scheme into execution by a female neighbour of hers, called Rugana, but as this was as troublesome as it was expensive, she permitted him to keep his pebbles, as marks of that virility, which he afterwards testified to several young Cats of his acquaintance.—Whether Tom ever came to the knowledge of this sanguinary intent of his Mistress, we never could learn, if he did, he must no doubt be sensibly affected with delight to find, that by its being laid aside, he found himself in possession of that treasure which entitled him to the honourable appellation of Ram-Cat. His mistress, after having bred him up to feed himself, and to provide for his own sustenance, left him to shift for the necessaries of life, by all those means, which most of his kind make use of to get a livelyhood, namely by Mouseing, and having before he was half a year old, rid not only her house, but that neighbourhood of the rats and mice which infested them, he bore the credit of being an excellent mowser, for he got no other reward, and was forced for sometime to live upon that empty saying, Virtue is its own Reward, verifying that fine anecdote of Juvenal, Ladatum Virtus et alget, which for the sake of our English Reader, we will suppose to signify, that a good or a wise man may starve in the midst of Fleet-Market, for any thing he is likely to get from either fools or knaves. Mrs. Clotilda-Skin-Flint, was one of those admirable ladies, who go in quest of obsolete robes, and had raised a tolerable sum by levying contributions on the necessitous, who where glad to part with their vestments for the tenth part of their intrinsic value: she had, to make her own employment more lucrative, wedded an old taylor, whom she married purely on the account of his dexterity and skill in, or repairing the breaches of old clothes, and making them pass for new: by this profitable business she was enabled to keep a very sightly shop in the purlieus of Monmouth-Street, and was by her lending out small sums of money to the butchers, who dealt with her at an extravagant usury, in possession of five hundred pounds in money and stock.

Tom did not approve of his Mistress’s niggarly temper, and though he made several attempts upon her larder, he seldom availed himself of the expedition, being glad to get off with whole bones, he being a rival in these purloinings with the old taylor, his master, who was as narrowly watched as himself in these kind of invasions, and whom his wife had starved, cudgel’d, and cuckolded into the bargain. However, one day, Tom laid a plot, and being determined to assuage the cries of hunger, he resolutely attacked two pound of beef-stakes, which were contrary to former caution left to his mercy, as the mistress had indulged herself too plentifully with the ratifai of St. Giles’s, commonly called Gin. The maid had been absent by accident, at the time of this depredation, Tom prudently withdrew, when he had eat up his delicious cates, and left the blame to fall upon either the maid, or the old taylor, the former of which fasted that day for her negligence, and was discharged without payment of her wages, while old snip had like to have been destroyed by the weight of the goose, with which his tender rib did belabour him to his no small mortification, and of which he lay ill for three days to his wife’s utter discontent, as she was forced to hire a journeyman to finish some work he had begun.