Of the beggarly race of misers, the most notorious was Thomas Cooke, born in the year 1726, at Clewer, a village near Windsor. His father, an itinerant fiddler, got his living by playing in alehouses and fairs, but dying while Thomas was an infant, his grandmother, who lived near Norwich, took care of him till he was able to provide for himself, at which time he obtained employment in a manufactory where there were a number of other boys who were paid according to the work they did. These boys always clubbed some money from their weekly earnings for the establishment of a mess; young Cooke, however, resolved to live cheaper, and when the other boys went to dinner he retired to the side of a brook, and made his breakfast and dinner at one meal upon an halfpenny loaf, an apple, and a draught of water from the running stream, taken up in the brim of his hat. With the money thus saved, he paid a youth, who was usher to a village schoolmaster, to instruct him in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Arrived at years of maturity, Cooke found employment at a Norwich warehouse as a porter. There his sobriety and industry caused his master to make him a journeyman, and raise his wages. Further, his master finding that he wished for an appointment as an exciseman, procured a situation for him near London, and he came to the capital by the Norwich waggon with only eight shillings in his pocket; but that is of little consequence. It is not money that makes a man succeed in life, but the want of it. In the world, a man who begins with money generally ends by losing it.