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.