Tom _is bound apprentice to a dancing master. His great progress
in that genteel Science: His adventures with the Monkeys._
_Dolly_ his new mistress, had lately applied to a register office,
where for a shilling paid in hand, a small capital, it is possible
to procure the interest of four or five pounds a year. A most wise
institution, or rather discovery of some sagacious æconomical
personage, who might have made an immense fortune by his invention,
had not his envious brethren pyrated him to the great disgrace
of government, and discouragement of genius, as well as arts and
sciences: Pity it is, that this prudent politician, had not been at
the expence of purchasing a patent, to ensure to himself the profits
of so great a discovery.
One of these learned Gentlemen, had obtained a place for _Dolly_,
who paid the other perquisites, due on being put into possession; I
think it is a shilling in the pound, proportionable to the wages;
so that if the wages be five pounds, the proprietor of this new
acquisition, whether place-man, or place-woman, shall receive no more
than nineteen shillings of his, or her quarter’s wages; so that if
one of these place-mongers shall procure one hundred such places,
in one quarter, (which is but a low computation) he shall receive
the gratuity of thirty pounds for his pains, without advancing a
farthing capital; how high must then this reasonable profit arise,
when the wages or sallaries amount to ten or twenty pounds a year?
and yet this lucrative employment is of _modern_ discovery, to the
great scandal of our forefathers, who as in the discovery of other
arts, and sciences, supinely slept, and never dreamed of such golden
advantages. _Dolly_ on going to her new place, was sorely perplexed,
what to do with her favourite _Tom_; next to money or man’s flesh,
she loved _Tom_, and as the former seemed the more feasible
exchange, she pitched upon it as the more eligible; among her _Jew_
acquaintance, during her residence with the _circumcised_ cast off
clothes-man, she had recollected her intimate connections, with a
young German of the synagogue, on whom she bestowed some singular
marks of her affection: He had for several seasons frequented
_Bartholomew_ fair, and the _Borough_, and was proprietor of several
foreign beasts, as monkies, man-tygers, and others of the minute
kind, whom he trained up to his own band, beneath the discipline of
the whip and bell, and taught them a thousand feats of activity,
and cunning, by means of the very same doctrine which _Richlieu_,
the French general, devised to conquer the stubborn _English_ at
the intended invasion, and conquest of _England_, viz. _Fear_ and
_Hunger_, but which he admirably improved into the sanguinary tenets
of downright murder in cold blood, a tenet, worthy the general of a
_most Christian King_.
To this _German_, of the _Hebrew_ race, she instantly applied and
sold poor _Tom_, under the foster name of apprenticeship to this
tyrant king of the _Singeric_ order; if the _Scots_ sold their king
for a groat, and _Judas_ his master for thirty silver pennys, how
more barbarous in her to sell her favourite, and fellow-servant for
an old cast cardinal, to adorn her for her introduction to her new
place; but so she did, and poor _Tom_’s indentures were made over
a pot of porter, to the disgrace of humanity, much more of female
tenderness, in this _black_ deed exceeding the cruelty of Ynkle,
who sold his mistress Yarico for an inconsiderable sum. How could
she wear this _black_ robe, which every day threw in her face the
_blackness_ of her guilt and ingratitude; if she could not recollect
the many gambols of his infancy, and the sweeter endearments of his
more advanced and adult age, if she could forget the many songs
with which he entertained her, both at meals, at work, and in bed,
where he often purred her to sleep; sure she ought to think of her
fellow-sufferer, and fellow-servant with more compassion than to
deliver him into the hands of a savage, among savages, under whose
intolerable cruelty he must endure many and severe stripes, beside
the accumulated hardships of confinement, and starving.—Unhappy
_Tom_! better had it been for thee, ere thy eyes were opened, to have
shared the fate of thy brethren and sisters, long since past the
sense and feeling of their sufferings.
But we will not dwell longer on so mournful a subject, an event, in
itself, of so tragic a nature, as may extort tears from many of our
compassionate readers.
The first letter of salutation _Tom_ was taught by his dancing
master, was to leap thro’ a hoop, but as he was some months before
learnt to leap over the stick by his young school-fellows, he easily
went thro’ this exercitation to the no small surprize of his master,
who yet imputed this first step to _Tom_’s natural genius; and
therefore promised himself all success imaginable from so sensible,
and so active a creature. Though _Tom_ had in his younger days often
described the _diagonal parallelogram_ circle in pursuit of his
own tail, round which he had performed as many _revolutions_ in a
_day_, as the _Earth_ does round the _Sun_ in a _century_, yet had
he never till now made an _horizontal_ line through the _center_
of a circle. He was next tried in the begging attitude, but in
this too he excelled all the quadrupeds that ever came within the
jurisdiction of this German posture master, so that in his second
lesson, he surprized his master as agreeably as before, and actually
followed a piece of meat, which was conducted before him, by way of
_precedent_, more erect than many of his bipedal fellow-creatures
of the more dignified species; his next instruction was to perform
the _gradation_ of a perpendicular ladder of ropes; in this he was
somewhat awkward, but by degrees, and as it were by _gradation_,
he acquitted himself tollerably well for the first time, and was
esteemed as an excellent scholar, and his master boasted of his new
pupil’s proficiency with more than ordinary elevation of voice and
spirit. By de lord, dat made me, says the _German_, dancing-master,
me hav one kot, dat vil bring me more monis, in one, two, three
monts, dan all my monkies togeder, me wou’d not give him for one
guinea, at dis present time, and fen he is made to my hond, me wou’d
no give him for ten. Thus the first day passed to the great credit,
and entire satisfaction of his master, who threw aside the whip and
bell, believing from such a great docility that he should never more
have occasion for it with respect to _Tom_, who was notwithstanding
tied up to his respective post, with a good strong whip-cord. But
as Dalilah bound Sampson with cords, sufficient as she thought to
bind him down to his good behaviour, which he broke as a man would
flaxed threads, so in vain did the German posture-master tie up
_Tom_ who made a shift to knaw the bands asunder, and give himself
liberty; but alas! the door was shut, and he found himself to his
great mortification, as close a prisoner as ever; so casting about
to find a vent-hole for his escape, he searched to no purpose, and
seeing a strange groupe of unnatural figures about him, his curiosity
led him to approach them, which he did to their no small surprize
and terror, and as they spoke to him in an unknown languague, so he
found that conversation, which he desired with his fellow-prisoners,
cut off; he first came in a gentle manner, and saluted the old baboon
with a loud mew, and was answered with a loud chatter, which at first
disconcerted him very much, not well knowing whether the noise he
made was a signal of friendship, or antipathy; however, as he judged
his fellow-prisoner’s heart by his own integrity, he proceeded, and
extended his paw, as it were to play with the old gentleman, which
the other bit almost to the bone, and had very nigh disabled poor
_Tom_ from ever practising another lesson, this rough return to his
good-nature so irritated _Tom the Cat_, that he fell upon _Pug the
Monkey_’s leathern jaws which he tore in a terrible manner, and then
went round with the whole neighbourhood, not daunted even at the
man-tyger’s dreadful form, for Tom had such intrepid courage that he
would venture upon the Devil himself in his anger, had he been in the
shape of any of those creatures, though it were an _armed rhinoceros,
or the Hyrcanian tyger_.
The out cry that was set up in the prison, brought the keeper, who
judged that some of them had broke loose and fallen upon the rest,
but least of all did he judge his favourite _Tom_’s having slipt his
collar, but easily guessed how matters went, when he saw the old
baboon, the man-tyger, and the other lesser creatures bleeding. He
considered what part he should take, or what measures pursue, in so
interesting an affair. He rightly believed that _Tom_ must have been
the aggressor, as it was consistent to reason so to imagine. He had
got a great deal of money, by his old acquaintance the singerical
fraternity, and never had handled a penny piece of _Tom_’s gettings,
but then he might possibly get a fortune by so extraordinary and
so promissing a genius, beside, thought he, the poor fellow, not
dreaming any harm might have come too near them, and so have received
the first blow, which he owned was provoking to one of _Tom_’s
spirit, but when he saw the creature limping up to him, and his
fine coat tore in several places he was confirmed in his opinion,
that the battle sprung from the malevolent monkeys, whom yet he
thought it hard to chastise as they had suffered sufficiently from
the enraged fury of our feline hero. He however took up the whip, and
bell and brandished over the heads of the terrified society, taking
_Tom_ along with him, as one unfit for such quarrelsome companions,
and worthy of a superior destination; he therefore took him up to
his own room, and having clasp’d a leather collar round his neck to
which he affixed a neat brass chain, he pinned it down to the floor,
permitting him a good scope to walk about the room, after this he
combed him and examining his legs, he applyed a little butter to
it, which _Tom_ by constantly licking, as it was kept constantly
greased, soon made a cure of. When he was perfectly recovered the
German took abundance of pains in his education, teaching him to walk
fast, to run, and to jump on his hind feet, so that _Tom_ at the age
of five months, became a perfect adept, and could cut capers higher
than mons. —— the French dancer. He in three days made him tumble
head over heels, backwards and forwards, and even three Somersets
at once. Had he possessed the hands of tenacity like those of the
monkey, _Tom_ would have excelled all of that species, taught or
untaught. This was a great deficience in _Tom_’s make and form, and
as sensible a grief to his master, who would have given ten guineas
that _Tom_ had pugs hands, but as the poet says, _non omnia possumus
omnes, nec licet cuivis adire corinthum_, and with this scrap of
Latin we shall abrutly conclude this chapter, in order to have an
opportunity of displaying our learning, and to begin another chapter.