Excerpt from The Adventures of Whittington and His Cat: Ornamented With Neat Engravings on Wood Dick whittington wasbutavery little boy'when his parents died, in deed so young, that he neither knew them, or the place he was born in. After strolling about the country as ragged as a colt for a long time, he met with a waggoner going to Lon don, who gave him leave to walk by the side of his waggon. As he had heard the streets of London were paved with gold, his intention was to get some of it. But how great must be his disappointinent, to find the streets covered with dirt, and him self without food, friends, money, or any person __to give him a character! In this state of distress, Dick asked charity of several people 3 one of them said, Go to work, you idle rogue. That I will, says he, with all my heart; I'll work for you if you'll letme: the man thinking the expression impertinent, gave him so violent a blow on his head with his stick, that the blood ran down his face. In this pitiable plight, he laid him self down at the door of Mr. Fitz Warren, a merchant, who scolded him for sitting there, and bid him go to work. Whittington said, that in deed 'he would if any one would employ him. He then edeavoured to get up, but was so weak he fell down again: this excited compassion in the merchant, and he ordered the footman to take him in, and give him meat and drink, and let him help the cook to do any dirty work.was informed of it, so she made the servants treat him kindly. Besides the crossness of the cook, vvhitting ton had another disagreeable to get over before he could be happy. He had a bed placed for him in the gar ret, where there was such a number of rats and mice, that they often ran over the poor boy's nose, and dis turbed him in his sleep. However, a gentleman who came to his master's house gave Whittington a penny for brushinghis shoes. And the next day seeing in the street a woman with a cat under her arm, he ran up to her to know the price of it. The woman, as the cat was a good mouser, asked a great price but on Whit tingtou telling his sad tale, she let him have it for a penny. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.