I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to school.

I no longer felt as a boy.

Uncle Jack, out of his own purse, had presented me with my first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had been coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto tail-less; my collars, which had been wont, spaniel-like, to flap and fall about my neck, now, terrier-wise, stood erect and rampant, encompassed with a circumvallation of whalebone, buckram, and black silk.

I was, in truth, nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man.

Now, be it observed that that crisis in adolescent existence wherein we first pass from Master Sisty into Mr.Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.; wherein we arrogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the long-envied title of young man,--always seems a sudden and imprompt upshooting and elevation.