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. We do not mark the gradual preparations
thereto; we remember only one distinct period, in which all the signs
and symptoms burst and effloresced together,--Wellington boots, coat-
tail, cravat, down on the upper lip, thoughts on razors, reveries on
young ladies, and a new kind of sense of poetry.

I began now to read steadily, to understand what I did read, and to cast
some anxious looks towards the future, with vague notions that I had a
place to win in the world, and that nothing is to be won without
perseverance and labor; and so I went on till I was seventeen and at the
head of the school, when I received the two letters I subjoin.

1.--FROM AUGUSTINE CAXTON, Esq.

My Dear Son,--I have informed Dr. Herman that you will not return
to him after the approaching holidays. You are old enough now to
look forward to the embraces of our beloved Alma Mater, and I think
studious enough to hope for the honors she bestows on her worthier
sons. You are already entered at Trinity,--and in fancy I see my
youth return to me in your image. I see you wandering where the
Cam steals its way through those noble gardens; and, confusing you