Ann Hughes gave it away!

[Illustration: THE BOY PROMOTED TO TROUSERS]

The Boy seems to have developed, very early in life, a fondness for new
clothes--a fondness which his wife sometimes thinks he has quite
outgrown. It is recorded that almost his first plainly spoken words were
"Coat and hat," uttered upon his promotion into a more boyish apparel
than the caps and frocks of his infancy. And he remembers very
distinctly his first pair of long trousers, and the impression they made
upon him, in more ways than one. They were a black-and-white check, and
to them was attached that especially manly article, the suspender. They
were originally worn in celebration of the birth of the New Year, in
1848 or 1849, and The Boy went to his father's store in Hudson Street,
New York, to exhibit them on the next business-day thereafter. Naturally
they excited much comment, and were the subject of sincere
congratulation. And two young clerks of his father, The Boy's uncles,
amused themselves, and The Boy, by playing with him a then popular game
called "Squails." They put The Boy, seated, on a long counter, and they
slid him, backward and forward between them, with great skill and no
little force. But, before the championship was decided, The Boy's mother
broke up the game, boxed the ears of the players, and carried the human
disk home in disgrace; pressing as she went, and not very gently, the
seat of The Boy's trousers with the palm of her hand!

He remembers nothing more about the trousers, except the fact that for a
time he was allowed to appear in them on Sundays and holidays only, and
that he was deeply chagrined at having to go back to knickerbockers at
school and at play.

The Boy's first boots were of about this same era. They were what were
then known as "Wellingtons," and they had legs. The legs had red leather
tops, as was the fashion in those days, and the boots were pulled on
with straps. They were always taken off with the aid of the boot-jack of
The Boy's father, although they could have been removed much more easily
without the use of that instrument. Great was the day when The Boy first
wore his first boots to school; and great his delight at the sensation
he thought they created when they were exhibited in the primary
department.

The Boy's first school was a dame's school, kept by a Miss or Mrs.
Harrison, in Harrison Street, near the Hudson Street house in which he
was born. He was the smallest child in the e