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 establishment, and probably a pet of the larger girls, for he remembers going home to his mother in tears, because one of them had kissed him behind the class-room door. [p 15]
He saw her often, in later years, but she never tried to do it again!

“CRIED, BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN KISSED”

At that school he met his first love, one Phœbe Hawkins, a very sweet, pretty girl, as he recalls her, and, of course, considerably his senior. How far he had advanced in the spelling of proper names at that period is shown by the well-authenticated fact that he put himself on record, once as “loving his love with an F, because she was Feeby!”

Poor Phœbe Hawkins died before she was out of her teens. The family moved to Poughkeepsie when The Boy was ten or twelve, and his mother and he went there one day from Red Hook, which was their summer home, to call upon his love. When they asked, at the railroad-station, where the Hawkinses lived and how they could find the house, they were told that the carriages for the funeral would meet the next train. And, utterly unprepared for such a greeting, for at latest accounts she had been in perfect health, they stood, with her friends, by the side of Phœbe’s open grave.

In his mind’s eye The Boy, at the end of forty years, can see it all; and his childish grief is still fresh in his memory. He had lost a bird and a cat who were very dear to his heart, but death had never before seemed so real to him; never before had it come so near home. He never played “funeral” again.

[p 16]
In 1851 or 1852 The Boy went to another dame’s school. It was kept by Miss Kilpatrick, on Franklin or North Moore Street. From this, as he grew in years, he was sent to the Primary Department of the North Moore Street Public School, at the corner of West Broadway, where he remained three weeks, and where he contracted a whooping-cough which lasted him three months. The other boys used to throw his hat upon an awning in the neighborhood, and then throw their own hats up under the awning in order to bounce The Boy’s hat off—an amusement for which he never much cared. They were not very nice boys, anyway, especially when they made fun of his maternal grandfather, who was a trustee of the school, and who sometimes noticed The Boy after the morning prayers were said. The grandfather was very popular in the school. He came in every day, stepped upon the raised platform at the principal’s desk, and said in his broad Scotch, “Good morning, boys!” to which the entire body of pupils, at the top of their lungs, and with one voice, replied, “G-o-o-d morning, Mr. Scott!” This was considered a great feature in the school; and strangers used to come from all over the city to witness it. Somehow it made The Boy a little bit ashamed; he does not know why. He would have liked it well enough, and been touched by it, too, if it had been some other boy’s grandfather. The Boy’s father [p 17]
was present once—The Boy’s first day; but when he discovered that the President of the Board of Trustees was going to call on him for a speech he ran away; and The Boy would have given all his little possessions to have run after him. The Boy knew then, as well as he knows now, how his father felt; and he thinks of that occasion every time he runs away from some after-dinner or occasional speech which he, himself, is called upon to make.