As we walked the streets together, many a citizen must have guessed by my glowing face and shining eyes that I was brimful of joy. I began to see a new beauty in everything. The men seemed pleasanter, the women more gracious, the atmosphere more balmy! It was only by severe suppression that I was able to restrain myself from immoderate behaviour, and breaking out into hysteric and unseemly ebullience. A gush of animal enjoyment in life, from this date, would sometimes overtake me, and send me through the streets at the rate of a professional pedestrian. I would open my mouth and drink the air, with deep disdain for all physical weakness. I had to restrain the electrical vitality, lest the mad humour for leaping over a dray or cart might awaken the suspicion of the policeman. On such days, and during such fits, it was indeed joy to be alive,--‘but to be young was very Heaven.’ Most of the day was spent in equipping me for the new position I was to assume. I was sumptuously furnished with stylish suits, new linen, collars, flannels, low-quarter shoes, and kip[6] boots: toilet articles to which I was an utter stranger, such as tooth-and nail-brushes, and long white shirts, resembling girls’ frocks, for night-dresses. It had never entered my head, before, that teeth should be brushed, or that a nail-brush was indispensable, or that a night-dress contributed to health and comfort! When we returned to Mr. Stanley’s boarding-house, we had a pleasant time in the arrangement of the piles of new garments and accessories, and in practising the first lessons in the art of personal decoration. In Wales the inhabitants considered it unbecoming in one who aspired to manliness to ape the finicky niceties of women, and to be too regardful of one’s personal appearance; and had they heard my new father descant so learnedly on the uses of tooth-and nail-brushes, I feel sure they would have turned away with grimaces and shrugs of dissatisfaction. What would stern Aunt Mary have said, had she viewed this store of clothing and linen that was destined for the use of a boy whom, at one time, she had seriously meditated indenturing to a cobbler? But, previous to the assumption of my new habiliments, I was conducted to a long bath, set in a frame of dark wood, and, while looking at it, and wondering at its splendour, I heard so many virtues ascribed to its daily use that I contracted quite a love for it, and vowed to myself that since it appeared to be a panacea for so many ills, all that scented soap and scrubbing could effect would be gladly tested by me.