The use of the word hanging sleeves in common speech and in literature is most interesting. It had a figurative meaning; it symbolized youth and innocence. This meaning was acquired, of course, from the wear for centuries of hanging sleeves by little children, both boys and girls. It had a second, a derivative signification, being constantly employed as a figure of speech to indicate second childhood; it was used with a wistful tender meaning as an emblem of the helplessness of feeble old age. The following example shows such an employment of the term. In 1720, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, then about seventy-five years of age, wrote to another old gentleman, whose widowed sister he desired to marry, in these words:— “I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves, coming home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure of speaking to them. And I could find it in my heart now to speak to Mrs. Martha again, now I myself am reduced to Hanging Sleeves.” William Byrd, of Westover, in Virginia, in one of his engaging and sprightly letters written in 1732, pictures the time of the patriarchs when “a man was reckoned at Years of Discretion at 100; Boys went into Breeches at about 40; Girles continued in Hanging Sleeves till 50, and plaid with their Babys till Threescore.” When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, he wrote a poem which was sent to his uncle, a bright old Quaker. This uncle responded in clever lines which begin thus:— “’Tis time for me to throw aside my pen When Hanging-Sleeves read, write and rhyme like men. This forward Spring foretells a plenteous crop For if the bud bear grain, what will the top?” A curious use of the long hanging sleeve was as a pocket; that is, it would seem curious to us were it not for our acquaintance with the capacity of the sleeves of our unwelcome friend, Ah Sing. The pocketing sleeve of the time of Henry III still exists in the heraldic charge known as the manche, borne by the Hastings and Norton family. This is also called maunch, émanche, and mancheron. The word “manchette,” an ornamented cuff, retains the meaning of the word, as does manacle; all are from _manus_. Hanging sleeves had a time of short popularity for grown folk while Anne Boleyn was queen of England; for the little finger of her left hand had a double tip, and the long, graceful sleeves effectually concealed the deformity.