Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest documents of the British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, and Mrs. Puffington finding a considerable sum going to the ‘good’ every year, insisted, on the birth of their only child, our friend, upon migrating to the ‘west,’ as she called it, and at one bold stroke they established themselves in Heathcote Street, Mecklenburgh Square.  Novelists had not then written this part down as ‘Mesopotamia,’ and it was quite as genteel as Harley or Wimpole Street are now.  Their chief object then was to increase their wealth and make their only son ‘a gentleman.’  They sent him to Eton, and in due time to Christ Church, where, of course, he established a red coat to persecute Sir Thomas Mostyn’s and the Duke of Beaufort’s hounds, much to the annoyance of their respective huntsmen, Stephen Goodall and Philip Payne, and the aggravation of poor old Griff.  Lloyd.

What between the field and college, young Puffington made the acquaintance of several very dashing young sparks—­Lord Firebrand, Lord Mudlark, Lord Deuceace, Sir Harry Blueun, and others, whom he always spoke of as ‘Deuceace,’ ‘Blueun,’ etc., in the easy style that marks the perfect gentleman.[1] How proud the old people were of him!  How they would sit listening to him, flashing, and telling how Deuceace and he floored a Charley, or Blueun and he pitched a snob out of the boxes into the pit.  This was in the old Tom-and-Jerry days, when fisticuffs were the fashion.  One evening, after he had indulged us with a more than usual dose, and was leaving the room to dress for an eight o’clock dinner at Long’s, ‘Buzzer!’ exclaimed the old man, clutching our arm, as the tears started to his eyes, ‘Buzzer! that’s an am_aa_zin’ instance of a pop’lar man!’ And certainly, if a large acquaintance is a criterion of popularity, young Puffington, as he was then called, had his fair share.  He once did us the honour—­an honour we shall never forget—­of walking down Bond Street with us, in the spring-tide of fashion, of a glorious summer’s day, when you could not cross Conduit Street under a lapse of a quarter of an hour, and carriages seemed to have come to an interminable lock at the Piccadilly end of the street.  In those days great people went about like great people, in handsome hammer-clothed, arms-emblazoned coaches, with plethoric three-corner-hatted coachmen, and gigantic, lace-bedizened, quivering-calved Johnnies, instead of rumbling along like apothecaries in pill-boxes, with a handle inside to let themselves out.  Young men, too, dressed as if they were dressed—­as if they were got up with some care and attention—­instead of wearing the loose, careless, flowing, sack-like garments they do now.

We remember the day as if it were but yesterday; Puffington overtook us in Oxford Street, where we were taking our usual sauntering stare into the shop windows, and instead of shirking or slipping behind our back, he actually ran his arm up to the hilt in ours, and turned us into the middle of the flags, with an ’Ah, Buzzer, old boy, what are you doing in this debauched part of the town?  Come along with me, and I’ll show you Life!’