leading strings

Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.

In the hey-day of youth, and hardly out of the leading strings of a school, he formed an intention to nuptialize, and joined heart and hand with sweet Ann Hathaway at the age of eighteen and a half.