Gala-Days Part 11

"Adam delved and Eve span,"

and that was only an amnesty of forty years while the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. But when you are deep in the heart of the country, scouring woods, climbing mountains, and fording rivers, having with your usual improvidence neglected to furnish yourself with stout boots, then a "horrid chasm," or series of chasms, yawning in the only pair that are of any use to you, presents a spectacle which no reflective mind can contemplate without dismay.

It was, in fact, with a good deal of dismay that the individual in question sat down, one morning, on "Webster's Unabridged,"--that being the only available seat in an apartment not over-capacious,--and went into a committee of the whole on the state of her boots. The prospect was not inviting. Heels frightfully wrenched and askew, and showing indubitable symptoms of a precipitate secession; binding frayed, ravelled, evidently stubborn in resistance, but at length overpowered and rent into innumerable fissures; b.u.t.tons dislocated, dragged up by the roots, yet clinging to a forlorn hope with a courage and constancy worthy of a better cause; upper-leather (glove-kid), once black, now "the ashen hue of age," gray, purple, flayed, scratched, and generally lacerated; soles, ah! the soles! There the process of disintegration culminated. Curled, crisped, jagged, gaping, stratified, laminated, torn by internal convulsions, upheaved by external forces, they might have belonged to some pre-Adamic era, and certainly presented a series of dissolving views, deeply interesting, but not, it must be confessed, highly entertaining.

After arranging these boots in every possible combination,--side by side, heel to heel, toe to toe,--and finding that the result of each and every combination was that

"No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe,"

the Individual at length, with a sigh, placed them, keel upwards, on the floor in front of her, and, resting her head in her hands, gazed at them with such a fixedness and rigidity that she might have been taken for an old Ouate, absorbed in the exercise of his legitimate calling.

(The old Druidical order were divided into three cla.s.ses, Druids, Bards, and Ouates. The Druids philosophized and theologized, the Bards harped and sang, and the Ouates divined and CONTEMPLATED THE NATURE OF THINGS. I thought I would tell you, as you might not know. I execrate the self-conceited way some people have of tossing off their erudite items and allusions in a careless, familiar style, as if it is such A B C to them that they don't for a moment think of any one's not understanding it. Worse still is it to have some jagged brickbat, dug up from a heap of Patagonian rubbish, flung at you with a "we have all heard of"; or to be turned off, just as your ears are wide open to listen to an old pre-Thautic myth, with "the story of ---- is too familiar to need repet.i.tion." You have not the most distant conception what the story is, yet you don't like to say so, because it seems to be intimated that every intelligent person ought to know it; so you hold your peace. My dear, don't do it. Don't hold your peace. Don't let yourself be put down in that way. Don't be deceived. Half the time these people never knew it themselves, I dare say, more than a week before-hand, and have been puzzling their brains ever since for a chance to get it in.)

The Individual came at length to the conclusion that something must be done. Masterly inactivity must give way to the exigencies of the case.

She had recourse to the "oldest inhabitant." A series of questions disclosed the important fact that--

"Well, there was a store at Sonose, about fourteen miles away; and Mr.

Williams, he kept candy, and slate-pencils, and sich--"

"Do you suppose be keeps good thick boots?"

"O la! no."

"Do you suppose he keeps any kind of boots? You see I have worn mine out, and what am I to do?"

"Well, now, I thinks likely you can get 'em mended."

Individual brightens up. "O, do you?"

"Yes, there's Mr. Jacobs, lives right out there, under the hill; he makes men's boots. I do' know as he could do yours, but you might try.

Thinks likely he ain't got the tools, nor the stuff to do that sort of work with."

I didn't care for the tools or the stuff. All I wanted was the shoemaker; if I could find HIM, little doubt that all the rest would follow naturally from the premises. So I arranged my "sandal shoon and scallop-sh.e.l.l," and departed on my pilgrimage. The way had been carefully pointed out to me, but I never can remember such things more than one turn, or street, ahead; so I made a point of inquiring of every one I met, where Mr. Jacobs lived. Every one, by the way, consisted of a little girl with a basket of potatoes, and a man carrying the United States mail on his arm.

At length the Individual found the house as directed, and found also that it was no house, but a barn, and the shoemaker's shop was upstairs, and the stairs were on the outside. If they were firm and strong, their looks were against them. Neither step nor bal.u.s.trade invited confidence. The Individual stood on the lower one in a meditative mood for a while, and then gave a jump by way of test, thinking it best to go through the one nearest the ground, if she must go through any. An ominous creaking and swaying and cracking followed, but no actual rupture. The second step was tested with the same result; then the third and fourth; and, reflecting that appearances are deceitful, and recollecting the rocking-stone at Gloucester, Ma.s.sachusetts, and the tower of Pisa, &c., the Individual shook off her fears, and ascended rapidly. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the etiquette of shoemaker's shop, she hesitated whether to knock or plunge at once into the middle of things, but decided to err on the safe side, and gave a very moderate and conservative rap. Silence. A louder knock. The door rattled. Louder still. The whole building shook.

Knuckles filed a caveat. Applied the heel of the dilapidated boot in her hand. Suffocated with a cloud of dust thence ensuing. Contemplated the nature of things for a while. Heard a voice. A man called from a neighboring turnip-field, "Arter Jake?"

"Yes, sir,--if he is a shoemaker" (to make sure of ident.i.ty).

"Yes, well, he ain't to home."

"Oh."

"He's gone to Sonose."

"When will he be back, if you please?"

"Wall, I can't say for sartin. Next week or week after,--leastwise 'fore the fair. Got a job?"

"Yes, sir, but I can't very well wait so long. Do you know of any shoemakers anywhere about?"

"Wall, ma'am, I do' know as I do. Folks is mostly farmers here.

There's Fuller, just moved, though. Come up from Exton yesterday.

P'r'aps he'll give you a lift. That's his house right down there.

'Taint more 'n half a mile."

"Yes, sir, I see it. Thank you."

Individual descends from her precarious elevation, and marches to the attack of Fuller. A fresh-faced, good-natured-looking man is just coming out at the gate. His pleasant countenance captivates her at once, and, with a silent but intense hope that he may be the shoemaker, she asks if "Mr. Fuller lives here."

"Well," replies the man, in an easy, drawling tone, that harmonizes admirably with his face, "when a fellow is moving, he can't be said to live anywhere. I guess he'll live here, though, as soon as the stove gets up."

I reciprocated his frankness with an engaging smile, and asked, in a confidential tone, "Do you suppose he would mend a shoe for me?"

I thought I would begin with a shoe, and, if I found him acquiescent, I would mount gradually to a boot, then to a pair. But my little subterfuge was water spilled on the ground.

"I don't know whether he would or not, but I know one thing."

"Well?"

"Couldn't if he wanted to. Ain't got his tools here. They ain't come up yet."

"Oh! is that all?"

"ALL?"

"Yes; because, if you know how, I shouldn't think it would make so much difference about the tools. Couldn't you borrow a gimlet or something from the neighbors?"

"A GIMLET?"

"Yes, or whatever you want, to make shoes with."

"An awl, you mean."

"Well, yes, an awl. Couldn't you borrow an awl?"

"Nary awl."

"When will your tools come?"

"Well, I don't know; you see I don't hurry 'em up, because it's haying, and I and my men, we'd just as lieves work out of doors a part of the time as not. We don't mend shoes much. We make 'em mostly."

"Oh that's better still; would you make me a pair?"

"Well, we don't do that kind of work. We work for the dealers. We make the shoes that they send down South for the n.i.g.g.e.rs. We ain't got the lasts that would do for you."

Individual goes home, as Chaucer says, "in dumps," and determines to take the boots under her own supervision. First, she inks over all the gray parts. Then she takes some sealing-wax, and sticks down all the bits of cuticle torn up. Then, in lieu of anything better, she takes some white flannel-silk,--not embroidery-silk, you understand, but flannel-silk, harder twisted and stronger, such as is to be found, so far as I have tried, only in Boston,--and therewith endeavors to down the curled sole to its appropriate sphere, or rather plane. It is not the easiest or the most agreeable work in the world. How people manage to MAKE shoes I cannot divine, for of all awkward things to get hold of, and to handle and manage after you have hold, I think a shoe is the worst. The place where you put a needle in does not seem to hold the most distant relation to the place where it comes out. You set it where you wish it to go, and then proceed vi et armis et thimble, but it resists your armed intervention. Then you rest the head of the needle against the windowsill, and push. You feel something move.

Everything is going on and in delightfully. Mind a.s.serts its control over matter. You pause to examine. In? Yes, head deep in the pine-wood, but the point not an inch further in the shoe. You pull out.

The shoe comes off the needle, but the needle does not come out of the windowsill. You pull the silk, and break it, and then work the needle out as well as you can, and then begin again,--destroying three needles, getting your fingers "exquisitely p.r.i.c.ked," and keeping your temper--if you can.