I placed the
bootmaker's awl in one strap, and his last-hook in the other, and with
"two roses" mantling my cheeks, postured for the contest.
I tried the heeling process, and earnestly endeavored to toe the mark;
but to successfully start the thing on foot was a bootless effort.
Then I slumberously gravitated, and dreamed thus:--
Old "LEATHERBRAINS" in SATAN'S livery, producing a hammer from a
carpet-bag (he was a carpet-bagger), proceeded to shape my feet, and
fill them with shoe-pegs.
My nap was ruffled, and not to be continued under those circumstances,
so I wisely concluded it.
"They're on!" says the bootmaker.
And a tight on it was, excruciatingly so.
I suspected at the time that I had been put to sleep by chloroform, but
I afterward remembered that a feeble youth was reading aloud from the
Special Cable Dispatches of the _Tribune._
My feelings centred in those boots, tears filled my eyes, and I was dumb
with emotion, but quickly reviving, I slaked the cordwainer with a flood
of rabid eloquence.
The cowering wretch suggested that they would stretch. He lied, the
villain, he lied, they shrank.
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