"NOTHING LIKE LEATHER!" 



" By Heaven !" cried my father, " I have not one appointment belonging to 

 me which I set so much store by as J do by these boots." TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



I NEVER knew but one man who was really attached to hessian 



boots. It was my friend S 3 and his attachment amounted 



almost to reverence. He always wore them summer or winter. 

 Although a martyr to the gout, his respect for hessians overcame all 

 desire for an easy shoe, when his fit was at the highest. I have seen 

 him writhe with pain under the infliction, and yet smile complacently 

 at the polished calf of his favourite leather. When night came, a 

 stranger might observe his ruffled temper, as he encountered the 

 boot-jack and slippers ; they were to him the heralds of departing 

 bliss. He sighed as he drew them off; and woe to the person whose 

 business it was, if the boots were not in readiness in the morning at 

 the moment he required them ! Yet he was not punctilious in his 

 dress ; he wore not hessian boots for their smartness ; he cared little 

 whether they were clean or dirty : his love had a deeper root it 

 sprung from gratitude. 



It is extraordinary how chance or mishap may suddenly bring to 

 light the most inestimable qualities in very common and, to all ap- 

 pearance, very trifling things. Hood has immortalized a wig as " a 

 life-preserver/' a property few could have guessed at. The wearer, 

 falling into the clutches of some wild Indians in the back-woods of 

 America, was sentenced to be scalped ; and the operation was quickly 

 performed but the knife passing fortunately between the scull and 

 the frizzled top-knot, the artificial scalp came off in the Mohawk 

 grasp, thus leaving the proprietor minus only his wig. 



To pass from the head to the heels, it would be difficult to con- 

 ceive how a pair of hessian boots could have rendered so important 

 a service to my friend S j yet they did. They were a life- 

 preserver to him, and he treasured them accordingly but let him 

 tell his own tale. 



" 1 dare say," said he to me one day, after an affectionate glance 

 downwards, " 1 dare say you wonder at my fondness for hessian 

 boots, but I am bound to them from respect to myself and family. 

 But for these bits of leather, sir, I should not be standing before you 

 at this moment : they saved my life, sir. Thirty years ago (it was 

 the winter of 18 ), I was riding a little cross-grained chesnut cob 

 over my own farm, when the beast making a sudden start, I was 

 thrown off my guard and off the horse at the same moment. Well ! 

 instead of standing still (the horse I mean), as he should have done, 

 he scampered away, as fast as his legs could carry him, across a forty- 

 acre field ; and what is worse, sir, my right foot hanging in the stir- 

 rup, he dragged me along with him. Luckily for me, there had 

 been a heavy fall of snow, which doubtless saved me many broken 

 bones ; but, what was a hundred times more fortunate, I was wearing 

 hessian boots, sir. Well when we had got to the opposite hedge, 



