Uses For Old Shoes.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1888, 16 April 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

Uses For Old Shoes.

It miy bs a surpri-e to some people to learn that lbe old there cest into (re aeh barrel are liable to reappear in the boudoir and parlor. An inquisitive reporter who saw a couple of ragpickers quarrelling over a lot of worn out and seemingly worthless foot gear interviewed one of the chiffonniers and found that they sold them to the manufacturers of wall paper. He followed up the clue, and upon qupstioning tbe foremen of one of these estebliehmenls, elicited the following information :—: —

11 We buy all the boots and shoes tbat the scavengers can briDg us. We psy different, prices for tho different qualities of leather. A pair cf fine calfskin boots will bring as hiah as 7d. We don't buy cowhide boots. The boots and shoes are first soaked in several waters to get the dirt off them. Then the nails and threads are removed, the leather is ground up into a rice pulp and is ready for use. " The embossed leather paperings whioh have come into fashion lately, and the stamped leather fire screens, are really nothing but thick paper covered with a layer of this pressed leather pulp. The finer the quality of tbe leather the better it takes the bronze and old gold and other expensive colors in the designs painted on them. Fashionable people think they are going away back to the mediroval times when they have the walls of their libraries and dining rooms covered with embossed leather. They don't know tbat the boots and shoes which their neighbors threw into the ash barrel a month before form the beautiful material on their walls and on the eoreens which protect their eyeß from tbe firo. «' We oould buy the old shoes eheapor if it were not for the competition from carriage makerß and bookbinders and picturo-frame makers. I don't know how many other trades v c old sboes and boots, but the tops of carriages aro largely made of them, ground into s! oats. Bookbinders use them in the cheaper forms of leather binding?, and the new style of leather frames with leather mats in them aro entirely made of the cast-oft coverings o! our feet,"

Mr. Matthew Burnett, a well-known temperance aovecate, peys that in the coarse of the period — nearly 26 years — over which his labors have extended, 17G 000 peisona have taken the pledge, and 147,500 tho blue ribbon from him.

It is said the doctors ps.rtly attribute tba malady from which the K'ng of Portugal eufft-red to his excessive smoking. It was no uncommon thing for him to smoke a hundred large green Havana cigara in four days.

PkiScilla : "Jaok tried to kiss me last night, and, do you know, I believe he had been drinking." Angelina : "Ho must have been." St. Peter : " What'ri all that noise inside Gabe?"

Gabriel: " They're laughing at Barnum and Noah. N mad beoause Barnum 'fl disparaged his show." .