COWHIDE BOOTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 6, 6 February 1892, Page 143

COWHIDE BOOTS.

The cowhide boot, writes a correspondent who wore a pair forty years ago, was neither a thing of beauty nor a joy for ever. It was plain even to ugliness, and a constant source of discomfort as long as it lasted. It was always so short that it tortured the toes, or so long and so roomy in the instep that the heel was perpetually rubbing up and down, like the modern elevator. When new its symmetry was like that of a stove pipe elbow, but after a few wettings it became as wrinkled as a calf’s neck.

The boy of that period almost invariably removed his boots at night in a thoroughly soaked condition—in spite of a reputation for being waterproof, they took in water like a sponge and as they were sure to dry in the most inconvenient shape, or rather shapelessness, it was a work of patience for their owner to force his feet into them again the next morning. With a clothespin inserted in each strap, to save his Ungers from being cut to the bone, the unhappy youth tugged and pulled until his arms were almost dislocated at the shoulder, and around the base-board and at the doorbottoms were the marks of his vigorous kickings, without which his utmost strength would have come to nothing. There was no right-and-left nonsense about a pair of cowhide boots. Each boot was constructed on the utility model, and was quite as bad a misfit for one foot as for the other. It would have been possible, no doubt, to mould it into something like the contour of one’s foot, but this was prevented by the watchful oversight of the boy’s father, who insisted that the same boot should never be worn on the same foot two days in succession. When the boots were pulled off at night, they were carefully placed side by side in such a way that there could be no mistake as to which foot each had encased during the day, and next morning came the reverse wear—not by any means the least serious reverse of the boy’s life. And with Sunday came the duty of making the boots presentable. What a task it was to coax a polish upon them ! If they were not as red as brick dust, they were saturated with grease, and in either case to bring forth a shine was impossible. The boy of to-day, in his neatly-fitting, finely-fashioned ’hoes of calf skin, can have no conception of the sufferings of his sire in bis cowhides. If he could have, he would perhaps smile audibly at his father's occasional laudation of the good old times.