“Well, now, I think I am a good watchy; for I’ve been watching you and your boots for some time.”
“What’s a man if he a’n’t got handsome boots; and what’s the use of handsome boots, if he a’n’t got ’em on? As the English Gineral said, what’s beauty without bootee, and what’s bootee without beauty? Look at them ’are articles—fust I bought ’em, and then I black’d ’em, and now they turn agin me, and bite their best friend, like a wiper. Don’t they look as if they ought to be ashamed?”
“Yes, I rather think they do look mean enough.”
“Who cares what you think? Have you got a boot-jack in your pocket?—no, not a boot-jack—I want a pair of them ’are hook-em-sniveys, vot they uses in the shops. I don’t want a pull-offer; I want a pair of pull-on-ers.”
“If you’ll walk with me, I’ll find you a pair of hook-em-sniveys in less than no time.”
“If you will, I’ll go, because I must get my boots on somehow, and hook-em-sniveys will do it if anything will. There’s no fun in boots what wont go on; you can’t make any thing of ’em except old clothes-bags and letter-boxes, and I a’n’t got much use for articles of the sort—seeing as how clothes and letters are scarce with me.”
“Can’t you use ’em for book-keeping by double-entry? That’s the way I do. I put all my cash into one old boot, and all my receipts into the other. That’s scientific double-entry simplified,—old slippers is the Italian method.”
“No, I can’t. I does business on the fork-out system. I don’t save up, only for boots; and as soon as I gets any money, I speculates right off in something to eat, and lives upon the principal.”
Peter gathered up his boots, and half reclining upon the watchman, wended his way to the common receptacle, where, after discovering the trick played upon him, and finding that the “hook-em-sniveys” were not forthcoming, he shared his wrath between the boots which had originally betrayed him, and the individual who had consequently betrayed him. At length,
“Sweet sleep, the wounded bosom healing,”
restored Peter to himself and that just estimate of the fitness of things, which teaches that it is not easy—even for a man who is as sober as a powder-horn—to pull a pair of long boots over another pair; particularly if the latter happen to be wet and muddy. Convinced of this important truth, Peter put his boots under his arm, and departed to get the straps repaired, and try the efficacy of hook-em-sniveys where the law could not interfere.