The Leatherstocking Tales

“ The next morning Old Pluck called a meeting of his companions. “Boys,” he said, “this [129] robber life is a good deal stupider than anything we left behind us. Let’s get back to school as fast as we can, and enjoy what is left of the Christmas fun. We will all admit that we are sorry for what we have done, and will promise not to run away again; and Tomtit can go to the master and tell him so.” ”

“ During the night nearly every person in the town was aroused by a black-bearded robber, who had climbed into one of the windows of the house, and who, instead of demanding money and jewels, simply asked what it was in which that person took the greatest interest. ”

“ There is but one kind of needle that will mend a wizard shoemaker’s leather apron, and neither man can give it to you, nor woman can give it to you. There is but one kind of thread that will do it, and neither man can give it to you, nor woman can give it to you; and there is but one kind of leather that will suffice, and neither man nor woman can give that to you. ”

“ Next morning the woman said, "The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I'll tell thee what I'll do: I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and knit both of them a pair of stockings, and do thou, too, make them two little pairs of shoes." ”

“ If we may be allowed humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very bad leather. ”

“ One plays in shoes for a few years with the most dire result, running away to square leg from fast balls, and so on, till despair seizes the soul. Then an angel in human form, in the very effective disguise of the man at the school boot-shop, hints that, for an absurdly small sum in cash, you may become the sole managing director of a pair of white buckskin boots with real spikes. ”

“ They're trying to make root-beer for an old woman, and you never saw such a lot of poisonous trash as they have stewed up."
"They can't make root-beer!" sharply cried the witch. "They don't know anything about it. There is only one person who has that secret, and that one is myself."
"Oh, tell it to me!" exclaimed the gnome, jumping from his chair. "There's to be a reward for the person who can do it right, and——"
"Reward!" cried the witch. "Then I'm likely to tell it to you, indeed! When you're all done trying, I'm going to get that reward myself." ”

“ He went to the merchants, and told them how he had lost all their money. He hoped they would be able to bear their misfortune with fortitude, and begged, as he could do nothing else for them, that they would accept the eight great nuts from the Fragile Palm that the boys had given him. To his surprise the merchants became wild with delight when they received the nuts. The money they had lost was as nothing, they said, compared to the value of this incomparable and precious fruit, picked in its prime, and still in a perfect condition. ”

“ It was broad daylight when the robbers reached their cave. The bundles were laid in a great circle on the floor, and, at a given signal, they were opened. For a moment each robber gazed blankly at the contents of his bundle, and then they all began to fumble and search among the piles of articles upon the cloths; but after a few minutes, they arose, looking blanker and more disappointed than before.
"So far as I can see," said the Captain, "there is nothing in the whole collection that I care for. I do not like a thing here!"
"Nor I!" "Nor I!" "Nor I!" cried each one of his band. ”

“ A woman who envies other women their [Pg 120] things can't think very much of herself. Now, I think so much of myself that if I choose to go out with a hole in my stocking, then holes in stockings are the fashion. ”

“ When the meal was over the chief pushed back his chair, and addressed the boys.
“Now, then, my young friends,” said he, “what is it that you wish me and my men to do?”
Then stood up Old Pluck and said, “We boys, as I told you before, ran away from school because we are tired of the old humdrum Christmas; and nothing better could have happened to us than to get you fine fellows into our power, as we have done. It will be the jolliest thing in the world for us to see you and your band go through all the wild feats and bold exploits which belong to robber life ”

“ A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning, and as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep. ”

“ When the latter caught sight of the tailor, and saw that he had once more two healthy eyes, his conscience troubled him.
“Before he takes revenge on me,” thought he to himself, “I must dig a pit for him.”
He, however, who digs a pit for another, falls into it himself.
In the evening when work was over and it had grown dusk, he stole to the King and said, “Lord King, the tailor is an arrogant fellow and has boasted that he will get the gold crown back again, which was lost in ancient times.” ”

“ I will give thee a coat and a cloak, which during this time thou must wear. If thou diest during these seven years, thou art mine; if thou remainest alive, thou art free, and rich to boot, for all the rest of thy life.” The soldier thought of the great extremity in which he now found himself, and as he so often had gone to meet death, he resolved to risk it now also, and agreed to the terms. The Devil took off his green coat, gave it to the soldier, and said, “If thou hast this coat on thy back and puttest thy hand into the pocket, thou wilt always find it full of money.” ”

“ Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well—rather dark, and smelling soothingly of leather—which formed the shop, there would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking—as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this interruption. ”

“ The youngest brother likewise met a man who asked him what he wished to do. "Would not you like," said he, "to be a tailor?" "Oh, no!" said the young man; "sitting cross-legged from morning to night, working backwards and forwards with a needle and goose, will never suit me." "Oh!" answered the man, "that is not my sort of tailoring; come with me, and you will learn quite another kind of craft from that." ”

“ Let go my hair!" shouted the Absolute Fool, as he bounded along. "You don't know how it hurts. Let go! Let go!"
But the Princess never relinquished her hold until they were out of the King's domain.
"A little more," cried the indignant youth, when she let him go, "and you would have pulled out a handful of my hair."
"A little less," said the Princess, contemptuously, "and you would have been cut to pieces; for you have not sense enough to take care of yourself. I am sorry I listened to you, and left the inn to which the Gryphoness took me. ”

“ While standing on the High Street holding the button of the ragged coat of an old man who pleased him, and whose escape, seeing he was a dipsomaniac, would be nothing short of miracle, there came up to him an Irishwoman, also advanced in years, apparently a weary tramp, her shoes covered with dust, and her poor clothes looking as if she had slept in them all night among straw. ”

“ Work in leather cannot therefore be classed altogether among the lost arts; it is being modified, and may some day be revived in all its glory by women who have plenty of leisure and love to have something to show for their handiwork. ”

“ I became aware that a change had come over his laundry; from one, or at most two a week, his dress shirts rose to four, and silk handkerchiefs began to replace his linen ones. It dawned upon me that Fifty-Six was abandoning the rigorous tenor of his student life and was going into society. I presently perceived something more; Fifty-Six was in love. It was soon impossible to doubt it. He was wearing seven shirts a week; linen handkerchiefs disappeared from his laundry; his collars rose from two inches to two and a quarter, and finally to two and a half. ”

“ Mr Leatherlung has got so hoarse shouting that his hats, or his umbrellas, or his boots are better than anybody else's hats, or umbrellas, or boots that he cannot attune his voice to social intercourse. And when, in the second generation, this congenital vulgarity is smeared with the accent of the high school it is apt to produce the sort of young people we listened to in the bus yesterday. ”

“ It was as white as the garments, with large dark eyes, wherein it seemed to Lettice as if her very soul had been melted; a soul that had gone down into some dreadful deep, and having come up safe, was ever afterwards anxiously ready to help other souls out of trouble. ”

“ As they were leaving the scene of this exploit Old Pluck did not feel altogether easy in his mind. “There used to be a good habit among robbers,” he said to the chief, “and that was to give to the poor what they took from the rich. We will go along this road until we meet some really poor people, and we will give them these goods.”
The robbers and boys, with the loaded horses and mules, walked along the road for nearly an hour, but met with no poor people. At last the chief declared that it was time to turn and go back to the castle, if they wanted to be there by dinner-time. ”

“ After marriage came elation, and then, gradually, the growth of weariness. Responsibility descended upon Merlin, the responsibility of making his thirty dollars a week and her twenty suffice to keep them respectably fat and to hide with decent garments the evidence that they were. ”

“ Letty colored to the eyes—her deep, damask flush. The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. ”

“ It was our boast in England that the whole of our population was booted--their feet were for the most part ugly enough to need it--but it becomes now inconceivable how they could have imprisoned their feet in the amazing cases of leather and imitations of leather they used. ”

“ See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman, who is passing just within the verge of the lamp-light! One blast struggles for her umbrella, and turns it wrong side outward; another whisks the cape of her cloak across her eyes; while a third takes most unwarrantable liberties with the lower part of her attire. ”

“ Leather never lies. Not good leather. An’ poor leather’s a dead give-away. My museum of soles.” He waved a showman’s hand toward the rows of shoes suspended neatly in brackets of his own devising against the walls. ”

“ So he did this and coming by night to the villager’s house, stole therefrom goods and clothes; whereupon the old man awoke and seizing the thief, bound him fast and beat him, to make him confess. So he confessed against the woman that she had prompted him to this and that he was her lover from the city. ”

“ No one shall sell any woolen cloth that shrinks when it is wet.
Only artificers using the cutting of leather, may buy and sell tanned leather and only for the purpose of converting it into made wares. ”

“ They had now become rich folks, but the goldsmith, who, in accordance with his greedy disposition, had filled his pockets better, was as rich again as the tailor. A greedy man, even if he has much, still wishes to have more, so the goldsmith proposed to the tailor that they should wait another day, and go out again in the evening in order to bring back still greater treasures from the old man on the hill. ”

“ Jasper Losely! Can it be? Once before, in the fields of Fawley, we beheld him out at elbows, seedy, shabby, ragged. But then it was the decay of a foppish spendthrift,—clothes distained, ill-assorted, yet, still of fine cloth; shoes in holes, yet still pearl-coloured brodequins. But now it is the decay of no foppish spendthrift: the rags are not of fine cloth; the tattered shoes are not the brodequins. The man has fallen far below the politer grades of knavery, in which the sharper affects the beau. ”

“ The only drawback to these life-saving competitions at school, considered from the standpoint of fitting the competitors for the problems of after-life, is that the object saved on such occasions is a leather dummy, and of all things in this world a leather dummy is perhaps the most placid and phlegmatic. ”

“ Their feet through faithless leather meet the dirt,
And oftener chang'd their principles than shirt. ”

“ A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of her sable robe. ”

“ The scent of the American currant will always bring my childhood back to me when even music could not do it. The hardest-hearted criminal can be softened sometimes to yielding and to tears by some smell that brings back an old home life long since forgotten. In the same way the sight of clothes worn in other days sends the memory darting back across the years. So it was with me when I was rummaging among my Little Yeogh Wough's things and found a pink linen coat and knee breeches and a little white-frilled shirt that had been worn with them. ”