Cobbler

“ Ho, by your leave, master Cobbler.
STRUMBO.
You are welcome, gentleman. What will you? any old shoes or buskins? or will you have your shoes clouted? I will do them as well as any Cobbler in Cathnes whatsoever.
CAPTAIN.
[Showing him press money.]
O master Cobbler, you are far deceived in me, for don you see this? I come not to buy any shoes, but to buy yourself; come, sir, you must be a soldier in the king’s cause.
STRUMBO.
Why, but hear you, sir; has your king any commission to take any man against his will. ”

“ But Cobbler’s Wax preferred remaining a live cripple to a corpse buried in the state of a mandarin of the second class. He was not a Westerner, given to dissecting his soul and screwing his emotions into test-tubes. Had he been, he would have discovered that it was pride which kept him from joining the spirits of his sires by an act of his own hands—pride, though his body was shrunk and his soul growing wizen and mean as the days swooned into weeks and the weeks into the pitiless swing of years. ”

“ When I saw him, he held a candle in this obsequious posture. I was very well pleased with the cobbler's invention, that had so ingeniously contrived an inferior, and stood a little while contemplating this inverted idolatry, wherein the image did homage to the man. When we meet with such a fantastic vanity in one of this order, it is no wonder if we may trace it through all degrees above it, and particularly through all the steps of greatness.
[22]
We easily see the absurdity of pride when it enters into the heart of a cobbler ”

“ And, what is more to the purpose, he is a tailor, and I'm a cobbler."
"Aha!" said the elder, with much interest; "more to the purpose, is it? How so?"
The Cobbler put the forefinger of the right hand on the forefinger of the left; it is the gesture of a man about to ratiocinate or demonstrate—as Quintilian, in his remark on the oratory of fingers, probably observes; or, if he has failed to do so, it is a blot on his essay.
"You see, Sir," quoth the Cobbler, "that a man's business has a deal to do with his manner of thinking. ”

“ At which the queen, when she heard it, laughed heartily; for he had many jokes and pleasant songs; he delighted the queen more than any thing she had seen or met with in her life. At length it grew towards noon, the cobbler was for going with them towards the court; but he must dress himself for he would not appear before the king in his cobbler's clothes for all the shoes in his shop.
CHAP. V.
How the King invited to Cobbler and his wife to dinner, and the discourse that passed thereupon. ”

“ Thus those who live on the greed or the vanity, or batten on the charity of their neighbour, learn to watch the lips.
The cobbler, by reason of looking at the lower end of men, attracted little attention from the passer-by. He who has his eyes on the ground passes unheeded. For the surest way of awakening interest is to appear interested. It would seem that this cobbler was waiting for a pair of boots not made in Konigsberg. And on the third day his expressionless black eyes lighted on feet not shod in Poland, or France, or Germany, nor yet in square-toed Russia. ”

“ With this the cobbler applied the remedies, and they made her well in a few weeks; after which they were married, and so set forward for the Court at Colchester. When the queen found that her daughter had married nothing but a poor cobbler, she hanged herself in wrath. The death of the queen so pleased the king, who was glad to get rid of her so soon, that he gave the cobbler a hundred pounds to quit the Court with his lady, and take to a remote part of the kingdom, where he lived many years mending shoes, his wife spinning the thread for him. ”

“ Terrified by the fear of being poisoned, the Cobbler confessed that he knew nothing about medicine, and that his antidote was worthless. Then the King summoned his subjects and addressed them as follows: “What folly could be greater than yours? Here is this Cobbler to whom no one will send his boots to be mended, and yet you have not hesitated to entrust him with your lives!” ”

“ But a cobbler," continued the man of leather, with a majestic air, "sits by hisself, and talks with hisself; and what he thinks gets into his head without being put there by another man's tongue."
"You enlighten me more and more," said our friend with the nose in the air, bowing respectfully. "A tailor is gregarious, a cobbler solitary. The gregarious go with the future, the solitary stick by the past. I understand why you are a Tory and perhaps a poet." ”

“ It was twelve o’clock when he rose and put the boots into his green bag, and gathering up his measure and some tools, set out once more. The streets were full and the cobbler made his way slowly through the throng. One or two spoke to him, others noticed him less than the mule that stood waiting for a reverend father outside the Garden of the Récollets. Le Bossu took little heed of it all; his face was drawn and haggard, and the hump seemed larger than ever. He walked on until he passed in front of the inn of the Golden Cup and came to a house a few yards beyond it. ”

“ Amongst these were itinerant cobblers—not shoe-makers, but shoe-menders—who used to travel from place to place with their tools on their backs.
Some little time after Nipper was settled in his country home, old Isaac Firth, an itinerant cobbler known to all the country-side, made his appearance at the kitchen door of the farm. The dog was sole housekeeper, and was stretched full length just within the threshold.
Nipper and Isaac Firth were old acquaintances, so the old dog welcomed the cobbler with a wag of his tail, and permitted him to enter. The day was warm. ”

“ The air was full of the twittering of birds, and all the life in Nature began to stir. There were no travellers on the highroad so early, save one, a corpulent priest, mounted on a stout mule, proceeding toward St. Cyr. Père Ambroise detested extraordinary exertion, but he had yielded to the importunities of the cobbler. For his own part, he thought that ten o’clock was soon enough to deal with M. de Baudri, but he had roused himself and set out at an unearthly hour because of le Bossu’s representations. ”

“ This done, she goes on till she came to a market town, and it [197] being market day, the people smelt a stink, and seeing such a mangy face, all fled but a poor cobbler, who not long before had mended the shoes of an old hermit, who, having no money, gave him a box of ointment for the cure of the leprosy, and a bottle of spirits for a stinking breath. Now the cobbler having a mind to do an act of charity, was minded to try an experiment; so going up to her, asked her who she was? "I am," said she, "the king of Colchester's daughter-in-law." ”

“ Then the cobbler sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both hands, as if he had carried it all the way, and called to the giant, "Think of a big fellow like you not being able to carry a tree!"
"Well," said the giant, "I will admit that you are the stronger. Come and spend the night in my cave."
The cobbler followed the giant into the cave. There, sitting around a fire, were a number of giants. They were laughing and talking in a noisy manner, and they scarcely noticed the little man.
The cobbler spread the bear's skin upon the floor near the fire. ”

“ Wumble Pool! The very name struck a chill to our hearts.
"Yes, and there's the moon," whispered the cobbler.
It was true that the distorted image of the moon floated dimly in the Pool, as though it had indeed been caught by the mad-woman, and drowned.
"How soft the ground is!" breathed Angel.
"Ay, and the Pool has no bottom," said the lamplighter.
"I can't think she'd have the heart to do it," said Martindale.
The Seraph screamed.
"There she is! I see her! Standing in the Pool!"
We ran to the brink. A cold air struck our faces. Our feet sank ankle-deep in the mud. ”

“ It was here that more than one of the companions of Admiral Coligny found safety.
Some time afterwards, defying the terrible edicts of Richelieu, a Paris cobbler transmitted some vitally important correspondence to the prisoners in the Bastille, by cleverly sewing the letters between the soles of shoes. Later on his shop became a sort of literary rendezvous. Politics were indeed talked there; but it was the latest prose and the latest verse which chiefly occupied the frequenters. The cobbler was at that period accustomed to combine with his leathern functions those of “public-writer.” ”

“ Such a story I have striven to relate in When a Cobbler Ruled the King, endeavoring to present a picture, faithful as far as it goes, of the historical and political situation. It may add to the interest of the story to know that except for the persons of "Jean," "La Souris" and "Prevôt," who are pure fiction, there is not one character in the book but has a counterpart in history. ”

“ As he expected, Léon Baudette appeared, picking a barefooted way along the beach, with many complimentary greetings. The wary cobbler stood between the boots and his client, and responded with open cordiality. A voyageur who gave flesh and bone and sometimes life itself for a hundred dollars a year, and drank that hundred dollars up during his month of semi-civilization on Mackinac, seldom had much about him with which to pay for his necessary mending. ”

“ Sir B. Nay, Mr. Cobbler, you are too severe in the conclusions; a man of my honour can never deceive you;—Can I, Pander?
Pand. No, Sir Bilberry. I have known Sir Bilberry from a child, and never knew a dishonest thing of him, upon my honour, friend Crispin.
Cris. That’s the last lie you told, Friend Pander. Well, Sir Bilberry Dibble, knight and baronet of Dibble-hall, in this county, you are come to ask a vote of a poor cobbler.
Sir B. I am, friend Crispin, and you may assure yourself that there is not a man in the whole borough I respect so much as yourself, though but a poor cobbler. ”

“ My first catch was a girl - not a beggar-girl, or an idle little gutter-prowler - but a mite of a child with the anxious and careworn face of a middle-aged woman, who was desperately bent on turning an honest penny by the sale of hard-working cobblers. At ordinary times the hard-working cobbler is a toy much in favour with the children of the lower order, on account, it may be assumed, of its being a plaything which, while it affords amusement, inculcates habits of industry. ”

“ The investigation of the second batch of letters was postponed until the afternoon.
During the morning, and at intervals throughout the day, others of “Cobbler” Horn’s neighbours came to offer their congratulations, and were astonished to find him seated on his cobbler’s stool, and quietly plying his accustomed task. To their remonstrances he would reply, “You see this work is promised; and if I am rich, I must keep my word. And then the habits of a lifetime are not to be given up in a day. ”

“ The mountaineer, too, will probably differ in disposition from the cobbler. He will be daring, resourceful, and not afraid of danger under circumstances which would terrify the cobbler. Now let us suppose that the sons and grandsons of the navvy are brought up to be navvies, and the sons and grandsons of the clerk are brought up to be clerks;—that the children and grandchildren of the Alpine guide follow his own calling, and the children and grandchildren of the cobbler do the same;—we shall probably have four families differing very much in type of physique from one another. ”

“ There was of old time a cobbler in the city of Orfa. One day he saw a dervish passing, the seams of whose shoes had given way. The cobbler said, ‘Dervish, come, sit down till I sew up the seams of thy shoes and patch the holes.’ The dervish answered, ‘If thou hast a remedy, apply it to the hole in my heart.’ The cobbler gave him his right hand and he came and sat down; and the cobbler gave him food to eat and sewed up the holes in his shoes and said, ‘O dervish, I too wish to journey; what counsel dost thou give me?’ The dervish answered, ‘I have three counsels ”

“ The girl had, as far as one might judge, about two dozen cobblers in the little rush basket slung on her arm; but though she pulled at the string of the one she carried in her hand with such desperate jerks that the hardworking cobbler's eyes were set squinting at the rate at least of sixty times a minute, and at the same time kept up the cry, "Here's the 'ard-workin' cobbler for a a penny; who'll have two 'ard-working cobblers for a penny?" no one was tempted to become a purchaser. ”

“ It will be remembered how, as an illustration of the general inconsistency and unexpectedness of things, "The cobbler's wife is the worst shod." "She goeth broken shoone and torne hoses," says a mediæval bard, "but," as may be expected from the general unaccountableness of such matters, "Who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife, With shops full of new shooes all the days of her life?" Cobblers pursue a steady and somewhat monotonous business which seems to favour reflection, and the followers of the craft have supplied from their ranks not a few famous men. ”

“ The bribe of two guineas a-week, exclusive of "half-mutchkins withouten score," proved, however, unavailing, and the cobbler remained firm to the last. By this refusal, "the birkie" has only become poorer by the said couple of guineas, and certain "half-mutchkins drouthier," for so true has the eye of the sculptor proved, that every one is said instantly to recognise the cobbler's phiz and person. A strange perverseness, indeed, or fatality, or what you will, seems to have seized upon all the favored few selected as fitting archetypes for these admirable figures. ”