Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/134

 tion; and who dictated? Yes, it may sound incredible, but is the truth for all that. And when I say so, people will believe me. It was my boots,—my old Copenhagen boots—which, being soaked through and through with rain-water, now had their place in the chimney, near to the red glowing fire. Whilst I was suffering from toothache, they were suffering from dropsy; they dictated their own autobiography, which, as it seems to me, may throw some light upon the Italian winter of 1840–41.

The Boots said,—

“We are two brothers, Right and Left Boot. Our earliest recollection is of being strongly rubbed over with wax, and after that highly polished. I could see myself reflected in my brother; my brother could see himself reflected in me; and we saw that we were only one body,—a sort of Castor and Pollux; a pair of together-grown Siamese, which fate has ordained to live and die, to exist, and not to exist, together. We were, both of us, native Copenhageners.

The shoemaker’s apprentice carried us out into the world in his own hands, and this