Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/412



" does not do," said a friend of mine, "to think about boots." For my own part, I have always been particularly inclined to look at boots, and think about them. I have an odd idea that most general questions can be expressed in terms of footwear—which is perhaps why cobblers are often such philosophical men. Accident, it may be, gave me this persuasion. A very considerable part of my childhood was spent in an underground kitchen; the window opened upon a bricked-in space, surmounted by a grating before my father's shop window. So that when I looked out of the window, instead of seeing—as children of a higher upbringing would do—the heads and bodies of people, I saw their under side. I got acquainted indeed with all sorts of social types simply as boots, indeed as the soles of boots; and only subsequently, and with care, have I fitted heads, bodies, and legs to these pediments.

There would come boots and shoes (no doubt holding people) to stare at the shop, neat, finicking little women's boots, good sorts and bad sorts, fresh and new, worn crooked in the tread, patched or needing patching; men's boots, clumsy and fine, rubber shoes, tennis shoes, goloshes. Brown shoes I never beheld—it was before their time; but I have seen pattens. Boots used to come and commune at the