Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/414

 "In the life of a poor man or a poor man's wife, and still more in the lives of their children, this misery of the boot occurs and recurs—every year so many days."

We made a sort of classification of these troubles.

There is the.

(i) They are made of some bad, unventilated material; and "draw the feet," as people say.

(ii) They do not fit exactly. Most people have to buy ready-made boots; they cannot afford others, and, in the submissive philosophy of poverty, they wear them to "get used" to them. This gives you the little-toe pinch, the big-toe pinch, the squeeze and swelling across the foot; and, as a sort of chronic development of these pressures, come corns and all the misery of corns. Children's feet get distorted for good by this method of fitting the human being to the thing; and a vast number of people in the world are, as a consequence of this, ashamed to appear barefooted. (I used to press people who came to see me in warm pleasant weather to play Badminton barefooted on the grass—a delightful thing to do—until I found out that many were embarrassed at the thought of displaying twisted toes and corns, and suchlike disfigurements.)

(iii) The third trouble of new boots is this: they are unseasoned and in bad condition, and so they squeak and make themselves an insulting commentary on one's ways.

But these are mere trifles compared to what arises as the boots get into wear. Then it is the pinch comes in earnest. Of these