Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (April 2, 1894)
THE HESPERIAN 9 . would call by no loss sonorous words than a "growing ability" and the fact that my great too persisted in crowding its passage through the leather, brought me frequently to my "Old Curiosity Shop." Thus it was that I became intimate with a person, of whom at the best, I shall sketch in a bung ling manner a- mere outline, for this man was in the truest sense, a character. The room that the old man occupied was not very large, nor was it fastidiously clean. It faced the west on the main stroet of my native town. Largo cases, extending on two sides and almost reaching the coiling had out-swinging glass doors, whose knobs were spools. Within I might gaze pro vided I took the pains to rub those dusty doors, seemingly as little used as the gun of immortal Rip after his sleep of a score of years. Often I stood before them with natural boyish curiosity while boot-jacks, boxes of pegs, lasts, old shoes, now shoes which the owners had failed to call for, balls of thread, and largo chunks of wax smiled down upon me, aud laughed to each other at the hole in my socks which 1 vainly tried to hide. Hanging without on one of the spool-knobs was a largo sombre documental-looking papor with a gilt soal in the lower left-hand corner, standing out in strong antithesis to the rest of the room's embellishment. As soon as I could road, with groat difficulty I figured out thoso words: "This certifies that James Mc Mahon is hereby given first award for hand made boots and shoe3 at the Dodge County fair of 1879." Upon congratulating my old friend he said with considerable bitter ness, his voice, always uneven, now crack ing worse than a fiddle in the hands of a novico, "Yis, they gave mo that pace of piper but niver a cint." The large, old-fashioned stove stood a little east of the center of the room, the sewing machine vos in the northeast corner. A. little in froiit'fcjf the stove appeared the friendly bench very low and very much worn. And on this bench, raised so slightly, the cobbler hammered away his life stitched and pounded into the un conscious leather the thoughts of the present, the considerations of the future, and the memories of the past. On all sides boots and shoes, shoes and boots , his subject and so great was their obedience to his dexterous lingers that he might have ox claimed, "I too am monarch of all I survoy." Ho that sat upon that bench is not so easily described. Ho usually wore a rusty pair of boots, coarse pants, tied up with straps, fixed for their office by his own hands, a rough flannel shirt, and the regula tion shoo maker's apron. His shoulders woro somewhat bent, indeed, how could they be otherwise? The short nock and wrinkled face would have been a fit study for an artist. His eyebrows wore heavy, his eyes bright and searching. Every part seemed to proclaim, "Hero is a man" and gave an earnest of honesty contained within that never wont unfulfilled. Yet words fail to carry my meaning. Oh that counten ance; deep, thoughtful, intense, only to be likonod to the pictures of Savonarola. lBotweon the man and his wife there existed one similarity and many contrasts. The likeness may bo seen in the fact that both were Irish and hence their dialect was the same. The cobbler's hair was. in places Btroakod with white, his worthy spouse was covered with gold, his hose vvis strongly builded as though to resist a cavalry charge, and tippod with rod, giving the impression that tho sun was just about to rise, (no doubt this redness wa's absorbed from tho glowing stove), hers was dwarfed and freckled; and according to an unwritten law of matrimony, since ho was very small, she wont to tho other extreme. Back of tho shoo shop was the' bed-room, kitchen and dining room combined in one and south of it was a partly-covered pen, in which two pigs grunted and squealed as contented astwo pigs that any have ever trod this earth. Many a time,
