The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-11-10

of plain as arid as il the world had been
made without water; and third, who cares for
nothing butthe free breathing Of theOpen nmoors,
or the rugged beauty of the barren fells is
dropped down into the heart Of anarrOT valley
where he cannot see the sun for the trees. at
first this matter Of locality seems to be but
very small grip on the feot, not worth
thought; but it is one of a certain cumulative
power impossible to describe, though keen
enough for him who suffers and the pinching
shoe of uncongenial place is quite as hard to
bear as that OF unoongenial work. Again,
man to whom intellectual companionship
means more than 1t does to many, is thrown
into neighborhood where he cannot hope to
meet with comprehension, still less with sym
pathy He is a Free-thinker, and the neigh
boThood goes in for the strictest Methodism or
the highest ultra-Ritualism; he is radical,
and he is in the focus of county Toryism,
where the doctrine of equality and the rights
of man is Just so much seditious blasphemy,
while the British Constitution is held as a
direct emanatiOn from divine wisdom second
only to the Bible, or he is a Tory to the
backbone-and his backbone is pretty stiff
one-and he is in the midst of that blatant
kind OF radicaism which thinks gentlehood
a remnant Of the dark ages, and copfOunds
good breeding with servllity, and loyalty to
the crown with oppression OF the people. Sur
rounded by his kind, he is as much
alone as if in the middle of q de-
sert; an EngGslrmau among EuglishmeD,
he has no more mental compauionship than
if he were in a foreign country, where he
and his neighbors spoke different tongues,
and had each set Of signs with not two agree
ing. And this kind OF solitude makes a pinch
ing shoe to many minds, though to some of
the more selt-centred or defying kind it is
bearable enough, perhaps even giving sense
of roomine5s which closer communion would
not give.
OF course one of the worst of our pinching
shoes is matrimony, when marriage means
bondage and not union. The mismated wife
or husband never leaves off, willingly or un-
willingly, squeezing the tender places; and
the more the pressure is objected to the worse
the pain becomes. Aud nothing can relieve
it. A country gentleman hating the dust and
noise of London, with all his interest in his
country position and all his pleasure in his
estate and wife whose love lies in Queens
balls and opera-boxes, and to whom the coun-
try is simply a slice out of Siberia wherever
it may be; a healthy hospitable man, liking
to see his table well filed, and wife with a
weak digestion, irritable nerves, and NOR
bid horror of society; pushing and ambitious
man, with loud voice and imposing presence,
and a shrinking, freside woman, who asks
only to glide unnOticed through the crowd,
and to creep noselessly from her home to her
graveyard not all these shOd with pinch
ing shoes, which, do what they will, go
on pinchlng to the end, and which
nothing short of death or chance can remove
These piDching shoes Of matrimony pinch
both sides equaLy-excepting, indeed, one
chances to be specially phlegmatic or pachy-
deImatous, and then the grip is harmless: but,
as rule, the ring-fence of marriage doubles
all conditions, and when A walks hobbled b
falls lame, and both suffer from the same mis-
fit. However, the only thing to do is to bear
and wear till the upper leather yields, or till
the foot takes the required shape; but there is
an eternity Of pain to be gone through before
either of these desirable ends comes about; and
the instinct which breads pain, and questions
its necessity, is by no means a false one. For
all that we must wear our pinching shoes of
matrimony till death or the divorce court pulls
them from our feet, which points to the need
of being more careful than we usually are
about the fit beforehand.
Poverty has a whole rack full of pinching
shoes very hard to get accustomed to, and bad
to dance in lightly as were the fiery slippers Of
the naughty little girl in the German fairy
tale. Given large heart, generous instincts,
and an empty hand, and we have the elements
of real tragedy, both individual and social.
For poverty does not mean only that animal
want of food and clothing which we generally
associate with its name. Poverty may have
two thousand year as well as only mOuldy
crust ana three shillings week from the
paIlsIj ana poverty CurslnS lIS sore leeG III q
brougham is quite as common as poverty, tuil
of corns and callosities, wheeling oostermOn-
gers barrow. The shoe may pinch horribly,
though there is no question of hunger or the
"twO-penny rope" for it is a matter
of relative degree, and the means wherewith
to meet wants. But as poverty is not of those
fixed conditions of human life which no human
power can remove, We have not perhaps quite
so much sympathy with its grips and pinohes
! in M ha Wh 10
there is work still undOne in the world, there
is gain still to be had; the man whose energies
run now in dry channel can, if he will, turn
them into one more fertile; and If he is making
poor business out of meal, it is his own fault
If he does not try to make better one out OF
malt. Where the shoe pinches hardest is in
places which we cannot protect and with a
grip which We cannot prevent; but we cannot
say this of poverty as necessary and inalien-
able condition, and sympathy is SO much waste
when circumstances can be changed by energy
or will.