Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1869-01-15


and tho name and position Of every spar
and stay and sheet, and when to reef and
and when to set sail, with any other nautic-
al information to be had from books and II
chance cruise as far us the More. That pen
behind his car never ceases to gall aud fret,
his shoe never ceases to pinch and, to the
last day of his life, the high stool in the
lawyers Office will be Il place of penance,
and the sailors quarter deck the very hcav-
en- of his ambition. No doubt, by the time
the soldier, wrongly labelled as "A parson,
or the sailor, painfully working the legal
treadmill, comes to the end of his career,
the old shoe which has pnchcd him so long
will be worn comparatively easy. The
gradual decay Of manly vigor, and the
slow but sure destruction of strong desires,
reduce ones feet at last to masses of accom-
modating pulp; but what suffering we 20
through before this result can be attained
what years of fruitless yearnng, of fierce
despair, of pathetic sell-supprcssion, of
jarring discord between work and fitness
must pound all the life out of us before our
bones become like wax, and pinching shoes
are transformed to easy-ftting slippers.
For itself alone, not counting the beyond,
ii would scarcely seem that such life was
worth the living.
Another pinching shoe is to be found in
climate and locality. A man hungering
for the busy life of the city has to vegetate
in the rural districts. where the days drop,
one after the other, like leaden bullets, and
time is only marked by an accession of
dullness. Another thirsting for the repose
of the country, has to iostle daily through
Cheapside. To one who thinks Canadian
salmon-fishing the supreme of earthly hap
piness, fate gives the chance of chasing but
terflics in Brazil to another, who holds
'the common objects of the seashore" of
more account than silver and gold, an adj
verse fortune assigns station i'm the mid
die of plain as arid rs if the world had
been made without water; and third,
who cares for nothing but the free breath
ing of the open moors, or the rugged beau
ty of the barreu fels, is dropped down in
to the heart of narrow valley, where he
cannot ee the sun for the trees. At FIRST
this matter of locality seems to be but a
very small grip on the foot, not worth Il
second thought, but it is ono of a certain
cumulative power, almost impossible to de-
scribe, though keen enough to him who
suffers and the pinching shoe of uncon-
genial place is quite as hard to bear as that
Of uncongenial work. Again, man to
whom intellectual companonship means
more than it does to many, is thrown into
neighborhood where he cannot hope to
sympathy. lie is Freethinker, and the
neighborhood goes in for the strictest Meth
odism, or the highest ultra Ritualism he
is Radical, and he is in the focus of coun-
ty Toryism, where the doctrine of equality
and the rights of man are just so much Sc
ditions blasphemy, while the British Con-
sttution is held as n 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 Radical
ism which thinks gen tlehood a remnant of
the dark ages. and confounds good breed
ing with servlity, and loyalty to the crown
with oppression of the people. Surrounded
by his kind, he is as much alone as if in
| the middle of the desert an Engishman
among Englishmen, he has no more mem
tai ompanionship-than if he were in a for
eign country, where he and his neighbors
| spoke different tongues, and had each a set
| of signs with not two agreeing. And this
kind of solitude makes n pinching shoe to
many minds though to some of the more
self-centred or defying kind it is bearable
enough-perhaps even giving sense of
roominess which closer communion would
not give.
| Of course, one of the worst of our pinch
ing shoes is matrimony, when marriage
means bondage and not union. The mis-
mated wife or husband never leaves off,
willingly or unwillngly, squeezing the ten
der places; and the more the pressure is
objected to, the worse the pain becomes
| And 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 pleasures in his estate,
and wife whose love lies in Queens balls
and opera boxes, and to whom the country
is simplya slice out of Siberia, wherever il
may be- hearty, hospitable man, liking
to see his table well filled, and wife witt
a weak digestion, irritable nerves, and a
morbid horror or society; pushing and
ambitious man, with loud voice and i'm
posing presence, and a shrinking firesidt
woman, who asks only to glide unnoticeC
through the crowd, and to creep noiselcss
ly from her home to her grave-are not al
these shod with pinching shoes, which, dc
what they will, go on pinching to the end
| NN.hf fcb OH IL,
can remove? The pinching shoe of mat
rimony pinches both sides equally y-exccpt
ing, indeed, one chances to be specially
phlegmatic or pachydermatous, and then
the grip is harmless but as a rule the rnl
fence of marriage doubles all conditions
and when A. walks hobbled b. falls lame
and both suffer from the misft. 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 9
false one. For all that. we must wear oui
pinching shoes of matrimony till death OF
the Div rec Court, pulls them from oul
feet, which points to the need of being NOR,
careful than we usually are about the fl
beforehand.
Poverty has a whole rack full of pinchn,
shoes very hard to get accustomed to, ant
as bad TO dance in lightly as were the fer,
slippers of the naughty little girl in tn,
German fairy-tae. Given large heart
generous instincts, and an empty hand
and we have the elements of a real trage
dy, both individual and social. For pov
orty does not mean only that animal wan
of food and clothing which we associate
with its name. Poverty may have tw,
thousand year AS well as only mould,
crust and three shillings II week from tn
parish and poverty cursing its sore feet il
brougham Is quite as common as povort,
full of corns and callosities, wheeling
costermonger's barrow. Tho shoe ma,
pinch horribly, though there is no question
of hunger or the "twopOnny rope :" for
is a matter of relative degree, and tn,