Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1905-04-15
PASSING OF cowHlDe BOOT.
Came 10 New England with Pilgrims
Worn by Famous Men.

Worn by Famous Men.
The sturdy boot OF cowhide, the
pride and comfort Of our New England
grandfathers, Is disappearing from
shop and store. 1t may still be seen
here and there upon the farm, but It
has no place upon the polished floor,
nor in the trolley or cab of the city.
The boot came to these rocky New
England shores with the Pilgrims, says
the Boston Globe. 1t broke the brush
Of the virgin forest for hardy pioneers,
and it trod down the seed of many a
harvest upon the homesteads.
Glover's men of Marblehead march
ed of to follow Washington in '76
wearing high fishing boots, shiny with
oil from the cod and salt from the
spray of the sea. Whittier, the quaker
poet, hammered upon thick boot soles
to the measures Of his rhymes and
Henry Wilson, the Natick cobbler,"
pondered on questions of State as he
pulled his good waxed ends taut and
dreamed Of future greatness.
Walt Whitman tucked his trousers
legs inside his high boots and went out
and made friends with the boatmen
and clam dlggers. Politicians donned
boots that betokened toll at lection
time, just as the office seeker of to-day
puts on a glad smile and puts out his
glad hand. A clergyman of high fame
attributed early success to his cow
hide boots, which he wore in his pull
pit so that his congregation would feel
that he was one of them.
The schoolboy of times gone by
dreamed of the shiny, red-topped, cop
per-toed boots that he would find in
his stocking Christmas morning and
the Harvard boy felt himself man
indeed when he could go to the cord
wainer and have.a pair of boots mold
ed to his feet and legs. OF course, he
might break the boot ack yankng them
off, but that would be injury to the
senseless bootjack, not harm to his
vanity.
Everett Dunbar, who still makes
boots by hand down in Lynn, has the
wedding boots of a new prominent
Lynner, worn % years ago The Lynn
er wore them only to his wedding,
though he paid SIG for them. He
wouldn't dare to wear them to-day,
though they are splendid specimen
of bootmaking, for they have COM
Portable broad toe and crimp tops and
are made of cowhide. all of which are
decidedly out of fashion for full even
ing dress to-day.
A few grandfathers of to-day still
call for their high boots, considering
them a sovereign preventive Of ''rheu-
matlz, pneumony and other peslly ills, -
especially If worn with the trousers
legs tucked into the boot top, so that
the cold and dampness cannot creep
beneath the clothing and reach the
body.
Even from rough mining camps and
the trail and the ranch of the West
the boot is disappearing. College boys
struck western camps with heads full
of ideas and feet in laced high ankle
boots, like the storm boots seen in Bos-
ton to-day. Dudes in yaller boots, ~
shifted the veteran miners. but 1t was
not long before the veterans them
selves found the snug-tittlng laced high
boots of much value in supporting the
ankles and in keeping out stones. And
hunters and cowboys and ranchmen
learned the same thing. too.
SO the sturdy boot of cowhde is
passing and civilization is marching
onward to lighter and more scientific
footwear.