In former years this puzzling topic could not have arisen. Loose trowsers gave plenty of room to boots which were wide in the legs. There was no difficulty in getting heels into them, and though there might have been some screwing and stamping, it was certain that eventually the articles would be drawn on the feet. Then, too, the tightness was only in the foot part of the boot. It required considerable muscular exertion to coax the five toes into the close prison designed for them, but by pulling one moment, working the foot the next, and then screwing the face into ugly contortions, considerable progress was usually effected. The power of the human countenance over upper leather is one of those extraordinary psychological facts which dabblers in animal magnetism have failed in accounting for satisfactorily. Yet that it does exist, is vouched for by all experience. Tight boots have always been susceptible to this influence. History herself cannot point to an instance where a new leathern foot-envelope was drawn on the walker with a countenance “calm as a summer’s morning.” It is notorious that no boot of character ever yielded until it saw, from the knitting of the eyebrows, the puckering of lips, and the distortion of muscles, that the putter-on was in absolute earnest. And how stubbornly the leather yields when it comes under the influence—how it relaxes with stiff dissatisfaction, and at last creeps over the part assigned, with an air of unwrinkled disgust. The philosophy of this subject is strange, and should be investigated by some modern Mesmer of sole and upper leather.