But his shoes were made straight; not as now one to each foot--a right and left--but each exactly alike; and he changed his shoes every morning, wearing one on one foot one day and on the other the next, that they might not get worn to either foot in particular. Shoes lasted a great length of time in those days, the leather being all tanned with oak bark only, and thoroughly seasoned before it was cut up. There is even a story of a farmer who wore his best shoes every Sunday for seven years in Sundays--fifty years--and when he died had them buried with him, still far from worn out. A traveller once returned from America--in those days a very far-off land--and was recounting the wonders he had seen, and among them how the folk there used sleighs, not only for driving in but for the removal of heavy goods. But Jonathan did not think it strange, since when he was young wheeled vehicles were not so common. He had himself seen loads of hay drawn home on 'sleds' from English meadows, and could tell where a 'sled' had last been used. There were aged men living about the hamlet in his day--if that could be called a hamlet in which there were barely a score of people, all told--who could recollect when the first waggon came to The Idovers. At all events, they pointed out a large field, called the Conigers, where it was taken to turn it round; for it was constructed in so primitive a style that the forewheels would not pass under the body, and thus required a whole field to turn in. At that date folk had no banking accounts, but kept their coin in a strong chest under the bed, sometimes hiding it in strange places. Jonathan was once visiting a friend, and after they had hobnobbed a while the old fellow took him, with many precautions that they should not be observed, into the pig-sty and showed him fifty guineas hid in the thatch. That was by no means all his property, but the old fellow said, with a wink, that he liked to have a little hoard of his own that his wife knew nothing about. Some land being put up for sale, after biddings by the well-to-do residents, an old dealer in a very small way, as was supposed, bid above them all. The company looked upon him with contempt, and his offer was regarded as mere folly; but he produced a nail-bag from under his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of the coarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the former generation, eschewing outward show, collected their money coin by coin, till at last they became substantial men and owners of real estate. So few were the conveniences of life that men had often to leave the road and cross several fields out of their way to light their pipes at a burning couch-heap or lime-kiln.