The mechanical processes, after marking and cutting out the leather, consist chiefly in various kinds of strong needlework, such as the lasting or tacking of the upper leather to the in-sole, the sewing in of the welt, the stitching to this welt of the out or top sole, the building and sewing down of the heel, and the sewing or closing of boot legs. The boot closer is the most skilful of the persons employed, and receives the highest wages. The materials with which the Shoemaker works are generally called the _grindery_,—they are so called at least through England and Scotland, though in Dublin it is called _finding_. “The cause of this technicality,” says Mr. James Devlin, in his most interesting description of the trade of the Shoemaker in the Industrial Library, “is now, I believe, scarcely known to any one in the trade. The relation to whom I was apprenticed, a man of a very active and inquisitive turn of mind, told me its history, which it may be worth while here to relate. “Formerly, before hemp, flax, wax, hairs, or any description of tools, were sold, as now, in shops set apart to this particular business, the shoemaker, not using the peculiar sort of stone rubber or the emery composition which he now uses to sharpen his knives upon, was in the habit occasionally of taking his knives to be ground (as the French shoemaker does at the present day) to some of the common knife-grinders of the neighbourhood. The knife-grinder having thus the Shoemaker for a regular customer, began in time to add to his usual business that of selling hemp, &c.; hence his little shop being termed the _grindery_, every thing he sold became known under this name, and is still continued.” The tools of the Shoemaker are in their collective form denominated his _kit_. Anciently, and in the old songs of the trade, they were called “St. Hugh’s bones,” from a now almost forgotten, though somewhat pleasant tradition. In Stow, and in Randle Holme’s “Academie of Armorie,” 1688, we find this term; as, also, in the still older romance of “Crispin and Crispianus;” and in two plays, “The Shoemaker is a Gentleman,” and the “Shoemaker’s Holiday,” of the beginning of the seventeenth century. The kit of the Shoemaker is, however, no longer now, as formerly, made up of “bones”—saint or infidel, human or brute,—but principally of good and kindly steel; purchased ready-made at the _grinder’s_, or the grindery establishments before spoken of, and kept afterwards (in this country, at least, and in America) in repair and proper order by the ingenuity and care of the workman himself; though in France, and generally on the continent, much of this is done by another person, to whom such occupation is the sole means of livelihood. Under the general term _kit_ is comprehended the _pincers_, _nippers_, _hammer_, the various descriptions of _awls_, of _setting irons_, and many other articles.