There are two ways of dealing with pinching shoes. The one is to wear them till you get accustomed to the pressure, and so to wear them easy; the other is to kick them off and have done with them altogether. The one is founded on the accommodating principle of human nature by which it is enabled to fit itself to circumstances, the other is the high-handed masterfulness whereby the earth is subdued and obstacles are removed; the one is emblematic of Christian patience, the other of Pagan power. Both are good in certain states and neither is absolutely the best for all conditions. There are some shoes indeed, which, do what we will, we can never wear easy. We may keep them well fixed on our feet all our life, loyally accepting the pressure which fate and misfortune have imposed on us; but we go lame and hobbled in consequence, and never know what it is to make a free step, nor to walk on our way without discomfort. Examples abound; for among all the pilgrims toiling more or less painfully through life to death, there is not one whose shoes do not pinch him somewhere, how easy soever they may look and how soft soever the material of which they may be made. Even those proverbial possessors of roomy shoes, the traditional King and Princess, have their own little private bedroom slippers which pinch them, undetected by the gaping multitude who measure happiness by lengths of velvet and weight of gold embroidery; and the envied owners of the treasure which all seek and none find might better stand as instances of sorrow than of happiness--examples of how badly shod poor royalty is, and how, far more than meaner folk, it suffers from the pinching of its regal shoes.