Transcriber Note: Obvious typos and punctuation errors corrected. Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_. Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS. A small decoration on the title page is represented by [Decoration]. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS MISERY _of_ BOOTS BY H. G. WELLS _Author of “Socialism and the Family,” “In the Days of the Comet,” “A Modern Utopia,” etc._ [Decoration] BOSTON THE BALL PUBLISHING CO. 1908 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS MISERY OF BOOTS CHAPTER I THE WORLD AS BOOTS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE “It does not do,” said a friend of mine, “to think about boots.” For my own part, I have always been particularly inclined to look at boots, and think about them. I have an odd idea that most general questions can be expressed in terms of foot-wear—which is perhaps why cobblers are often such philosophical men. Accident it may be, gave me this persuasion. A very considerable part of my childhood was spent in an underground kitchen; the window opened upon a bricked-in space, surmounted by a grating before my father’s shop window. So that, when I looked out of the window, instead of seeing—as children of a higher upbringing would do—the heads and bodies of people, I saw their under side. I got acquainted indeed with all sorts of social types as boots simply, indeed, as the soles of boots; and only subsequently, and with care, have I fitted heads, bodies, and legs to these pediments. There would come boots and shoes (no doubt holding people) to stare at the shop, finicking, neat little women’s boots, good sorts and bad sorts, fresh and new, worn crooked in the tread, patched or needing patching; men’s boots, clumsy and fine, rubber shoes, tennis shoes, goloshes. Brown shoes I never beheld—it was before that time; but I have seen pattens. Boots used to come and commune at the window, duets that marked their emotional development by a restlessness or a kick.... But anyhow, that explains my preoccupation with boots. But my friend did not think it _did_, to think about boots.