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The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles, battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, and the crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirt hanging from a branch.
Then thinking it must be about his person, they compelled him to take off his boots and stockings. In their stead a pair of almost soleless shoes were thrown him by one who appropriated the boots. Meantime the Irishman had distributed the contents of the demijohn, after having filled his own canteen. Then there was great hilarity.
His hands, bronzed by the tan of sixteen summers, were clasped under his head, and his legs were crossed, one soleless shoe on high vaunting its nakedness in the face of an indifferent world. A sailor's blouse, two sizes too large, was held together at the neck by a bit of red cambric, and his trousers were anchored to their mooring by a heavy piece of yellow twine.
It was a democratic undertaking, this newspaper, with its vast circulation and mighty staff, and visitors of all sorts daily crossed its threshold. Yet this man's coat hung about him in tatters, and his boots were almost soleless. The boy hesitated. "What business?" he asked curtly. "I will explain it to him in a moment," Douglas answered. "If he is busy, one of the staff will do.
It was the clothes that called a second glance. Save the cartridge belt around the waist there was nothing to mark the man as a soldier. The kindly hand which had placed him there had drawn over his face a soiled gray hat; his suit was a worn blue serge, dyed now with dark stains, and his feet were encased in patent-leather shoes, cracked and almost soleless.
For a drunken, begging, squalid, letter-writing man, called Pecksniff, with a shrewish daughter, haunts thee, Tom; and when he makes appeals to thee for cash, reminds thee that he built thy fortunes better than his own; and when he spends it, entertains the alehouse company with tales of thine ingratitude and his munificence towards thee once upon a time; and then he shows his elbows worn in holes, and puts his soleless shoes up on a bench, and begs his auditors look there, while thou art comfortably housed and clothed.
Hallelujah! chorus of the Canadians, marched with soleless boots, or with no boots at all, but with putties wrapped round the bare feet. An hour and a half's rest, and then on again! On, ever on! They are so tired, they feel they can march no further, and yet on they go, steadily marching straight forward, a silent, dogged, determined army out there upon the veldt.
Their feet, clad in soft soleless shoes, made of skins, were long and pointed and of almost uncanny flexibility. It had become impossible for any one to look at either of the little men without letting his eyes wander to their curiously expressive feet, which, like "courtier speech," were expressive without revealing anything.
Many a time, when he has been marching either alone or with troops, his clothes in tatters, his shoes soleless, and his mouth as dry as a saucer licked by a cat, many and many a time has he got out from under the impending shadow of depression, out into the open sunlight with his rifle, to forget all about hunger and thirst in matching his wits against nature's.
"And then you'd have more time and quiet for reading your books," she added coaxingly. Pelle was against the plan. The better class of artistes took rooms at the artiste hotels, and the people they might expect to get had not much to pay with. He had seen a good deal of them from his basement window, and had mended shoes for some of them: they were rather a soleless tribe.
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