Yes, indeed! But Tirzah Ann felt jest that way, and I couldn't make her over at that late day, even if I had time to tackle the job.

She took it honest--it come onto her from her Pa.
The preperations that man would have made if he had had his head would have outdone Tirzah Ann's, and that is sayin' enough, and more'n enough.
And the size of the shoes that man would have sot out with if he had been left alone would have been a shame and a disgrace to the name of decency as long as the world stands.
Why, his feet would have been two smokin' sacrifices laid on the altar of corns and bunions.

Yes, indeed! But I broke it up.
I sez, "Do you lay out and calculate to hobble round in that pair of leather vises and toe-screws," sez I, "when you have got to be on foot from mornin' till night, day after day?
Why under the sun don't you wear your good old leather shoes, and feel comfortable ?" And he said (true father of Tirzah Ann), "He wuz afraid it would make talk." [Illustration: "Leather vises and toe-screws."] Sez I, "The idee of the World's Fair, with all it has got on its mind, a noticin' or carin' whether you had on shoes or went barefoot! But if you are afraid of talk," sez I, "I guess that it would make full as much talk to see you a-goin' round a-groanin' and a-cryin' out loud.

And that is what them shoes would bring you to," sez I.
"Now," sez I, "you jest do them shoes right up and carry 'em back to the store, and if you have got to have a new pair, git some that will be more becomin' to a human creeter, let alone a class-leader, and a perfessor, and a grandfather." So at last I prevailed--he a-forebodin' to the very last that it would make talk to see him in such shoes.

But he got a pair that wuzn't more'n one size too small for him, and I presumed to think they would stretch some.