My Russet Shoes.
It's a queer thing, is fashion.
I don't often run up against it, thank heaven! but I did last summer.
I started in with a pair of tan shoes,—carried over from the summer before, but what cared I? They were whole and clean. They fitted well. They were light. They were cool. I liked them.
But one luckless day I went into a shoe store to get a pair of black shoes and I heard a man asking for russet leather.
"We don't keep it anymore," said the clerk. "There's no more call for it. It's all gone by—out of style. Everyone has his russet shoes blacked nowadays."
H'm! And I had russet shoes on my feet at that instant.
As I walked out, I was conscious, distinctly conscious, of my footgear.
I seemed conspicuous, down there. Folks seemed to be looking at my shoes. Smiling at them, for all I could tell. I began to notice shop-windows. Sure enough; no russets there.
And the feet I met. Sure enough; no smartly attired chap wore russets—only last-year fellows, like me. I became very much dissatisfied with myself. A vague uneasiness seized me, and when I analyzed it, I would come around to my shoes.
No, beloved, I am glad to say that I did not succumb. Those shoes remained un-blacked. I expect to trot them out again next summer, and wear them, if they will hold together. I am not going to knuckle down to fashion. And yet—I shall feel uneasy.
Now if that is my one little experience with fashion, what must it be—what must it be—to be a woman? Not the shoes only—mercy, no!—but the hair, and the sleeves, and the neck rigging, and the cut of the waist, and the hang of the dress, and the trimmings thereon, and the sacque, and the parasol, and the cuffs, and the—O my!—and the hat! And if it isn't puffed out here,—my shoe experience. Or if it is silk when it ought to be velvet,—the same experience. And if it hangs down where it ought to stick up, ditto. And if it is flowers where it ought to be feathers, —more ditto. Why, there's hardly a square inch of a woman's garb but is likely to become the occasion of a russet shoe awkwardness.
How thankful I am that I'm not a woman!