The Little Man with One Shoe

HERE be many things now that never used to be, and there used to be many things that are not now any more; and one of them was the shoe-maker's shop at the end of our street, down there where the houses come together so close that you think you will never get the doors open at all, and you have a fear in you that the people inside have never come out, and so they may not know the language you speak to them. But on our street, the nearer you got the more the houses stepped apart and smiled at you, and at the very end, after you passed by the bake-shop where they had hot cross buns in the window on Good Friday, and the toy-shop where all the animals marched to the tunes in their stomachs, you came to a door with a shoe hanging over it in the street. That was the shoemaker's shop, which was the darkest place this side of midnight, and so full of leathery smells—ah, well, what with the dark and the leather all at once, you thought first of Tom Thumb's famous adventure and wondered if you too had fallen asleep on a truss of hay, and what was the name of the cow that had swallowed you.

Well, one day I took my way to the shoemaker, with a pair of shoes that had long needed repair. He set them on his leathered knees, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead, and says he, "Well, it's a fine way you have of letting good shoes go to wrack and ruin! But I will say this for you," says he, "and without looking twice; you have worn them out in no ordinary fashion."

"You are right there," said I; "for it was in those shoes I used to go a-romancing these many years ago, and I should like to do the same again if you will mend them." He handed them back to me as if one was hot coals and the other was cold icicles, and he could not make up his mind which to drop first.

"You would never go a-romancing in these shoes again, with soles of the leather that you see here," says he; "you must have leather that will resist both cobblestones and dew, and still make your feet dance to the music of the grass-blades and the daisies. You will have to go to the Leprechaun," says he; "to the fairy shoemaker and the master of us craftsman all, who lives in the green hills of Ireland."

"The Leprechaun! Dear man," says I, "I cannot be crossing the wide water to have my shoes mended. I must do my romancing close at home or not at all."

"You are a sensible mind, after all," says he; "it is few who have the idea that romance is anywhere in the neighborhood whatever. Now if you are really wise, you will hunt out the little man with one shoe," says he, "for he is the Leprechaun's seventh son's seventh son, and a great mender of shoes. I warn you he is slow, for he pegs in each nail with a tale or a story, and for pay he demands that you shall tell him a tale or sing him a song in return. That is why he wears but one shoe of his own, for as soon as he has finished the pegging of one, the sole of the other is worn to a thread with his search for more romances. Go on now," says he, "and tell him I sent you; I have got to be working like an ant in midsummer, over the shoes of the men in this place."

Well, I cannot tell you in what parts I went and how far I went to get those shoes mended, for it is likely you would not believe me, and my breath would be expended for nothing. But this you must know: that at the end of three years I knew all the dark streets, and all the bright ones too, of all the towns in my country, and I had walked in lanes and on highways, and all to no end. I remember with blushes the many men I have stopped, inquiring why they wore but one shoe, for with all the answers I had, there was not one in the search for romance. This one had the gout in one foot, and left his shoe at home; and that one was wearing the one shoe he had found in his way and looking for the mate to it; and another was vainly trying to soften new shoes which were too small and wearing them one at a time to have peace and comfort on one side of himself at the least.

And so at last I came back to our street, and I walked the length of it down to the place where the houses step apart and smile; this I knew they were doing, though I could not see it, for it was the dark brown twilight of a Christmas Eve when I came home. There was a light in the window of the shoemaker's shop, and I thought to myself that I would look in first to see what he was doing so late of a holiday evening. This was the thing I saw first, and it came to my mind that I had seen it often enough before too, but that I had not looked at it properly,—the shoemaker was sitting with a foot tucked under him!  I ran to the door and held my ear to the crack of it and sure enough he was pegging a shoe, and I could hear his voice going up and down in the cadences of a tale.

I opened the door and I held up my shoes again. "Oh, Little Man with One Shoe," said I, "here am I at the end of my search. Seventh son of the Leprechaun's seventh son, why did you deceive me before?" He did not so much as wink, but set aside the shoe of his own that he was working on, and set his bare foot on the floor.

"I deceive you!" says he; "I told you what to look for; it was your own affair that you had never used your eyes. I told you that the leather you see here would never mend the shoes for you, and that was as true as death; you should have considered that one does not keep fairy leather lying about in broad daylight. It is just as well to take care of one's best, as the rabbits said when they first cut off their long tails and locked them up for safe keeping.

"I have been sitting on one foot or the other for these many years, mending my own shoes as I had the time. Did you never notice that I even have but one shoe hanging at my door? That is the sign of the Leprechaun's men, and I think you never considered it.

"There is this to be said for you, however," says he, "that you came home to find the little man in your own street. There is one of my ilk in every street of Christendom, and of Maumetry too for that matter, with the door open for those that live there, if they will but use their eyes. Come now, I must mend your shoes, since you have found me out. And have you six tales to tell me? For I remember that these shoes of yours require six pegs, and I have had them ready all the time."

"Tut! it is you that tells the tales," said I; "but I have no objection to capping the stories you peg into my shoes with songs of curious and simple pattern."

So we sat down, and the little man laid aside his own shoe, on which he had been at work. Out of one pocket he took the fairy leather, and out of the other the fairy nails; and as he worked, he told me What Ailed the King, and how sometimes Everything goes for Nothing and still comes home prosperous; of the Master of Magic moreover, and the Apples of Glory, the Amiable Adventures of Minkin Mouse, and the Three Powers that a King's son had.

And when he finished the shoes, I put them on, and straightway knew the road to Ispahan and Carcassonne and Eildon Hills and Bethlehem, and other happy places. Then I put my face outside, and there it was Christmas morning, and the world was white with snow.

It happens that the shoemaker's shop is gone now, and himself too, but I have met him in other places, as I hope you may; and I have no doubt that if you walk to the end of your street, down there where the houses come together, and knock at the door where a single shoe is hanging, you will hear—if you but show your shoes worn thin in the search of romances—stories like these he told to me, or possibly much better.