Book of the April Month
from Phil Robinson's Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States, And Round Them (1883)
(p 43, about men in Colorado....)
There is nothing gives a man so much self-reliance as having thick boots on....No man can feel properly capable of taking care of himself in slippers. In patent-leather boots he is little better, and in what are called "summer walking-shoes" he still finds himself fastidious about puddles, and at a disadvantage with every man he meets who does not mind a rough road. But once you begin to thicken the sole, self-reliance commences to increase....a man here stands, and it may even be sleeps, in boots of unimpeachable solidity. So he goes down the street as if it were his own, planting his feet firmly at every step, and, not having to trouble himself about the condition of the footway, keeps his head erect. Depend upon it, thick boots are one of the secrets of "independence" of character.
(p 18, about cafés chantants in Chicago)
... I found them to my surprise patronized by groups of men sad almost to melancholy. It was the music, I think, that made them feel so. Its effect on me I know was very chastening. I felt inclined to lift up my voice and howl. But the intense gravity of the company restrained me, and I left. Yet I am told that inside these very places men stab each other with Bowie knives and shoot each other with revolvers, and are even sometimes quite disagreeable in their manners.
(p 43, about men in Colorado....)
There is nothing gives a man so much self-reliance as having thick boots on....No man can feel properly capable of taking care of himself in slippers. In patent-leather boots he is little better, and in what are called "summer walking-shoes" he still finds himself fastidious about puddles, and at a disadvantage with every man he meets who does not mind a rough road. But once you begin to thicken the sole, self-reliance commences to increase....a man here stands, and it may even be sleeps, in boots of unimpeachable solidity. So he goes down the street as if it were his own, planting his feet firmly at every step, and, not having to trouble himself about the condition of the footway, keeps his head erect. Depend upon it, thick boots are one of the secrets of "independence" of character.
(p 18, about cafés chantants in Chicago)
... I found them to my surprise patronized by groups of men sad almost to melancholy. It was the music, I think, that made them feel so. Its effect on me I know was very chastening. I felt inclined to lift up my voice and howl. But the intense gravity of the company restrained me, and I left. Yet I am told that inside these very places men stab each other with Bowie knives and shoot each other with revolvers, and are even sometimes quite disagreeable in their manners.
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