MR. POTTS MAKES HIS TOILET.
When Mr. Potts awoke on the following morning, he was half afraid to open his eyes, for fear that the whole should prove a dream, too blissful to be true. After he had mustered courage to look, and found it to be all real, he lay for a while in lazy rapture, feeding his eyes upon the picture, which seemed more beautiful by daylight than it had appeared by the midnight camphene, of the preceding night.
Having performed the initial rites of the toilet, Mr. Potts attempted to assume the admired boots; but found to his cost that the disciple of St. Crispin had too literally obeyed his injunctions to give him a “snug fit.” In vain he tugged and pulled, excoriating his fingers against the unyielding straps—his dressing apparatus did not comprise a pair of boot-hooks—his foot would no more in than Lady Macbeth’s blood-fleck would out. At last, by dispensing with his “lambs-wools,” diligently lubricating the leather, and introducing a handkerchief into one strap, and a towel into the other, so as to gain a firmer hold, he succeeded in insinuating his naked feet into their places. “It is the first step that costs,” says the French proverb, and Mr. Potts’s first step in his new boots cost him an agonizing thrill in his toes, which threatened to put a veto upon his hopes of wearing them that day. Having fully arrayed himself, Mr. Potts mounted a chair, so as to bring the lower part of his figure within the range of his somewhat diminutive dressing-glass, and finding that the image which met his view fully equaled his anticipations, he bestowed upon it a farewell smile of approbation and set off upon his rounds.
