Boots—boots—boots—boots—moving up and down again!
An’ there’s no discharge in the war.
’Tain’t—so—bad—by—day because o’ company,
But—night—brings—long—strings o’ forty thousand million
Boots—boots—boots—boots—moving up and down again!
An’ there’s no discharge in the war.
A soldier sees enough pairs of boots in a ten-mile march to last him half a lifetime.
Yet, after all, are not these the most amiable things beneath the stars, the things that we treat with derision and contempt in days of calm, but for which we grope with feverish anxiety when the storm breaks upon us? They go on, year after year, bearing the obloquy of our toothless little jests; they go on, year after year, serving us none the less faithfully because we deem them almost too mundane for mention; and then, when they suddenly turn out to be a matter of life and death to us, they serve us still, with never a word of reproach for our past ingratitude. If the world [258] has a spark of chivalry left in it, it will offer a most abject apology to its boots.
It would do a man a world of good, before putting on his boots, to have a good look at them. Let him set them in the middle of the hearthrug, the shining toes turned carefully towards him, and then let him lean forward in his arm-chair, elbows on knees and head on hands, and let him fasten on those boots of his a contrite and respectful gaze. And looking at his boots thus attentively and carefully he will see what he has never seen before. He will see that a pair of boots is one of the master achievements of civilization. A pair of boots is one of the wonders of the world, a most cunning and ingenious contrivance. Dan Crawford, in Thinking Black, tells us that nothing about Livingstone’s equipment impressed the African mind so profoundly as the boots he wore. ‘Even to this remote day,’ Mr. Crawford says, ‘all around Lake Mweru they sing a “Livingstone” song to commemorate that great “path-borer,” the good Doctor being such a federal head of his race that he is known far and near as Ingeresa, or “The Englishman.” And this is his memorial song:
Ingeresa, who slept on the waves,