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STEREOTYPED BY REDFIELD & SAVAGE,
13 Chambers Street, N. Y.
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AMERICAN PREFACE.
The work embraced in the following pages, which has been received with great favor in England, in the fashionable circles, as well as by the trade, the publisher has great confidence will prove attractive and interesting to the American public.
“I have given,” says Mr. Hall, in his preface to the English edition, “the result of my experience, derived from an intimate practical acquaintance with this department of trade for twenty years, and have endeavored to correct much that was bad in form and material, and I trust have not only found fault in many instances with past and present fashions, but have also enforced and provided the remedy. The illustrations of the ancient fashions are all taken from the highest authorities, and I believe may be relied on as historical.”
In addition to the matter in the second London edition, we have subjoined a History of Boots and Shoes in the United States, showing the changes of fashion in this indispensable article of dress; also, numerous biographical sketches of individuals, who, having learned the art of shoemaking, have afterward distinguished themselves by their genius, talents, or worth, and occupied eminent stations among their fellow-men.
The frequency of the development of literary talent among shoemakers has often been remarked. Their occupation, being a sedentary and comparatively noiseless one, may be considered as more favorable than some others to meditation; but perhaps its literary productiveness has arisen quite as much from the circumstance of its being a trade of light labor, and therefore resorted to, in preference to most others, by persons in humble life who are conscious of more mental talent than bodily strength.