ST. CRISPIN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 253, 13 February 1877, Page 2

ST. CRISPIN.

The boot and shoemakers are about celebrating the aniversary of their patron } St. Crispin ; formerly these two branches of the same trade did not stable their horses together, now they dwell in harmony. Qne subdivision of the order has all but disappeared—the cobbler ; the city improvements have destroyed his nooks and corners. However, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he was a posHive power, and took an active part in all the stirring events of the period. The cob biers had their stalls around the walls o-

tlie Louvre; two poles and a tarpaulin" completed the structure. Pending the massacre of St. Bartholomew, they saved many Huguenots, by concealing them under piles of old shoes or hides of leather. As painters always whistle, cobblers are addicted to singing. In 1789 they were the first to display the Repub lican cockade, and, with the tailors, contributed largely to the armies of the Mother Republic and of Napoleon 1. ; they were the most satirical in their political songs, and the severest orators of the carrefours. Disgusted at the foundation of a constitutional Monarchy, instead of a Republic, after the revolution of 1830, they gradually dwindled away, and are now only to be found occupying a pig 1 hole in some wine shop or woodman's store, or better, acting as posters, than whom none are more faithful or attentive. Boot and shoemaker's shops at present in; Paris are called "Docks," as consoling to the proprietors perhaps as the word "Mesopotamia" to the old women in their parson's sermon. These docks are veritable saloons, fitted up mirrors, velvetcovered chairs and sofas : some provide cigars for well-known customers, others only the lights, and a few subscribe for a journal at one sous.