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                           Transcriber Note:

 Obvious typos and punctuation errors corrected.
 Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the _italic
   text_.
 Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
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                                  THIS
                           MISERY _of_ BOOTS

                                   BY
                              H. G. WELLS

             _Author of “Socialism and the Family,” “In the
                     Days of the Comet,” “A Modern
                             Utopia,” etc._

                              [Decoration]


                                 BOSTON
                        THE BALL PUBLISHING CO.
                                  1908

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                             THIS MISERY OF
                                 BOOTS




                               CHAPTER I

                 THE WORLD AS BOOTS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE


“It does not do,” said a friend of mine, “to think about boots.” For my
own part, I have always been particularly inclined to look at boots, and
think about them. I have an odd idea that most general questions can be
expressed in terms of foot-wear—which is perhaps why cobblers are often
such philosophical men. Accident it may be, gave me this persuasion. A
very considerable part of my childhood was spent in an underground
kitchen; the window opened upon a bricked-in space, surmounted by a
grating before my father’s shop window. So that, when I looked out of
the window, instead of seeing—as children of a higher upbringing would
do—the heads and bodies of people, I saw their under side. I got
acquainted indeed with all sorts of social types as boots simply,
indeed, as the soles of boots; and only subsequently, and with care,
have I fitted heads, bodies, and legs to