on one of its ends on the floor. With an iron
wedge and a heavy wooden beetle it is riven
in halves, from top to bottom, just as you
might divide a Stilton cheese into two equal
portions, by cutting it through,
perpendicularly lengthwise, instead of horizontally
across. Small cylinders from the arms of the
tree will only make one pair of child's sabots,
and are not riven again after the first splitting;
the thickest parts of the trunk that are used,
will make eight pairs of full-sized sabots, and
are consequently so subdivided.

We have now before us a quantity of riven
billet-wood, apparently just the thing for
a country gentleman's dining-room. Smart
John, the footman, in his powder and plush,
would faint to be told to go and make himself
a pair of shoes out of a couple of such billets
as these. Our sabotier, however; innocent of
hair-powder and plush nether garments, but
rejoicing in a black moustache and a blue
cotton jacket and trousers; takes the billets
one by one in his left hand, and with a small
hatchet in his right, chops away at them
recklessly on a butchers' block before him,
knocks the bark off with the back of his
hatchet, and so fashions them into things
having more resemblance to wooden hot rolls
for the breakfast table, than anything else I
can compare them to. Chop, chop, chop
away, with horrid carelessness. " Don't you
sometimes cut your fingers off? " " No,
Monsieur, here are the whole ten of them; I
haven't drawn blood, for more than a twelve-
month." On he goes, with unremitting strokes.
You see, too, that the wooden rolls, as they
pass through his hands, receive some
unsuspected touches, by which the position of a
future toe and heel are clearly indicated to
the eye. When all the billets have been thus
transformed, the tailleur or cutter, for such is
his title, carefully inspects his lot of fancy
bread, and puts together those which will pair
well: at the same time deciding which
shall be "rights" and which "lefts." As
he goes on sorting them, he builds them into
a pile, by laying one pair across another, like
a plate of sugar biscuits in a confectioner's
window.

These unlicked cubs of sabots have now to
undergo another trimming. They bid adieu
to the butcher's block, and pay a visit to a
carpenter's bench. In front of the bench is
a curious tool called a paroir, or parer, made
of cast steel. It is something like a small
scythe without the usual handle, but with a
short wooden one instead; where the point
of the scythe would be is a hook, which fits
into a ring on the bench; and by means of
the handle, and the support given to the tool
by the hook and ring, our artist contrives
to peel and pare the breakfast roll (itself
steadied against slight hollows and prominences
on the bench), until it assumes by little
and little the appearance of a shoemaker's
last, cut off at the ankle. All this work
is dexterously performed by shifting the
sabot with the left hand, while the right plies
the paroir. The paroir has been previously
sharpened with a small triangular prism of
still harder steel, called a tire-point.

During both the chopping and the paring,
great attention is paid to the size of the
future sabot. The workman makes frequent
use of a pair of callipers and a foot-rule divided
into quarter inches, which he keeps beside
him. And he every now and then claps the
sabot against its proposed fellow, to make
sure that the process of paring is going on
satisfactorily.

The ankleless shoemaker's lasts are now
handed over to another sabotier, the creuseur,
or scooper, who, by bringing a different set
of muscles into play, has to find room in the
solid last for a lady's or gentleman's foot to
enter. He, too, has a bench before him,
and on it lie some half-dozen tools, like
enormous gimlets; but, the end of the iron
is variously shaped; some are like egg-spoons,
others like children's apple-scoops, others
must be seen to be believed. They are all
called cuillères, or spoons; in French, a pump-
borer is likewise called a cuillère. By means
of a few bits of wood, like overgrown
dominos, and a wedge or two, the sabot is
firmly fixed upon the bench, in. the position
in which it would be on the ground; and with
its heel towards the scooper or as if it were
running away from him,—which it has good
reason to do. For, seizing one of his most
ferocious scoops, he fires away at it and
pitches into it, as if he had a spite against
it and meant to cut its very heart out,—
which indeed he does mean, and soon
accomplishes. He then penetrates to the very
tip of the toe-nail, sounding his depth with
a bit of stick, and by means of his other
frightful scoops and gouges, removes the
whole inside of the sabot, leaving it as smooth
and empty as the' egg-shells that remained
on our table after breakfast. It is as smooth
as the palm of your hand. The touch reveals
another fact; the moisture of the sap is
quite perceptible, although it is now a
twelve-month since the tree was felled. It is so
damp, that if the old woman who lived in a
shoe were to take lodgings in such a sabot as
that, she would certainly catch her death of
cold. But wood too dry would not scoop so
well.

The sabot is now finished, as far as it can be
at present. The tortured and imprisoned
thing is liberated, to be followed by its fellow
victim. The young couple are then kept
together, and united for life by means of a
string passing through a hole in the inner
side of each. Assemblies of happy pairs are
hung together in bundles, to dry slowly in the
air. Nothing more can be done for them for at
least a month. The necessity of submitting to
this drying time, explains why it is so
convenient to the manufacturer to half finish his
article in the forest, and to perfect it in the
capital.