And finally he had some
customers even from Millsdorf and other valleys. Even down into the
plains his fame spread so that a good many who intended to climb in the
mountains had their shoes made by him for that purpose.
He ordered his house very neatly and in his shop the shoes, lace-boots,
and high boots shone upon their several shelves; and when, on Sundays,
the whole population of the valley came into the village, gathering
under the four linden trees of the square, people liked to go over to
the shoemaker's shop and look through the panes to watch the customers.
On account of the love he bore to the mountains, even now he devoted his
best endeavor to the making of mountain lace-shoes. In the inn he used
to say that there was no one who could show him any one else's mountain
boots that could compare with his own. "They don't know," he was
accustomed to add, "and they have never learned it in all their life,
how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall
fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to
render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp,
can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug
and soft as a glove."
The shoemaker had a large ledger made for himself in which he entered
all goods he had manufactured, adding the names of those who had
furnished the materials and of those who had bought the finished goods,
together with a brief remark about the quality of the product.
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