gn, and saw "Mike O'Bader, Boot and Shoe Maker," on it. Some wild
geese passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned,
and then trailed into the shop.

There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker's bench, trimming a
half-sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and
miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the
problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by
nothing less, it seemed, than the stylus of the centuries.

Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old shoemaker
looked up, and spoke sanely enough. He had been ill, he said, for a
few days. The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me, and
I could see that I had no place in his memory. So out we went, and on
our way.

"Old Mike," remarked the candidate, "has been on one of his sprees. He
gets crazy drunk regularly once a month. But he's a good shoemaker."

"What is his history?" I inquired.

"Whiskey," epitomized Judge Hoover. "That explains him."

I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had
the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my
exchanges.

"Mike O'Bader," said he, "was makin' shoes in Montopolis when I come
here goin' on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey's his trouble. Once a
month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He's got a rigmarole
somethin' about his bein' a Jew pedler that he tells ev'rybody.
Nobody won't listen to him any more. When he's sober he ain't sich a
fool--he's got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he
reads. I guess you can lay all his trouble to whiskey."

But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly construed
for me. I trust that women may not be allowed a title to all the
curiosity in the world. So when Montopolis's oldest inhabitant
(some ninety score years younger than Michob Ader) dropped in to
acquire promulgation in print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle of
reminiscence in the direction of the uninterpreted maker of shoes.

Uncle Abner was the Complete History of Montopolis, bound in
butternut.

"O'Bader," he quavered, "come here in '69. He was the first shoemaker
in the place. Folks generally considers him crazy at times now. But
he don't harm nobody. I s'pose drinkin' upset his mind--yes, drinkin'
very likely done it. It's a powerful bad thing, drinkin'. I'm an old,
old man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin'."

I felt disappoi