For 200 years a shop in St. James's Street has sold boots and shoes. Not the inexpensive, machine-made articles that most of us wear, but boots and shoes fashioned from start to finish by hand, by skilled craftsmen who also are artists. There are not more than 100 of these men left. the last survivors of a dying craft, for no young men are learning the trade. A dozen West End shoemakers give them employment on pieceworx, which they do in their own homes.
Kings have stepped through the doorway of this St. James's Street shop. Alfonso of Spain is still a customer. When Albert of the Bel—gians was made a British Field Marshal, he came here for a pair of ick-boots, for which he paid 26 guineas, Napoleon III was another royal patron and Edward VII and George V had their feet fitted in this shop, as gilded crests on the walls reveal.
Tt takes two men two days to roast ind beeswax in front of a fire the pers of the thigh-high jack-boots 0 eae A 26 guineas a pair, supplied to officers of the House-
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.