Shoemaking machinery not having attained the present development which
pastes imitation-leather uppers upon paper soles, the soldiers of the
first Union Army had to trudge in the boots made with wooden pegs to
hold the portions together; in wet weather the pegs swelled and held
tolerably, but in dryness the assimilation failed and the upper crust
yawned off the base like a crab-shell divided. As for the supposed
sewed ones, they went to the sub-officers, but the thread was so poor
that parting was as thorough as sudden. Mr. Lincoln _wonted_, as Walt
Whitman says, to repeat this tale when the army contractors were
swarming in his room for a bidding:
"A soldier of the Army of the Potomac was being carried to the rear
among the other wounded, when he spied one of the women following the
army to vend delicacies. In her basket, no doubt, were the cookies to
his fancy--the tarts and pies--open or covered. So he hailed her: 'Old
lady, are them pies sewed or pegged?'"
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