“They look exactly like my own galoshes,” one of the copying clerks at
the police station said, as he set the ownerless galoshes down beside his
own. “Not even a shoemaker could tell one pair from the other.”
“Mr. Copying Clerk!” said a policeman, who brought him some papers.
The clerk turned around to talk with the policeman, and when he came
back to the galoshes he was uncertain whether the pair on the right or the
pair on the left belonged to him.
“The wet ones must be mine,” he thought, but he was mistaken, for they
were the galoshes of Fortune. The police make their little mistakes too.
So he pulled them on, pocketed some papers, and tucked some
manuscripts under his arm to read and abstract when he got home. But as
this happened to be Sunday morning, and the weather was fine, he thought,
“A walk to Frederiksberg will be good for me.” And off he went.
A quieter, more dependable fellow than this young man you seldom see.
Let him take his little walk, by all means. It will do him a world of good
after so much sitting. At first he strode along without a wish in his head, so
there was no occasion for the galoshes to show their magic power. On the
avenue he met an acquaintance of his, a young poet, who said he was
setting out tomorrow on a summer excursion.
“What, off again so soon?” said the clerk. “What a free and happy fellow
you are! You can fly away wherever you like, while the rest of us are
chained by the leg.”
“Chained only to a breadfruit tree,” the poet reminded him. “You don't
have to worry along from day to day, and when you get old they will give
you a pension.”
“You are better off, just the same,” the clerk said. “How agreeable it must
be to sit and write poetry. Everyone pays you compliments, and you are
your own master. Ah, you should see what it's like to devote your life to the
trivial details of the courts.”
