Note: First published in Scribner's, March 1912.

Synopsis: The narrator always orders boots from the Gessler brothers who makes the very best. The brothers grow old and one of them dies. The narrator orders another pair from the elderly Mr. Gessler, and picks them up, finding them splendid, but is shocked to hear just a week later that Gessler died -- he is told that Gessler had such a single-minded devotion to making shoes that he didn't advertise, didn't make money, hardly slept, and starved to death over that final pair.