Gentlemen,
Thank you for the kind and thoughtful responses.
If a shoe does need stretching, it is not a question of when will it rain; One may use a bit of alcohol and glycerin with a shoe tree that does fit your foot and a slight pressure to the hinge of the tree over a period of a few days with a renewal of the liquid as it drys to stretch the shoe and keep its shape until it is possible for the tree to be fully deployed as intended. However, these sorts of actions are better performed by a cobbler with proper shoe stretchers and long experience. Sometimes a moisturizer will also help keep the leather supple. Too much alcohol in the mix will also cause the leather to become brittle by leaching out the natural products of the tanning process that maintain the stability of the material. One wants suppleness as well as adjustment. Hence the glycerine. Lanolin is also good, but like ambergris, has an ethical reason to question the usage.
It may be done, but a bit of patience with the shoe, for short periods, on carpet. In low stress moments, such as just wearing them while reading AAAC will help. But they should fit from the start.
(It has been said before, but it is my practice to condition the inside and outside of the shoes prior to wearing them; either with Bickmore's Bicks 4 or Lexol. Then, the outside of the shoe may and should be polished with a thin application of your preferred kind of product. It is usually a creme polish for my footwear: black, brown, burgundy, neutral, and navy blue as there are several items that may benefit from a navy polish that caused me to add it to my usual inventory. Anything very light tan should be polished with neutral, creme or paste as you prefer.)
Best practice seems to indicate the shoe should be allowed to rest between wearings, trees if you have them, in their boxes and bags (where supplied or available) on the sides in a rack with the lid of the box parallel to the walls. This is not how they store them in stores. But back in the day, when Clark's was still Clark's, they did exhaustive research into how they might best advise their customers to care for their products so that they would last longer and extend the useful life of their products.
Imagine the concept! How may we make a product better so a customer will not need to replace it? Those were the days, Gentlemen. Others also respected the value of the cutosomer's efforts in those times, and that is why one may have a suit of good quality that was made in 1940 that is still a suit of good quality to this day in service.
But, things change, people are trained to expect to disgard the fruits of their labors in quarterly cycles. Please forgive the digression.
Thank you again for the kind words, and good fortune and long and rewarding life to you all.
rudy