154 TH^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the United States infantry uniform is about the most sensible that 

 could be devised with regard to sanitary advantages, and nearly so in 

 respect to good taste, if Thorwaldsen's dictum holds good, that the 

 most becoming garments are those which adapt themselves to the 

 natural outlines of the human form. A jacket should be loose, with 

 wide but rather short sleeves, loose trousers, no waistcoat or drawers 

 in the summer season ; for small boys, short trousers without pockets, 

 but with broad leather braids along the seams. The comparative 

 advantages of waistbands or braces have been frequently controverted ; 

 at best it is only a question of choosing the lesser evil. A tight belt 

 is almost as injurious as a corset, while non-elastic suspenders may inter- 

 fere w^th the functions of the respiratory organs, and even occasion 

 stooping. For boys and slender-built men, with well-developed hips, 

 an elastic waistband is, on the whole, preferable ; corpulent persons can 

 not dispense with braces, for the plan of buttoning the breeches to the 

 jacket or waistband would amount to the same, by making the shoul- 

 ders support the weight of the lower garments. Tight breeches have, 

 fortunately, gone out of fashion ; likewise tight kid-gloves, which 

 were once de rigueur on every public promenade. 



But we all sin against our feet ; not one white man in ten thousand 

 wears shoes that are not more or less of a hindrance in walking, and 

 often a source of wretched discomfort. In the United States, England, 

 and Central Europe, it is wholly impossible to find a ready-made pair of 

 shoes to fit a normal human foot ; they are all too tight in proportion 

 to their length, every pair of them, even the United States army shoes 

 and the English " fast-walking brogans." Heels are nonsense ; there 

 is no excrescence on the sole of a well-formed human being, A man 

 can walk faster, more easily, and more gracefully, with level shoes, 

 with soles shaped like those of a slipper or an Indian moccasin. An 

 easy shoe should be heelless ; the upper leather soft and pliable ; 

 the sole of a No. 9 shoe at least four inches wide. But you can not 

 persuade a shoemaker to commit such heresies against the tenets of his 

 craft. Dio Lewis recommends paper patterns, corresponding to the 

 exact shape of the natural sole, but it is all in vain ; a compromise 

 between reason and dogma is the best you can attain by such means. 

 The only practicable plan is to get one pair of shoes made under your 

 personal supervision, and then stipulate for the necessary number of 

 i^rechQ facsimiles. The disciple of St. Crispin shrinks from the guilt 

 of the original sin, but connives at a copy ; a precedent will reconcile, 

 his conscience. 



For children there is a shorter expedient : let them go barefoot, at 

 least in-doors and all summer ; it will make them hardier and healthier. 

 Abernethy, Schrodt, Dr. Adair, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Claude 

 Bernard, agree on this point ; Dr. Cadogan thinks shoes and stockings 

 wholly useless, and John G. Whittier seems to share his opinion that a 

 barefoot boy is the happiest representative of the human species. " I 



