CHECKING AND BLINDERS. 



urally high and keeping them thus arbitrarily in a fixed 

 position, as I notice to be generally practiced, frequently all 

 day, while perhaps being rapidly driven or worked hard, must 

 be almost equally trying and painful for them to bear, and in 

 connection with the use of blinders is so much of a fault that it 

 cannot but be regarded as the greatest ingratitude and a crime 

 to so faithful and useful a servant. 



But custom, when 

 once fixed, no matter 

 how unreasonable or 

 cruel it may be, would 

 seem to transcend even 

 ^ the limits of reason and 

 // common sense. It 

 {/ may be mentioned that 

 even the prime-minis- 

 ter of England would 

 not have the door of 

 his house opened by 

 the hand of a woman in 

 Fig. 301.— Both methods of cheeking. answer to the call of a 



visitor ; it must be done by a liveried servant. Neither would 

 he appear in Fleet Street, London, without a regulation hat 

 on ; for so inexorable is the custom of society, that either would 

 be regarded sufficient to ostracise him socially. 



In China the so- 

 cial standing of a 

 lady is determined 

 by the extreme 

 smallness of her 

 feet, and to reduce 

 their size to the 

 smallest degree 

 possible, they are 

 subjected to the 



most cruel com- Fig. 302. — Long nails. Absurd Chinese custom, 



pression from infancy, which leaves her little more than a 

 helpless, hobbling cripple ; while the social standing of the 

 men is regulated by the length of the finger nails, which are 

 protected with the greatest assiduity, until they grow to a 



