FASHION AND DEFORMITY IN THE FEET. 645 



ion ; torpor, malaise, and headache, will result. In this condition study 

 is a task instead of a pleasure ; the mind is weak, and the memory 

 can not retain imparted knowledge for any great length of time. 



In general terms, it may be laid down as a rule, that much effect- 

 ive study must not be expected from a pupil who is overfed, especially 

 if on rich and stimulating food. Let it not be understood that flesh- 

 meat should be excluded from the diet of the young. By no means ; 

 it is only its excess that is objected to. An overfed pupil is indolent, 

 intellectually, not because he may be so inclined willfully, but for the 

 reason that his digestive organs rob his brain, and his blood is charged 

 with effete matter ; in figurative phrase, the fire is slow because the 

 stove is filled with coal and choked with ashes. 



To recapitulate : The more abstruse studies — mathematics, science, 

 rhetoric — should be taken up during the morning session. The proper 

 time for the forenoon recess is at half -past ten. The lighter or concrete 

 subjects — reading, history, geography, writing, drawing, music — should 

 occupy the afternoon session, commencing preferably at two o'clock. 

 When it begins at half -past one, a recess of ten or fifteen minutes is 

 necessary, preferably the quarter-hour preceding three o'clock. No 

 out-door recess when the weather is inclement. For the younger pu- 

 pils, short lessons frequently repeated, exercising chiefly the imitative 

 faculty and the memory, should be the rule. 



FASHION AND DEFORMITY IN THE FEET. 



Bt ADA H. KEPLEY. 



« A WELL-FORMED foot," says Chapman in "The American 

 -L\- Drawing-Book," " is rarely to be met with in our day, from the 

 lamentable distortion it is doomed to endure by the fashion of our shoes 

 and boots. Instead of being allowed the same freedom as the fingers 

 to exercise the purposes for which Nature intended them, the toes are 

 cramped together, and are of little more value than if they were all in 

 one ; their joints enlarged, stiffened, and distorted, forced and packed 

 together, often overlapping one another in sad confusion, and wantonly 

 placed beyond the power of service. As for the little-toe and its 

 neighbor, in a shoe-deformed foot, they are usually thrust out of the 

 way altogether, as if considered supernumerary and useless, while all 

 the work is thrown upon the great-toe, although that too is scarcely 

 allowed working-room in its prison-house of leather. It is, therefore, 

 hopeless to look for a foot that has grown under the restraints of 

 leather, for perfection of form ; and hence the feet of children, al- 

 though less marked in their external anatomical development, present 

 the best models for the study and exercise of the pupil in drawing." 



