xx FEET 347 



badly-shaped boots, and in whom, consequently, the play of 

 the ankle, feet, and toes is lost, have generally small and 

 shapeless legs and wasted calves, and walk as if on stilts, with 

 a swinging motion from the hips. Our infantry soldiers also 

 suffer much in the same manner, the regulation boots in use 

 in the service being exceedingly ill-adapted for the develop- 

 ment of the feet. Much injury to the general health the 

 necessary consequence of any impediment to freedom of bodily 

 exercise must also be attributed to this cause. Since some 

 of the leading shoemakers have ventured to deviate a little 

 from the conventional shape, those persons who can afford to 

 be specially fitted are better off as a rule than the majority of 

 poorer people, who, although caring less for appearance, and 

 being more dependent for their livelihood upon the physical 

 welfare of their bodies, are obliged to wear ready-made shoes 

 of the form that an inexorable custom has prescribed. 



The changes that a foot has to undergo in order to adapt 

 itself to the ordinary shape of a shoe could probably not be 

 effected unless commenced at an early period, when it is young 

 and capable of being gradually moulded into the required 

 form. 



The English mother or nurse who thrusts the tender feet 

 of a young child into stiff, unyielding, pointed shoes or boots, 

 often regardless of the essential difference in form of right and 

 left, at a time when freedom is especially needed for their 

 proper growth an^l development, is the exact counterpart of 

 the Chinook Indian woman, applying her bandages and boards 

 to the opposite end of her baby's body, only with considerably 

 less excuse ; for a distorted head apparently less affects health 

 and comfort than cramped and misshapen feet, and was also 

 esteemed of more vital importance to preferment in Chinook 

 society. Any one who recollects the boots of the late Lord 

 Palmerston will be reminded that a wide expanse of shoe 

 leather is in this country, even during the prevalence of 

 an opposite fashion, quite compatible with the attainment 

 of the highest political and social eminence. 



No sensible person can really suppose that there is any- 

 thing in itself ugly, or even unsightly, in the form of a 

 perfect human foot ; and yet all attempts to construct shoes 



