AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 673 



Boots brings me to side-walks, which will then be of iron. 

 There will then be no need of lofty heels ; you will walk noise- 

 lessly; you will throw no mud upon your trousers. How this 

 last named evil will be avoided depends on another improvement 

 which I shall not here describe. Eut I may say that I, for several 

 years, succeeded in getting boots made that never threw mud 

 upon my legs. It was with difficulty that I drilled one bootmaker. 

 Eut as I went abroad for some years, and could not find him after 

 my return, I have not felt willing to undertake the labor over 

 again ; so I get my legs muddy, until I can afford to di-ill another 

 practical man to pay some attention to a theorist. 



What turned my attention to this improvement was a fact 

 which I observed on my reflections upon it. A fellow student 

 of mine had a stiff" knee; his stiff" leg got muddied as other legs 

 did, in the rainy season in London; but his sound leg was always 

 clean. I considered whether a stiff" leg was better in any re- 

 spect than a leg as nature made it; or whether the boots were 

 wrong. Having implicit faith in nature, and a strong prejudice 

 against bootmakers, on account of their distortions of the feet. 

 I deemed it improbable that nature had made an arrangement 

 that a stiff" knee could improve; so I studied into the anatomical 

 and mechanical principles of the matter, and designed a foot, 

 made lasts myself, and got a pair of boots made that threw no 

 mud, and which enabled me to walk a fifth farther in a day than 

 I could walk in common boots. 



I would also say respecting carriages as I say respecting boots, 

 that it is improbable that nature has so arranged that mud and 

 dust are necessary to be borne. The refined taste that exists in 

 cultivated minds is presumptive evidence of the existence in na- 

 ture of the means of satisfying that taste; and if I did not know 

 by scientific investigation, that locomotion without dirt is attain- 

 able at moderate cost, if not at less cost than the barbarous dirty 

 system, I should still have fiiith that man is not made to endure 

 such evil forever, but has before him the prospect of all the ex- 

 cellence that his taste requires, in locomotion as well as in other 

 matters. 



[Am, Inst.] 43 



