Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/412

 habitants of the City of the Angels. "However," I said, as we drove into Puebla, "we shall see—we shall see."

A PLEA FOR BARE FEET.

I in the newspapers, not long ago, a piteous appeal from a clergyman in one of the metropolitan east-end parishes—in behalf of the poor, and especially of the little children—who had, as the reverend gentleman pathetically asserted, "scarcely a shoe or stocking to their poor little feet." Now, as I went barefooted myself when a "wee callant," as most Scottish lads and lasses do in the rural districts, whether their parents be rich or poor, or of the decent middle class, I bethought myself that much might be said on behalf of bare feet for young children, whether as regarded health, cleanliness, beauty, or economy.

The late Admiral Sir Charles Napier, once said in my hearing, that until he was twelve years of age, he never wore shoe or boot unless he went into a town; and that he was always glad to get back into the country again and take off the encumbrance from his feet and legs. Sir Charles was proud of his agility, and when close upon three score years and ten, could dance the Highland Fling and the Gillie Callum, with a grace and alertness, which men young enough to be his grandsons might have envied. He attributed much of his vigour to his early training, and to the fact that his feet had been left in his childhood and youth to the wholesome regimen of Scottish out-door life, to develop themselves as nature intended. Sir Charles Napier's experience was not peculiar, as many a sturdy Scot in every part of the world can testify. Every one who has travelled, either in the Highlands or the Lowlands, must have noticed the legs bare and shapely, and the neat ankles and feet of the lads, and especially of the lasses in the glens, and on the moors, and in the streets of the towns and villages; and if he were a reader of Robert Burns, have thought upon the lines, where he describes, in the guise of a rural maiden, the genius of Caledonia, without shoe or stocking, as a spirit should be.

Most children in rural Scotland are innocent of all patronage of the craft of St. Crispin, and love, as the immortal song says, to paidle in the burns that all over the mountain land are as plentiful as meadows in England.

"Paidle?" exclaims the English reader—"what is paidling?" Nothing, my friend, but paddling about in the water with bare feet—a very favourite diversion with the children of the glens and the mountains, and the recollection of which, when brought to mind in a company of Scotsmen by the singing of what may be called their national song, invariably arouses their enthusiasm, and fills them with patriotic emotion.

It can scarcely be denied that a bare foot and leg is a more picturesque object than a foot with an old, patched, down-trodden boot or shoe, and a dirty darned stocking. But for young people the bare foot has other than artistic and æsthetic recommendations, and much may be said in favour of its economy, and, what is far more important, of its healthfulness. Nothing in the back slums of English cities is more suggestive of squalor and misery than the unsuccessful attempts of the poor to be decently shod. A ragged coat or gown is less suggestive of extreme want than the forlorn boots and shoes of the children, and the filthiness of their stockings. And yet the poor of England must spend a considerable portion of their scanty earnings in the attempt to procure what custom, habit, use, and the general consent of society, agree to think indispensable pieces of attire. If it be estimated that the number of poor children under twelve years of age living in the rural districts and cities of England is three millions—a very moderate calculation—and that each child costs five shillings a year for such poor boots, shoes, and stockings as its parents can purchase, we have a sum of no less than seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum expended for a purpose which the children of the poor Scotch, as well as the Irish, neither think essential nor agreeable; and if the annual sum be multiplied by twelve, we have no less than nine millions of pounds sterling lost to the parents, without any real advantage to the children. Among the poorest of the poor, would it not be an advantage if the share contributed by them to this large total of wealth were expended in bread and butter, and the other food required, or if a little share of it went to pay the school fees? There is no greater reason in nature why the feet should be covered than the hands or the face; and a handsome foot is, as everybody knows, as pleasant an object as a well-shaped hand. And if the hand could only be cramped by the glove a quarter as much as the foot is cramped by the shoemakers, there would scarcely be a pretty hand left in all England, unless it belonged to some strong-minded person of either sex who was bold and firm enough to set fashion at defiance, and to refuse to outrage the simplicity of nature.

As regards health, grace, and agility, we have but to ask ourselves whence come corns and bunions, and how continually the sufferers from these painful callosities, are prevented by the torture they inflict, from taking the walking exercise which is alike the cheapest, the most healthful, and the most agreeable, to be convinced that of all the handicrafts that minister to the wants and the comforts of man, that of the shoemaker could be most easily and advantageously dispensed with. In England, among rich and poor alike, the normally shaped foot of an adult is very seldom to be seen, as any doctor or surgeon can testify out of his experience. In fact, the feet of most men and women are deformed, and the great toe forced from its natural position in a curve towards the little toe, which, in like