Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/674

656 the ideal lady's foot of to-day; narrowness, shortness, and littleness are the qualities that go to make it up; and there are women, if we may believe what is said in the newspapers, who to secure a narrow foot are willing to have the little-toe ruined.

Strange as it is, the American women, while cramping the feet, deny it. The Chinese are more logical. They distort and cripple the feminine foot to a much greater degree, and then sing its praises. Its favorite name, the "golden lily," is well known.

Many of the peculiar ailments under which women pass their days in invalidism, unhappy and miserable themselves and making others unhappy, would vanish or be greatly mitigated if they would but apply common sense to the selection of their shoes. It is very hard to persuade them to reform their habits on this point, but I have never known any woman who had learned the new comfort to go back to the old habit.

No exercise is so healthful and delightful as walking, yet few women can endure it. For to walk in their ordinary shoes is one of the most exhausting labors women can attempt. There is no doubt that by a thorough and careful system of pedestrianism many women would become robust, though now half-invalids. I know of one who walked on an average two or three miles a day, and would spend an hour or two cutting brush, saplings, and small trees, lopping off limbs, hauling brush to gullies and into heaps, and climbing fences. Her garments were warm and loose, her shoes "stogies," big, broad, and low-heeled. Health came as a reward. Another case is of a lady who is a commercial traveler in a large Western State. Her health broke with indoor confinement at school-teaching and book-keeping, and she was advised to try the road, which she did, as agent for a sash, door, and blind factory, and afterward for a paint, oil, and glass establishment. She never misses a day nor a train, dresses feet and body for comfort, is hearty and well, and earns a large salary.

The feet not only look smaller, but really become so in tight, high-heeled shoes, in consequence of a reduction of the blood-supply. We are told of a Frenchman who invented an apparatus for reducing the size of the nose, and it consisted only of a spring which cut off the supply of blood to the organ. A paper was read at a recent health congress in Switzerland, calling attention to a French style of shoe, which, the author remarked, gave the foot a "hoof-like" appearance. This style is much worn here, and produces a clumping, ungraceful jolt in the gait, tending to induce destructive spinal vibrations.

Probably the worst and most lasting injuries to the foot are produced during childhood, when the bones and cartilages are tender, and