Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/314

300 I stepped into a blacksmith's shop to see the smith shoe a donkey. Near the anvil was a pair of leather shoes brought in to be shod. The number and size of the nails driven into the soles and heels were perfectly wonderful. I am sure they would weigh as much as the four iron shoes the smith was nailing to the donkey's hoofs. The effect of wearing such heavy shoes from youth up is as perceptible in the labourer's gait as the wearing of heavy iron armour must have been in the walk and carriage of the knights of old. In the first place, there is no spring or elasticity to a pair of shoes thus bottomed with iron. They do not shed mud by the motion of the foot. Then, being so thick and broad soled, they inevitably interfere with each other if lifted perpendicularly. So the wearer at every step describes the segment of a circle with his foot. This motion brings his knees together, like the joints of a pair of compasses. And the habit becomes a second nature to him, and he wears it all his life long. You will not see one English farm-labourer in ten lift his foot and set it down perpendicularly, or in a direct line with his knee. So you may always recognize him, though walking many rods before you, by this peculiar swinging gait. Adding to such shoes the heavy agricultural implements he wields, he has to run the race of labour with our American farming-men so heavily-weighted