TAKE CARE OF YOUR FEET.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

TAKE CARE OF YOUR FEET.

IF YOU WEAR THE RIGHT HOSIERY AND SHOES AND KEEP THEM RIGHT YOU WILL BE HAPPY.

If the microbes that accumulate on a shoe in its journeyings and develop in its use were visible .to the naked eye, what a show it would be! The variety and number would make a microscopic menagerie. And yet we wear the same shoes* outdoors and indoors, day in and day out, so long as they hold together. The older they are the more we cling to them.

Who would think of living in a garment to the extent shoes are lived in, and yet what garment is so soiled as shoes?

A good 'shine' will keep the outside of shoes looking well. It should be the business of the wearer to see that shoes are frequently exposed to sun and air.

Perfectly clean hosiery should be worn. This can scarcely be changed too often. The ils that flesh is Heir to would be mightily lessened if men and women ■were as careful, as fastidious, about their footwear as they are about their hats or collars. Rheumatism and many other ailments would decrease, if not disappear. Nerves would quickly right themselves and sing happy songs to the senses gene* rally, instead of wailing out tiresome misereres, if feet were encased in clean coverings at all times.

Who knows the shape of a perfect foot? It is recorded of an artist that he passed upon 8,000 feet to find a model to work from when he wanted to restore a Venus, yet every girl might have perfect feet ifshe cared for them properly.

'Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy' applies in clothing the feet as well as the rest of the body.

.Buy a shoe snug enough to hold the heel and instep without slipping and long enough to afford spring and play with the rise and fall of the feet in locomotion.

Proper walking should be taught in school and acquired early in life.

Orientals are more reformed about- their shoes than we progressive Westerners are The Japanese do not wear the same shoes indoors and outdoors. The Mahommedans consider it a defilement to enter the mosque in shoes worn outside. Peasants in France slip their sabots from their feet at the threshold and walk about the room en chausettes if an errand takes them inside the house.

I have searched far and wide in this country for real house shoes, such as are worn as a matter of course in Germany and France. Our maid of all work clicks or clumps about in tight horrors,. racking the nerves at every step, or, if silence is insisted on, she wears 'any old thing,' and she is often nervous and cross from exposure and fatigue "attendant upon ill-fitting, microbe-filled old shoes.

It is said that Frenchwomen are the best shod women in the. world. It is good to look upon a genuine bonne—the 'good woman of the house'—on whom the general comfort of the house depends. She looks so comfortable! She wears such comfortable clothes, such comfortable shoes. Her steps are as noiseless as if she walked on velvet—and, indeed, . her shoes are often of velvet, with felt or leather soles. If she steps outdoors the sabots at the door are slipped into and taken off again on her return.— New Tork HerOd.