TOLD BY THE FEET.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17742, 19 April 1923, Page 12

TOLD BY THE FEET.

Tliere is no part of the human anatomy which more surely betrays the character of the individual than the feet (writes Mrs E"'a Hep worth Dixon in the "Westminster Gazette"). It is amazing what ambitions, what pride, what slovenliness, what caution, what arrogance, what timidity, may be found in those extremities, especially those or women. 'i"ey '•givt*' their owners "away" in most uncompromising lasiuon, particularly when tr.eir possessors are oft their guard. \ve all kuuiv a woman, occupying a great position, who, uoivn to tne SKirt's is ud pomp, power, and modisimess. Her lints ana gowns and jewe's come from tlie Hue ue la l'aix, sne has a nice instinct for fashion, yet she betrays her iLidasiuess by tne position of her leet, which are always crossed and tui'ned inwards under her chair. The youngest debutante on the fringe of tne group shows her breeding, by the carelessness and grace of the pose of her siim, arched leet. A cyiucai sidelight on terrestrial ambitions are the' feet — they aro always feminine —which have definitely, as the French say, "abdicated." Stout soles, squat heels, nlonstrous shapes of bulging leather; what a comment on the finality of human desires, of the extinction of joy and hope, of pride and assurance. There: are thousands of elderly persons who will never "abdicate" while they haivo breadth, and you may see them, poor souls, enduring tortures, tottering, so to speak, on prodigiously' hich Louis XV. heels, to the silent tomb. The high heel, to be sure, sometimes deposits them there before due but we must all bo w before tnese veterans of the social battlefield, whose motto is "The Old Guard Never surrenders," and wbo would sooner die! than be relegated to the sad companv of the frumps. Watch, abroad, a procession of feet coming out of a! place of eTtt-prtainment. Your Englishman, if he is properly turned-out. will ho unmistakable in a collection of French, American, Italian, Dutch, or Belgian boots and this, not onlv from' the shape of his foot, hut also bv the way he plants it on the earth as if, forsooth, this planet belonged to him.