DISSERTATION ON FELT.

Evening Star, Issue 18034, 31 July 1922, Page 9

DISSERTATION ON FELT.

NO MORE RHAPSODIES. The twentieth century does not /1 Into rhapsodies over the lower extremal m of a human being (says a writer in Ije Melbourne ‘ Age ’); but there was m I eriod in the history of humanity when ■ reek sculpture immortalised in marble the beauty and the contour of the human dot. It was a sandal-wearing age which ah j wed the foot to develop in its own way, and no human form was considered beautiful unless the feet could also lay claim to healthful and perfect shapeliness. Poets have not scorned to make the human foot the subject of their poetical skill, and. we find such lines as—

Come, and trip it as you go, On the light fantastic toe. While n poet dealing with the more demure type of womanhood presents a lovely picture of old-world maidenhood when he says i

Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out

There is also a beautiful reference to the human foot in the prose poetry of the Old Testament, which constitutes the voicing of a sentiment solely dependent on the needs of the people from whose hearts the cry was wrung. In these days of motors, aeroplanes, and wireless it needs a little imagination to picture an age when human feet were almost the sole agents which brought news from distant lands. In many instances messengers were; despatched to the high places of the district, from which they could reconnoitre and hasten with the tidings, good or ill. Human leet can be very expressive of human emotion, and the waiting populace, reading good tidings in the blithe and hurrying steps, cried: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” The sentiment is old-world, but the language is a product of the greatest literary age in the history of England, with which the translation of the Bible was contemporaneous. Have you ever noticed how expressive feet can. be as you listen to the footfalls of the various people you know? They tell their own stories of oheoriness or grouch, inconsequence or reliability, energy or the reverse. Vigorous youth and decrepit ago both betray themselves by the footstep, which tells a very intelligible story it we care to listen. Facetious comments are for ever being made on the unhappy floor walker at night, who is always accompanied by the wails of a refractory infant, and the sympathy expended on the man whose slippers meet him at the door is proverbial. On the other hand, there is the youth who deservedly earns the glares oi disapproval levelled at his unconscious head as he obtrudes his not over small feet well into the centre of the floor while he reclines in the best chair at ease, until someone falling over them causes him to lazily withdraw them to a less prominent and public position. Little love stories are sometimes told surreptitiously by the means of toe tapping beneath the table, which, furthermore, is often used as a system of telebetween the host and hostess when cordiality invites a second helping from that portion of the menu which is, in the language of restaurants, already “ off.” A story is told of a toe-tapping wife whose signals grew more insistent as her husband grew more cordial in his invitations to his guest to have more wine. The guest, however, declined, and 1 steadily grew more emphatic, over his refusal. On his departure the disconcerted lady found the reason for the situation—she had tapped the wrong foot. The foot may be expressive of contempt, and 1 call forth a protest like that of Shylock, who, when repulsing the merchant’s request for money, cried: “You that did void your rheum'upon my beard, and foot me like a stranger cur over your threshold.”

Or it may as an effective means of punishment undergo tortures revolting to the twentieth-century mind 1 . An old Eastern custom was to bindi the miserable culprit securely, and then beat the soles of Ins feet with canes until fainting or death put an end to his sufferings. Some tribes among the North. American Indians slit the feet of their captives to prevent them escaping—a very effectual method of imprisonment indeed. It is a curious fact that the North American Indian walks with his toes straight to the front. Europeans walk heels together and toes apart; therefore it becomes an easy matter, where evidence is needed as to the identity of the owner of footprints, to ascertain whether made by an Indian or a white man.

j lie custom of wearing shoes, although early history, made headway very slowly, but nevertheless evolved l into quaint and abnormal footwear. The sterner sex of a bygone period proved their sla-very to fashion by wearing narrow-toed shoes just as ludicrous and unserviceable in their own way as the slender heeis ahected by the uitra-fashionaible ladies of to-day. It was a question of toes, then, instead of heels, and at the beginning of the fourteenth century bflio long points were so pronounced that they bad to be fastened) to the wearer’s knee to allow of any freedom of movement. It was not till the seventeenth century that high heels for ladies’ shoes came into vogue, and in those interesting dbys both shoes were made from uhe one foot. It was well into the nineteenth century before a right and a left slice conOiituted the pair. It is mainly to the shoes that humanity can attribute all its deformities as regards feet, and, with the malfonmng influence of' unserviceable footwear the lower extremities of men and women are growing less and loss beautiful, and more ui like the sculptured feet which immortalise in marble the beauties of another age than oura

■ In Eastern lands, where journeys were mads chiefly on foot, the feet received the first attention on the arrival of a guest at a host’s house. As sandals were the only protection for the feet, it became a necessary thing for the host to hasten with water with which to wash the feet of the footsore visitor. It was sinip.y an act of common courtesy and hospitality, such as we extend to a. modern visitor when we refresh him or her- with a cup of tea or coffee.

Motors, flying machines, ami the wonders of electricity all make it leas necessary for humanity to use its feet for locomotion. These factors successfully obscure to a great extent the primary and the natural use of the human foot. “Shanks's ponies ’’ have been good servants to humanity in the past, and are still the wonderful examples of mechanism as of old. It is only when misfortune comes to those prosaic and despised' members of ours that the true purpose and beauty of them are revealed l . Science describes the human foot as a beautiful piece of flesh and' blood mechanism, upon which the body gains a perfect balance and freedom of movement. The poet does not hesitate to endow his personification of the Almighty with so perfect a creation, and, clothing his thoughts in the beautiful garments of poesy, speaks of “ the shining footprints of his Deity.”