have to do is to be handsomely and comfortably shod, and still as to their feet be far below the standard of size with which their foreign sisters step complacently on our shores.

Much has been said regarding the late barefaced way in which bogus, non-bogus, exhausted, ruined, impecunious foreigners have purchased American girls with their bogus or non-bogus, but always impecunious, offers of rank, and the humiliating phase of American girls being willing to transfer themselves for this titular vanity, when it is notorious that in no country has woman, whether as child, girl, or matron, so high a place as in this in chivalric love and respect. But, whereas the girls so disposing of themselves are palpably only "pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw," sufficient credit has not been awarded to their captors for the good taste which they have evinced, their sole motive having been deemed mercenary. But let us look for a moment at the thing in the glass of fashion, by which to judge the mold of form, and see if we have done these foreigners the fullest justice. Be they real or spurious, lords or lordlings, counts or bogus counts, it will be seen upon scrutiny that they have an eye for other things besides the main chance.

The action of these girls has been characterized as outrageous from the point of view of morals. But we shall not be so severe in our thoughts, remembering that, for the most part, in the feminine mind, the mere practice, without the religious theory of matrimony, covers, like charity, a multitude of sins. We characterize it as unwise, from the fact that in America the wife holds the highest position which she has yet attained. We confess, however, that if we were a count or bogus count, or a needy foreigner of any sort, that, as we should not be expected to have any morals, we should be most happy to accept in marriage any rich American girl who is at the same time handsome and all that thousands of American girls are otherwise in delectability, and that is just what these men are doing. One

of them must be very forlorn indeed to demand only money for his rank. He must, as a general rule, have beauty, grace, vivacity, manners, education, or else the money-bags must be very heavy, and perhaps they will not even then suffice to tip the scale. It is only a very dilapidated American old maid who has to pay an inordinately high price for a poor specimen of a count like a barber. So we argue that great injustice has been done to the motives and taste of these foreigners, and impliedly to the charms of the American girls whom they preferably seek. They have a keen appreciation of the personal charms of these girls. With their sublime egotism, they only want the earth, . and they get it.

Granting the brightness, vivacity, information, tact, grace, and all other attractive attributes of the girls, back of these, however, there must still be something in their physical characteristics which makes them so attractive to foreigners, for these qualities do not of themselves ever prove most powerful in sexual selection. The main attraction is through that principle which nature is continually manifesting as operative among human beings,-the affinity of opposites. Frederic the Great's regiment of giants left progeny of huge size at Potsdam, but we do not hear that the race has been maintained. If every tall man and tall woman, and similarly of the short of both sexes, should come together by elective affinity in marriage, what would become of the human race as we know it, even within the span of a hundred years? It is the delicacy of the traits of the American woman which attracts the average foreigner. After the whopping big feet and hands of many foreign women, especially of Englishwomen, it is delightful to see the sylph-like delicacy of the sex in America as to their extremities. And the whole person of the American girl partakes of this delicacy of physical traits, and, coupled with mental attributes, represents what foreigners find so attractive in her. Therefore, her reflec

tion, as viewed in the foreign glass of fashion, which she has chosen to judge of her mold of form, being so satisfactory, it is folly for her to seek to exaggerate one of her physical traits which already verges upon excess.

The lowest type of foot is that of the negro. Its lowness is constituted by the simian flatness of the instep, the hollow of the foot being obliterated. The calcaneum, or heel-bone, standing at a considerable angle from the vertical, toward the rear, as a consequence lowers the arch of the instep. Instead of the foot as a whole being a high arch, it becomes none at all, from the fact that one of its abutments is thrown far away from the centre. In the highest type of foot the instep rises in a swelling arch. This trait may, however, like any other, be excessive. Then it becomes unsightly, and, reaching the extremest point, is a deformity. We have known a person who had a foot so short and an instep so high as to make the effect club-footed, and he (for it was a man) could not walk with ease. The Arab's test of elegance and refinement in a foot, that water will flow under its hollow, shows that early in the history of the human race anatomical differences in its types were recognized. The Arabs, as a conquering race, were very early thrown in contact with the negro in Africa, and their own Eastern elegance of extremities must have struck them as in strange contrast with the negro's rudeness of form of the same parts.

It should be axiomatic that nothing, except face and hands, can be so aristocratic as a well-dressed, shapely foot; nothing so plebeian as an ill-dressed, clumsy one; and nothing more vulgar than any foot in a shoe manifestly too tight.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE COSMETIC CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE FEET.

'HE civilized foot presents one of the best proofs of the

THE

correctness of the theory, that it takes a vastly longer time to affect the congenital features of a structure than to affect the adult form of them. It must be remembered that, what we call civilization has endured for only a few hundred years, and that it is only during this comparatively brief period in the history of man that the foot has been unduly constrained. Going back to the period when statuary brings us face to face with the general condition of the foot in ancient times, we find that the great toe stood somewhat outward, instead of, as now, standing straight forward, or somewhat inward, which is, perhaps, the most common modern position of the member. Children of civilization, when first born, exhibit this type of foot, but, whether or not they subsequently go barefoot, later in life exhibit one of the two other types. This shows, what has been proved in many other ways in connection with animal life, that through continuous modification of function on definite lines, the animal, when first born, may not show any change in structure, although, at a later period of the individual's life, the long-latent impression may come into visible existence.

Great absurdities are uttered regarding feet. We have known a foot to be called handsome because it was inordinately small, when it had not a single handsome attribute, the one specially praised being so much in excess as to amount to a defect. A foot, to be really beautiful, must have a fine instep, perfectly straight and individually symmetrical toes; the nails of rose-pearly, not yellowish, tint; heel of gently outward curvature; and, in general contour, be softly rounding and delicately tinted with a rosy