Keep Your Shoes "New"

1902

Some people always buy the most expensive footwear, and always manage to look ill shod. Others haunt bargain counters and wear unpretentious shoemaker's shoes, and somehow the boot toe peeping from beneath their skirt is always of the neatest.

All boots, shoes and slippers intended for ordinary wear should be kept on their tree when not in use, and whenever the walking boots get damp, they must be rubbed with vaseline as soon as they are taken off, first, however, removing the mud and afterward padding them with soft linen rags or paper. This will preserve their shape and prevent shrinkage. Shoe polish should be used sparingly, and only after the dust has been wiped off, for more shoes are destroyed by the reckless use of polish than is generally supposed.

A Comb In the Claw

1907

Many birds possess a useful comb in the claw of the middle toe of the foot. This has been noticed in owls, nightjars, herons, bitterns, cormorants, gannets, etc.

It has been explained as a means of holding the prey securely. The comb is sometimes replaced by a curved blade with teeth, which runs along the inner side of the claw. Such a blade is found in razorbills, wild ducks, gulls, starlings and many other birds.

Where a comb is required the inner edge of this blade becomes divided into teeth. Young nightjars or goatsuckers have only the blade, but old ones have a well developed comb.

Bowlegged Fellows Are Not Likely to Face Poverty

1919

Bad Luck for Turn-In Toes

There is an old saying that a bandy legged boy will never lack warm stockings, meaning that he will never be in want of money, so that folk whose friends are apt to be rude about their manner of walking may find consolation therein, says a writer in London Answers.

On the other hand, persons who walk in a fashion which quickly wears down their heels are likely one day to be in need of cash, while knock-kneed folk, though they have the ability to get wealth, have not the power to attract love — so it is said.

A long stride and a swinging walk are good — they imply that there may be ups and downs, but good fortune will never get far away, and will come out on top eventually.

Bad luck follows in the train of those who habitually turn in their toes, however, and an ancient adage has it that the man who always walks on the tips of his toes is likely to end his days in prison.

So watch your step!

Why a Cat Lights on Its Feet

1896

An experimenter recently undertook to discover why a cat invariably fell on its feet. He finds that a cat always falls on its feet providing it has a distance of a yard to fall in and enable to make a half turn in the air, so as get its feet undermost. It holds its paws vertically and manages to preserve this position during the rest of its fall, in spite of the initial movement of rotation taken by its body.

The mechanical explanation is simply that the animal, by thrusting forward its left limb, shifts the center of gravity of the whole body so as to make revolve upon the axis of the spine until the feet reach the ground. Moreover, a cat does not hurt itself by all from a height, not because it invariably falls on its feet, but because the structure of a cat's back and spine is extremely flexible. The muscles of its legs are extraordinary strong and numerous, and, further, it has elastic pads or cushions consisting of a mass of fibrous tissue and fat on all its feet, seven in each forepaw and five in each hind paw. — Chicago News.

The Beauty of the Feet and Dancing

New York, July 1914

Feet Underestimated, Says Mrs. Vlissengen, Patron of Dancing

"God made feet as well as hands, the devil had nothing to do with them," declared Mrs. Jean Vlissengen, who arrived yesterday from Chicago.

Mrs. Vlissengen put on the pageant which was intended as the culmination of the recent Federation of Women's Clubs in Chicago, but which ended in an investigation by the Chicago police. She indignantly denies, however that the girls were required to wear tights, only the Apollo's costume — or lack of it — was criticized.

"The foot is just as expressive as the hand," she continued. "The Greeks understood this, but we have allowed ourselves to be deprived of its beauty through silly conventions."

Two of the girls who took part in the Chicago pageant, Misses Patsy Shelley said to be a descendant of the poet, and Roschen Turck-Baker, the niece of a well-known Chicago physician will arrive later and do ballroom dancing. Both are 16 years old, and have received all their training from Mrs. Vlissengen. They do no modern dances.

"I have never received any money for my work with these girls," she said. "I wish merely to raise dancing to its proper place among the arts. So I take two or three promising girls a year and train them. I gave Isadora Duncan all her training." — New York Sun.

Sleeping With Your Feet Toward the Equator

1884

Dr. J. S. Wright, professor of operative and clinical surgery in the Long Island college hospital, does not think that health is promoted by sleeping with the feet to the equator. He says the subject has never been treated in medical lectures, and he never heard it discussed in any scientific body. He never knew of any hospital where attention was paid to the theory in the arrangement of the beds.

Dr. McCorkle, professor of matoria medica and therapeutics, also of the Long Island college hospital, says he believes the theory of placing the bed north and south is more believed in by the laity than by the medical profession; that he has never tried it himself nor seen it tried by anybody.

Dr. Merzbach, of the same hospital, does not believe in the theory. A venerable physician of New York says: "My opinion is that it is a piece of nonsense worthy of some superstitious old lady. I would rank it with fortune-telling and table-tipping. Some people believe in them. Some people derive benefit from having charms about their persons, and there is no particular harm in their wearing charms if they see fit. I have heard of a man who carried a horse chestnut in his pocket as a preventive of hemorrhoids. He declared that whenever he lost his horse chestnut the disease returned. Yet I never heard of any physician prescribing that mode of cure for hemorrhoids.

"There is no end to the cures that may be worked by imagination. Bulwer hits off this thought capitally when he makes Pisistratus Caxton say: 'A saffron bag worn at the pit of the stomach is a great cure. Oh, foolish boy, it is not the saffron bag, but the belief in the saffron bag. Apply belief to the center of the nerves and all will be well.' So I say that this bed theory is a sort of saffron bag. While I am of the opinion that it is nonsense, and old women's cackle and empiric drivel, I have no doubt people may honestly believe in it and bear testimony to its worth. It is easily tried; it does not cost any money. It will do about as much good as a dose of sweetened water, such as a doctor often gives to people who think they must have something when they don't need anything."

The above opinions will no doubt prove of interest to those people whose rooms are so arranged that they cannot sleep with their heads to the north.

—The Atchison Globe, Atchison, Kansas, Aug. 3, 1884.