THE MODERATE PACE.
Here the weight of the body is advanced from the heel to the ball of the foot; the toes are less turned out; and it is no longer the toe, but the ball of the foot, which first touches and last leaves the ground; its outer edge, or the ball of the little toe, first breaking the descent of the foot, and its inner edge, or the ball of the great toe, last projecting the weight—([Plate VIII.] figs. 3 and 4). Thus, in this step, less of the foot may be said actively to cover the ground; and this adoption of nearer and stronger points of support and action is essential to the increased quickness and exertion of the pace.
The mechanism of this pace has not been sufficiently attended to. People pass from the march to the quick pace they know not how; and hence all the awkwardness and embarrassment of their walk when their pace becomes moderate, and the misery they endure when this pace has to be performed by them, unaccompanied, up the middle of a long and well-lighted room, where the eyes of a brilliant assembly are exclusively directed to them. Let those who have felt this but attend to what we have here said: the motion of the arms and of every other part depends on it.
THE QUICK PACE.
Here, the weight of the body is advanced from the heel to the toes; the toes are least turned out; and still nearer and stronger points of support and action are chosen. The outer edge of the heel first touches the ground, and the sole of the foot projects the weight.
These are essential to the increased quickness of this pace—([Plate VIII.] figs. 5 and 6); and it is important to remark, as to all these paces, that the weight is successively more thrown forward, and the toes are successively less turned out. In the grandest form of the march, the toes, as we have seen, are, in the posterior foot, though but for a moment, even thrown backwards; in the moderate pace, they have an intermediate direction; and in the quick pace, they are thrown more directly forward, as in the six figures of [Plate VIII.]
It is this direction of the toes, and still more the nearer and stronger points of support and action, namely, the heel and sole of the foot, which are essential to the quick pace so universally practised, but which, together with the great inclination of the body, being ridiculously transferred to the moderate pace, make unfortunate people look so awkward, as we shall now explain. The time of the moderate pace is, as it were, filled up by the more complicated process of the step—by the gradual and easy breaking of the descent of the foot on its outer edge, or the ball of the little toe, by the deliberate positing of the foot, by its equally gradual and easy projection from its inner edge, or the ball of the great toe. The quick pace, if its time be lengthened, has no such filling up: the man stumps at once down on his heel, and could rise instantly from his sole, but finds that, to fill up his time, he must pause an instant; he feels he should do something, and does not know what; his hands suffer the same momentary paralysis as his feet; he gradually becomes confused and embarrassed: deeply sensible of this, he at last exhibits it externally; a smile or a titter arises, though people do not well know at what, but, in short, the man has walked like a clown, because the mechanism of his step has not filled up its time, or answered its purpose.
I trust that the mechanism and time of the three paces are here simply, clearly, and impressively described. The following is the more imperfect, but still useful, military description, with its words of command:—