If shoes are worn, they should be easy across the toes, and of good form in the sole, hollow and arched at the waist, and snug at the heel—if boots, then the elastic the same as ladies’.
If the ankles are weak, a surgeon should be consulted without delay. I have benefited many children by making an elastic lace boot, which, from the support it affords, compressing the muscles of the foot, and by bearing well up by means of a spring under the arch of the foot, has prevented lameness, and restored the feet and ankles to their natural form.
GENTLEMEN’S BOOTS AND SHOES.
The foregoing remarks on ladies’ boots, apply equally to gentlemen’s half-boots, the same materials being used for dress or summer walking; they need, therefore, only to be referred to in their proper place, and the remarks and illustrations, pages 105-108, will convey all that is necessary to know of the proper shape and true principles of fitting, sufficient length, straightness of form, and the room in the right place, being the chief points to be attended to.
Shoes are now very little worn; boots of some kind or other being the general wear. At present, says the author of “The Shoemaker,” we are emphatically a booted people; so are the French and the Americans; the fashion goes onward with the great progress of civilization; it is as it were its very sign. Homer has applied to his own far-famous countrymen, the epithet of the well-booted Greeks, a somewhat singular coincidence at first sight, though doubtless he meant no more than some sort of stiff leg-covering, as a protection necessary to the warriors of whom he sang, and bearing no likeness to the gay delicate boot of later times.
The fame of the English in this way is not, however, altogether new; though from what the present generation must have observed since the introduction of the Wellington, it may seem to be otherwise. We were, it appears, a booted people before, or at least were so considered.
“I will amaze my countrymen,” said Gondemar, Spanish ambassador, to the court of James I., “by letting them know on my return that all London is booted, and apparently ready to walk out of town.” The reflection certainly is curious; the old poets and heroes were booted, and the hero of Waterloo has given as proud a distinction to our own boot. But then people in past days, when they had their boots on, were thought to look prepared for a journey, whereas, at present, the boot is almost as domestic a thing as the slipper. We go to the ballroom in it, the theatre, the houses of parliament, and even royalty itself is approached in the boots!
The Wellington is unquestionably the most gentlemanly thing of its kind, and all the attempts of the Bluchers, Alberts, Clarences, Cambridges, and such like, to rival it, most signally fail. Its well-known character for style, wear, and facility of repair, has stamped it the boot of the present day.
A good Wellington boot of the softest calf-leather, the sole moderately thick, the waist hollow and well-arched, firm and yet flexible, cut to go on without dragging all your might with boothooks, and made with an intermediate sole of felt to prevent creaking, is the best boot for general wear that can be made.
The varnished or patent leather Wellington, is a handsome article of the same class, and is generally made with a tongue, the legs being of colored morocco leather. It is now brought to a great state of perfection, and our bootclosers are the most perfect in the matter of fancy-closing and stabbing, in Europe.