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The most honored shoe is the Pope's mula, or slipper, with its embroidered cross, which the haughtiest monarchs as the humblest pilgrims have stooped to kiss. When a cardinal is elected to fill the vacant see of Peter, his recent equals proceed at once to pay him this honor, and kneel to kiss the Papal slipper.

these high heels-the natural equilibrium being lost, | club feet might be so disguised without attracting attenand a constant strain of all the muscles being required to tion. keep the balance, resulting in a most disastrous disarrangement of the vital and important organs. A new disease has appeared within the past ten or fifteen years, since the arrival of the high heels, which has been traced to their malign influence. Drs. Derby and Agnew, two of our most distinguished oculists, refuse to treat ladies who persist in wearing high-heeled shoes, for any affection of the eye.

Among the peasants of France, Holland, Belgium and Germany, heavy wooden shoes, called "sabots," are (and have been worn for many centuries. The fashioning of these heavy and fatiguing shoes occupies most of the population in a certain district in Brittany, in the north of France. The sabot-makers live in the forests in little camps, and their tools are few and simple. An ax to cut down the trees, a saw to cut the wood into proper lengths, a large drill, a gouge and a plane, are all that is necessary to him. The inside of a sabot is scooped out, and then rubbed smooth, the outside is planed and sometimes painted black, though they are more commonly of the natural color of the wood. In journeying through that wild and beautiful country it is a pleasant thing to come upon the cabin of a sabot-maker, deep embowered in the forest.

Often the whole family will be found at work, the mother polishing the inside of the sabot, the sons sawing the wood into proper lengths, while the father sits and drills out the long white shavings, which the baby snatches with delight. They are often its only playthings, poor little Breton baby.

The moccasin of the Indians is one of the most comfortable of shoes that it is possible to find. Those who live in cold latitudes wear high moccasins, reaching to the knee, made of heavy, soft deerskin. These moccasins are much used by Canadian and Maine hunters, and are the only foot-covering that can be worn with the wide snowshoes, which are to carry them over the frozen crust in the severe Winter marches.

Of all the nations of the earth, the Chinese are the most barbarous in their fashion of dealing with the feet, for with half of their race (the women) the foot is never allowed to attain its natural size, but at the age of seven is broken and distorted into a shapeless mass of flesh. The toes are turned under the foot, and by means of bands and strong pressure finally reduced, after years of suffering, to a withered and shapeless bunch. The shoes worn by the women are very small; they are made of silk or satin. The sole is white, and is from two to three inches thick. The men's shoes are of the same pattern, and are often richly embroidered.

The small, crushed feet are a sign of caste, not wealth, amongst the Chinese women. Poor families will suffer every discomfort rather than allow the feet of their daughters to grow to their natural size, thus preventing their being able to work or to add their labors to the support of the family.

In certain castes the feet are allowed to grow to their natural size, and these women carry burdens, and do much of the heavy labor of the house. The Manchu Tartars, who are the dominant race in the Empire, do not suffer their women to crush their feet, and no woman who has submitted to the deforming process is allowed to enter the imperial palace. And yet the horrible fashion was introduced by an Empress of an earlier dynasty, who, about a thousand years ago, induced her husband to issue an edict obliging all the ladies at the Court to wear their feet and ankles heavily bandaged, in order that her own

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Shoes have played an important part in the romances of all ages. In our earliest childhood we delighted in the adventures of "Cinderella; Or, The Little Glass Slipper." This story is older than the very language in which our nurses told it, and comes down to us accompanied by a sort of moldering and exquisite perfume from amidst the papyrus archives which modern science has learned to translate from Egyptian hieroglyphics. Pti, a beautiful Persian princess, was taken captive by an Egyptian general, who brought her, with the rest of his spoils, to his home on the banks of the Nile. One day, after bathing her lovely self in the waters of the great river, and before she had quite finished her toilet, Pti was startled by the vision of a youth as beautiful as the Sun God, who ran toward her from a neighboring thicket.

The youth would have caught her in his arms, but the lovely Pti was a true daughter of Dian, and being swift of foot, escaped his embrace, leaving in her flight a tiny glass slipper. This the youth treasured, and through its medium, and with the aid of some Egyptian, Monsieur Claude (for with all other accessories of civilization, a detective force and its chief cannot have been wanting to the land of the Sphinx), was able at last to discover its lovely

owner.

The Persians alone manufactured shoes of glass in those days; the lovely woman was, therefore, a Persian. The general had brought a train of captives with him from the land of flowers and glass slippers. How easy the following of such a clew when Cupid placed the first link of evidence, the crystal slipper, in the youth's hand! And the youth was no other than a prince of the blood royal, Ramesis II., the original of the great statue of Memnon, the singing statue, which stands on the banks of the River Nile to-day.

When Pti was at last found, she fled no more from her princely lover; but, as his wife, lived long and happy, and her cartouche is placed beside his in the greatest of all the pyramids.

Writers and poets of all ages have used the theme of a woman's shoe, from the time of Horace, who describes a coquettish Roman beauty of his day tightening the straps of her sandals about her pretty ankle, down to that of T. B. Aldrich, in whose "Queen of Sheba" the little slipper of the heroine plays so important a part in the life and character of the hero.

When Fanny Ellsler, "the divine," came to delight New York, in 1841, the late Dr. Francis Lieber, who was gravity itself in all his noble pursuits, having witnessed her début in the old Park Theatre, was anxious to see if the intelligence of the tongue corresponded to the witchery and grace of foot, limb and figure.

An old admirer of the danseuse, who had known her in Vienna, in Dresden and in Paris, gave him a note of introduction, which the sage author of "Ethics and Hermeneutics" hastened to present. He was received with charming amiability, and was bewitched by what he called “her soft and flat Vienna dialect." Some shoes were brought in, made after the model of those which had borne her through the twinkling entrechats and pirouettes of the night previous. The doctor seized upon one of these shoes, and entreated his fair hostess to allow him to keep

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it as a souvenir and a relic. But Fanny was inexorable, saying, "Je n'ose pas faire des jaloux!"

The

One of Ouida's heroes drinks at an orgie, " champagne from a dancer's shoe"; and this was often done in olden time in the gay parties of fashionable revelers. stirrup-cup is an old custom, and as it is naturally associated with the boot, collectors of bric-à-brac will occasionally show you a drinking-glass of olden date made in the form of a boot. In the best work which that wayward, unwholesome writer has given to the world, "Bébé; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes," the sabots of the little heroine are pathetically described as being worn thin by the long journey the poor child has made on foot from her far home to Paris, where has gone the hero of her life, taking with him her happiness and peace of mind for ever and for aye.

In "Later Lyrics," a volume of poems by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, there is a poem which goes to the heart of all motherhood, called "Baby's Shoes." Indeed, the poetry of childhood is expressed in the pudgy little shoe, which speaks so tenderly of the tottering and uncertain gait, dear in its helplessness. Nothing is so musical as the trot of little feet, nothing so touching as baby's shoes. Nor are the old boots and discarded slippers always prosaic. We cannot, however, applaud the bit of realism which introduces as a bonbonnière the semblance of an old and patched cowhide boot in the boudoir of a lady. Longfellow speaks ill of the "wretch who could drink

RIDICULOUS SHOES.

wine out of a boot." How can we commend the lady who would eat her sugar-plums from so vile a receptacle ! Shoemakers, from their sedentary habits, are said to be fanatics, and often insane.

While the French have had the reputation of being always the most fashionable and artistic shoemakers, Americans have not been left out as creators of the sock and buskin. New York has many an artistic shoemaker, one of whom is the father of a sculptor, St. Gaudens. Eastern Massachusetts has ever taken care of our understandings in more ways than one, and it would be but a feeble history of the shoe which should leave out the story of Lynn. Fish, which are caught along the coast, produce a cheap oil for preparing the leather. Sealskins from Labrador and Newfoundland were the best of material for shoes. In 1750 a Welsh shoemaker, John Adam Dagye, acquired great fame in the trade at Lynn, and in 1764 the London Chronicle speaks of the beauty of women's shoes made at Lynn. In 1788 this little town exported 100,000 pairs of women's shoes. During the Revolutionary War Lynn supplied the army with great quantities of shoes. In 1855 Lynn exported 6,000,000 of pairs of shoes, and more than half as many boots, reaching the immense sum of $4,000,000. Now Marblehead pro- .* duces 1,000,000 of shoes annually, Haverill, Danvers, Worcester, Milford, Abington, Quincy, Braintree, pour out shoes like raindrops. Lucy Larcom, а

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CHOPPINES.

famous poetess, began life by binding shoes at Lynn, and has written a charming lyric called "Hannah at the Window, Binding Shoes," which carries poetry into a prosaic occupation.

Philadelphia has an important shoe-manufacture, amounting to $4,000,000 a year. This city has been famed for the excellence of its sole-leather and morocco. David Mead Randolph, in 1809, took out a patent for a method of riveting the soles and heels to the uppers, instead of fastening them by sewing, as had been done.

The wooden peg now used for the fastening of seven-eighths of the common shoes was invented by Joseph Walker, of Hopkinton, Mass., in 1858. These pegs are produced by a machine, at the rate of fourteen every second, and go to the making of stout, cheap shoes.

The sewing-machine, of course, immediately found its way to the shoe, and now the "uppers are stitched by sewing machines run by steam, and tended by women, in "sale" shoes.

"Custom-made shoes" are, of course, made with more care than these millions for the million. Each customer has a separate last; the soles are sewed on with waxed thread, and the gaiters, either with elastic sides or lacings or buttons, is as neat a foot-covering as any made in any part of the world, or in any age; but it is neither as picturesque, as individual or as characteristic, as the papyrus

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could run under her instep. Her ankle is as slender as that of a deer, and the elegance of her foot is the despair of even a French shoemaker. She should never pinch this lovely thing, or deform it by wearing too high heels.

Shoes have passed into proverbial philosophy in the familiar proverbs, "Waiting for dead men's shoes," "I would not stand in his shoes," "I prefer to be trodden on by the velvet slipper rather than the wooden shoe," and the well-known superstition of throwing an old shoe after a departing bride for good luck is a well-known and most ancient fancy. The horseshoe has become a synonym for good luck, and for ease and comfort what holds such honorable place as the old shoe? "Too big for his shoes," not finding "any shoe fine enough," are other expressions, and the scripture gives us as a synonym for humility, "The latchet of whose shoe I am unworthy to unloose"- all wellknown and eloquent tributes to the shoe. It is our point of contact with that dear Mother Earth, from whom, Antaeus-like, we must perpetually renew our strength. Hence the importance of Shoes and their History.

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CARDINALS KISSING THE MULA OR SLIPPER OF A NEWLY-ELECTED POPE.

buskin, the senatorial calceus, the Greek sandal, the longtoed shoe, the cavalier boot, the Chinese monstrosity, the wooden shoe or the Indian moccasin. Indeed, it is the epitome of the nineteenth century. It is commonplace, useful; and "for the many." It shows that rank has been leveled, that the lower classes have risen, that beauty and grace have given way before labor and convenience. Comfortable, durable and cheap, fitted for the daily walk, and not the gaudy ceremonial of life, we may say that the wooden shoe tells the story of the iron age-of human

progress.

One elegance of the past we do retain. Both men and women wear the buckle, occasionally, introduced by the gay and festive Charles early in the seventeenth century. The shoe buckle continued to be a very conspicuous ornament of the shoe, and an important industry in England up to the time of George III., when it suddenly lost favor. George IV., when Prince of Wales, kindly sought to restore the buckle, for the sake of the suffering artisans, who were ruined by this change of fashion. He succeeded but feebly.

Shoes worn by ladies in this country and in England in the last century were very elaborate and costly, made of bright silks and velvets, ornamented with gold and silver stars and bows with jeweled buckles. The famous little slipper of Marie Antoinette, with its lovely buckle and rosette, and shockingly dangerous high heel, has come down to modern fashion freighted with all the sumptuousness and tragedy of that unfortunate beauty.

The buckle is very becoming to both the male and female foot, and is advantageous to a Summer shoe, as keeping its low-cut "upper" in place.

Of all races, the Americans have the most beautiful feet. The Red Indian has a foot which the Apollo might have envied. The young American girl, "that swift Camilla, skimming o'er the plain," treads on a delicate sole, which only touches the ground in two places. Water

EXCESSIVE fear opens the door to desperation.

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OLD BOOT-SHAPED DRINKING-GLASS.

THE GOLDEN ARROW-HEAD.
BY JANE G. AUSTIN.

It is a true story, although it does not sound like it; but it must be true, for it is told in the dryest and most unromantic style, in a big, tedious book upon mining, compiled for the benefit of a Congressional Committee, and we all know that the stories in such books are quite as veracious as those in the newspapers, and what can be said beyond that?

Well, then, seeing the vague outline of a fascinating history in the big blue-book, we made it our business to hunt up such legends, historical hints, and especially such old monastic records as are still moldily preserved in some of the ruinous churches and convents of Mexico, until, bit by bit, we have pieced out the whole story, even to the names of several of the personages who enacted the little drama we are about to set before you.

The scene is in and about a wild mountain-pass, between the mine of Real del Monte and the village of Tezeyuco, in the broken and bandit-haunted upland regions of Central Mexico.

The time is 1703, the principal personage a Jesuit father, called Padre Gonzalvo-a man perhaps sixty years of age, gray-bearded, stern-eyed, thin-lipped, tall and gaunt of figure, but with an expression of devotedness and absorption not only in his face, but in every line of his form, in even the footsteps that seemed ever pressing impatiently onward to more and higher labors, that attracted one's admiration and sympathy in spite of the repellent coldness of his mien.

Beside him walked a younger and handsomer man, his dress oddly compounded of a hunter's and a monastic garb, his handsome face harmonizing admirably with both; this was Paolo-other name unknown-friend, attendant, protégé of Padre Gonzalvo, who, after vainly attempting to make a monk of him, and finding himself constantly foiled by the exuberant animal life which, without any disposition to wickedness, seemed the ruling characteristic of Paolo's existence, had accepted him, in his present undefined position, as hunter, messenger, soldier of the mission station, with some few religious offices attached to his other duties, and a place in the procession on Sundays. Behind these two came several stout lay brothers, and an Indian boy acting as guide, and to him Paolo now impatiently turned.

because I promised to forget all I had learned at the mission and become a good Tezeyucan again that he spared my life, and then I ran away, and come back because I love Paolo and—”

"Nay, my son, because you are a baptized Christian, and have no more part or lot with heathendom," interposed the father. "It was the grace of God working in your heart that brought you back to us, and by that same grace I am sent forth to find those poor benighted friends of yours and give them the glad tidings of—”

"Father, father !" gasped the boy, pointing forward to a cape-like promontory projecting almost across the cañon. "They are hiding there-they have seen us !"

"And what then? Here, get thee behind Paolo and me. We will go first, and show these poor savages how entirely we trust

"

But at this moment, as if in fiendish sarcasm upon his words, a flight of arrows shot from behind the rock and flew hissing past the ears of the lay-brothers, who, with one accord, tucked their long frocks under their girdles, and rushed headlong down the pass, clamorously invoking various saints and angels to protect them. With their shrieks mingled one shrill cry of pain and terror such as never passes the lips of man or beast but in the stress of mortal anguish; it was from the boy Mez, as he fell prone upon his face, with an arrow quivering in his heart, his eyes rolling in the last wild look upon sky and earth in which the spirit bids farewell to all that it yet has seen of life.

"Run, padre mio-nay, hide behind that rock !" exclaimed the hunter, raising his musket to his shoulder and darting forward, but a second volley of arrows met him midway, one of which grazed his cheek, and continuing its course, struck Padre Gonzalvo, and sent him stumbling to the ground.

"Padre mio! wounded, killed !" shouted Paolo, rushing back and catching the gaunt figure of the monk in his arms.

"No, no, it is nothing. Let me lie here, and make your escape; they will not harm me. See, they are in forcethey are coming!"

And, in fact, the Indians, emboldened by success, were cautiously appearing from behind the rock, peering about "Mez, we ought to have come to the village before this, to see if any larger force were in reserve, and brandishing if it lies as you said." their bows and spears above their heads with threatening gesture.

"Just beyond this cañon, Señor Paolo," replied the boy, in such quavering tones that the padre turned and looked at him inquiringly for a moment; then asked:

"What is it, my son? Are you afraid of anything?" "Yes, father, horribly afraid!" exclaimed Mez, his face turning lividly yellow and his teeth chattering like casta"The Tezeyucans will no doubt kill me if they can for bringing you here."

nets.

"But I only came to do them good-to convert their poor lost souls to God-to give them eternal happiness," said Padre Gonzalvo, his eyes lighting with fervor as he looked eagerly forward through the savage and tortuous pass upon which they had now entered.

"But they don't want to be converted, my father," insisted the boy, naïvely. "When I chanced upon the village last Summer, and told Metcal, the chief, where I had been all these years since my mother and I were stolen by the hunters, he wanted to kill me, lest I should ever go back and tell the white men that I had found my people, and speak of Metcal and his village; and it was only

Paolo caught up the musket he had 'thrown down, and taking deliberate aim, fired into the densest part of the throng, exclaiming :

"There! Mez said you had never seen a gun! There's a specimen of one for you? Now, padre mio, let us see what legs can do for both of us."

And flinging one stalwart arm around the priest's body, while grasping his musket in the other hand, Paolo set off down the cañon at a prodigious rate, the Indians remaining too much bewildered and terrified at the flash, the explosion and the effect of the musket-shot to pursue them, for the ball had buried itself in the brain of one of the chief warriors of the tribe, and his comrades were still inspecting the novel wound, so different from that of an arrow, when Paolo disappeared at the mouth of the cañon.

Late the next day the little party reached the missionstation, weary, footsore and discouraged, for Padre Gonzalvo, fevered with his wound, seemed very ill, and as the lay brothers bore him through the chapel on his hastily

constructed litter of chaparral-boughs, they muttered that | vived, he inquired, in the Indian dialect, for the chief of

it would be as well to lay him before the altar at once and begin to chant the offices for the dying.

Paolo alone preserved his usual equanimity, and, so soon as his friend and father was safely bestowed in bed, began preparations for extracting the arrowhead still buried in the priest's shoulder; in this he was rather assisted than directed by the timid and tremulous brother acting as physician to the mission, and it was the hunter into whose hand the arrowhead, broken from its shaft, fell as it was cut from the shoulder where it lay buried.

Throwing it aside, Paolo devoted himself to binding up the wound and settling the patient to rest; but when all this was over he turned and took up the arrowhead, examined it curiously for a moment, then, still holding it carelessly in his hand, left the room, and presently retired to his own little closet, where he remained shut up for some time.

That night Paolo watched with the padre, saw that all was going on well as possible with him, both then and through the next day, and finally, about twenty-four hours from the time of his return to the mission, astonished Padre Junipero, the sub-prior, by demanding to be received in confession, as he was about to start on a perilous enterprise.

The shrift was a brief one, and at the close, after receiving absolution, the hunter, kissing the hand of the good old monk, said, stoutly:

"And so you see, father, nothing is more likely than that I should leave my bones up there with poor Mez, and in that case you will tell the padre after he gets well, and you and he will pray me out of purgatory as quick as yon can-won't you?"

"I will pray for your bodily safety at every office until you return, my son," replied the sub-prior, gently; "and at the end of a month, if you have not returned, I will daily at Mass pray for your soul's salvation and forgiveness. And now, my son, kneel for my parting blessing." A few moments later Paolo had quietly left the missionhouse, and was rapidly retracing the path toward the

mountains.

Two days later, and just about the time when Padre Gonzalvo, sitting up for the first time, somewhat peevishly inquired why Paolo was absent when he was ill, a pitiable object limped into the village of Tezeyuco, just at the sunset hour, when the inhabitants, collecting about the doors of their lodges, and in the open space in their midst, devote themselves to social intercourse, and are, perhaps, as nearly amiable and gentle as their natural temperament ever permits.

This object might have been man or might have been woman, might have been old, might have been young, for its filthy and tattered garments were of no shape; the head and face were bound up as if wounded, the gait was limping and footsore, and, altogether, our stalwart young friend Paolo had contrived to make himself look as decrepit, harmless and absurd an object as can be imagined. At his sudden appearance among them, several of the Indians started to their feet, seized their weapons and sprang forward; but at a quiet word and gesture from their chief fell back, and suffered the strange figure to limp slowly into their midst, when, pansing, he stared vacantly around, and pointing to his discolored mouth, gasped hoarsely:

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the village; and, being brought before him, brokenly told the story of how, although, unfortunately, a white man by birth, he had, at a very early age, been adopted into an Indian tribe among the mountains further south, had lived in it ever since, and become so thoroughly an Indian as to have forgotten any home, kindred or name, other than that of Weetawa, which he might ever have possessed. His present forlorn condition he attributed to a prolonged captivity among the northern Indians, who had taken him prisoner in a foray upon his own people, and had treated him very cruelly. He had escaped from their villages about a month previously, and was slowly making his way southward and homeward; coming upon the territory of the Tezeyucans, he had resolved to ask their hospitality and protection for a little while, until he should be able to continue his journey.

To all this story, told with various details of time, place and circumstance combining to give it an air of truth, the chief and the councilors whom he had called about him by a look and gesture, listened attentively and in silence. At the close they turned to each other, and a brief consultation took place, ending in the chief's returning toward the stranger, and quietly saying:

"You are welcome, Weetawa. Eat, drink and rest yourself for a few days or many days, as you will. The Tezeyucans are rich and they are generous; they make you welcome; your mat shall be spread in the lodge of Metcal, and his women shall feed you."

He signed with his hand, and the squaw again came forward, grasped the false Weetawa's hand, and led him away to the lodge or wigwam of her master, for it was Metcal himself who had spoken.

Pointing to a corner of the large and irregular hut, and tossing down an old blanket, she carelessly announced: "Sleep there, Weetawa; eat this if you are hungry." And thrusting a piece of coarse corn-bread into his hand, she departed to resume her gossip.

"All right, so far, though I wish I had my share of the supper going on in the refectory about this time," muttered Paolo, kicking the blanket into a heap and seating himself upon it to gnaw the sour, hard bannock in his hand.

"Does Weetawa like honey ?" asked a soft voice close beside him, and, looking up, Paolo saw in the dim twilight the slender form and charming dusky face of an Indian girl bending toward him, and holding out a piece of honeycomb on a sort of platter of birch-bark.

Stammering some form of thanks, he rose to his feet, and, while accepting the gift, looked curiously at the giver. Young-not more than fifteen or sixteen, and very beautiful in the style of her own people-she was worth looking at, especially now, when a little shyness lent color to her cheek and depth to her dark eyes.

"I am Kalooma, the daughter of Metcal, and this lodge is my home," explained she, as Paolo still kept silence, using his eyes rather than his tongue; but, aroused by this innocent avowal of her own importance, the young Spaniard lost no time in making himself agreeable to his pretty hostess, and presently confided to her such a detailed and wonderful history of himself and his adventures as would, had they only been true, have made him in verity the hero Kalooma innocently believed him. The conversation was not ended when Layla, the wife of Metcal and mother of Kalooma returned, ordered her daughter to bed, and motioned Weetawa to his own lair. The other inmates of the lodge soon followed, and in an hour the village was wrapped in slumber.

The next morning Paolo began his observations. He

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