shape as the fashionable boot or shoe, is a standing marvel.1[1]
In reality, the great toe is pressed into the middle of the boot, where it overlies the second and sometimes part of the third toe, while the tip of the great toe, which is an inch or more in thickness, is forced into the small space whence the wedge end of the last has been removed. Nor is the case much better even if the shoe is worn a size or more larger than the foot; for, however this may be, in walking the high heel forces the toes down into the wedge.
And what is the beauty of the result when all the tortures of these "infernal machines " are endured? The appearance is that which suggested to a little four-year-old who had been comparing his own chubby feet with those of a gentleman visiting his father, who wore shoes tapering to a point in the approved fashionable style, the following question: "I say, is your toes all cutted off but one?"
Can English gentlemen condemn Chinese ladies for deforming their feet in the way I have described when in the appearance of their own they come so very near a similar ideal deformity? What would be the horror of an English lady whose child was born with only one toe on each foot, and that in the middle? Yet this is the form to attain which both men and women have been suffering tortures
- ↑ 1 See Plate 7, which is by no means an exaggerated example of the cramming process.
