To sustain the statement, that Miss Yekoo is a "_Chinese lady_," it is said, that these crippled feet are signs of aristocracy. Not infallible, I conceive:--not more so, than crippled ribs, occasioned by tight lacing, which may originate in the upper circles, but find hosts of imitators, among the lower orders. "We may add," says Mr. Davis, writing of this practice, "that this odious custom extends lower down, in the scale of society, than might have been expected, from its disabling effect, upon those, who have to labor for their subsistence. If the custom were first imposed, by the tyranny of the men, the women are fully revenged, in the diminution of their charms and domestic usefulness." Mr. Davis evidently supposes, that the custom had its rise in jealousy, and a desire to prevent the ambulatory sex, from gadding about. Various causes have been assigned, for this disgusting practice. Sir John Barrow, after expressing his surprise, at the silence of Marco Polo, on the subject of crippled feet, which were, doubtless, common in his time, observes--"Of the origin of this unnatural custom, the Chinese relate twenty different accounts, all absurd. Europeans suppose it to have originated in the jealousy of the men, determined, says M. de Pauw, to keep them '_si etroit qu'on ne peut comparer l'exactitude avec laquelle on les gouverne_.'" A _practice_, which, at its very birth, and during its infancy, required the assignment of some plausible reason, for its existence and support--when it grows up to be a _custom_, lives on and thrives, irrespectively of its origin, and, frequently, in spite of its absurdity. The blackened teeth of the Japanese--the goitres of the Swiss, in the valley of Chamouni--the flattened heads of certain Indian races--the crippled feet of the Chinese are illustrations of this truth, in the admiration which they still continue to receive. "Whatever," says Sir John Barrow, "may have been the cause, the continuance may more easily be explained: as long as the men will marry none but such as have crippled feet, crippled feet must forever remain in fashion among Chinese ladies." M. De Pauw, in his Philosophical Dissertations, alludes to this practice, in connection with that, formerly employed by the Egyptians, and which he calls--"_the method of confining the women anciently, in Egypt, by depriving them, in some measure, of the use of their feet_." Plutarch, in his _Precepta Connub_, says, that shoes were entirely forbidden to women, by the Egyptians. "Afterwards," says De Pauw, "they imagined it to be inconsistent with decency, that they should appear in public, with the feet naked, and, of course, they remained at home."