Throwing the shoe after the wedded pair was, also, no doubt intended as an augury of long life to the bride. In Yorkshire the ceremony of shoe-throwing is termed "thrashing," and the older the shoe the greater the luck; and in some parts of Kent the mode of procedure is somewhat peculiar. After the departure of the bride and bridegroom the single ladies are drawn up in one row, and the bachelors in another. When thus arranged, an old shoe is thrown as far as possible, which the fair sex run for: the winner being considered to have the best chance of marriage. She then throws the shoe at the gentlemen, when the first who gets it is believed to have the same chance of matrimony. A somewhat similar custom prevails in Germany, where the bride's shoe is thrown among the guests at the wedding, the person who succeeds in catching it being supposed to have every prospect of a speedy marriage. Many auguries are still gathered from the shoe. Thus young girls on going to bed at night place their shoes at right angles to one another, in the form of the letter T, repeating this rhyme:-- "Hoping this night my true love to see, I place my shoes in the form of a T." As in the case of the stocking, great importance is attached by many superstitious persons as to which shoe they put on first, in allusion to which Butler, in his "Hudibras," says:-- "Augustus, having b' oversight Put on his left shoe 'fore his right, Had like to have been slain that day By soldiers mutin'ing for pay." An old writer speaking of Jewish customs tells us that "some of them observe, in dressing themselves in the morning, to put on the right stocking and right shoe first without tying it. Then afterwards to put on the left shoe, and so return to the right; that so they may begin and end with the right one, which they account to be the most fortunate." A Suffolk doggrel respecting the "wear of shoes" teaches us the following:-- "Tip at the toe: live to see woe; Wear at the side: live to be a bride; Wear at the ball: live to spend all; Wear at the heel: live to save a deal." Among some of the many charms in which the shoe has been found efficacious, may be mentioned one practised in the North of England, where the peasantry, to cure cramp, are in the habit of laying their shoes across to avert it. Mrs. Latham, in her "West Sussex Superstitions," published in the "Folk-lore Record," tells us of an old woman who was at a complete loss to understand why her "rheumatics was so uncommon bad, for she had put her shoes in the form of a cross every night by the side of her head, ever since she felt the first twinge." In the same county, a cure for ague consists in wearing a leaf of tansy in the shoe.