Nature, when allowed free scope for her work, does it thoroughly and handsomely. Healthy children are born with arched insteps and straight toes. Notice the foot of the little urchin who runs barefoot in summer time around the outskirts of our cities and villages, and there is no fault to be found with it. Though the parents’ feet have flat insteps, crooked toes, and big joints, those of the child are regular-shaped and sound. There seems to be an intention to give every one a fair start in the race of life with good pedal extremities. It is not at all probable that old father Adam went perambulating about his garden with the “hollow of his foot making a hole in the ground,” or that his great toes pointed off in the direction of the little ones, as though they had a secret affinity for them, while the others were forced upward out of place, in order to cover up the affair; nor that our beautiful mother Eve wandered among the flowers with _her_ feet disfigured by corns and large joints. If they had been, would the serpent have cultivated her acquaintance in the way he did? On the contrary, does not every painter and sculptor represent her with feet beautiful and shapely, like every other feature of her person? Did the old Greek, Phidias, make flat feet on his statues, and ornament them with corns and callosities? Did old Hercules have a big toe-joint on which to rest his club? Or did the ancients of the Golden Age know about such things at all? The Art of the world has never recognized them as beautiful or natural. We venture to say that in all the painting and sculpture of the past they cannot be found. They are entirely unnatural and deformed, belonging to the days of modern civilization. Nature makes her feet, except in rare instances, with arches well-marked and strong, and toes that point directly forward in the line of the foot’s length. Yet the deformities spoken of are very common at the present time, and in this most intelligent part of the world. We believe, judging from a dozen years’ experience in the making of boots and shoes for individual feet, that those more or less deformed constitute the rule, and the healthy and well-formed ones the exception. Such disfigurements and distortions are thrust upon our attention every day—crooked feet—short, stumpy feet—feet that tread inward, and those that tread only on the outside edge—flat feet—crippled feet—and feet so disproportioned that the part which should be an inch smaller than the instep is often half an inch larger—feet with large ankles, and feet with long heels—swelled feet, and feet that are nothing but bones—feet that turn inward and outward, and backward—feet with flat insteps—with big joints—with great toes that lie crosswise of the smaller ones—with small ones that grow over each other—with nails grown in, or to one side—with hard corns, and soft corns, little and big—with callosities on insteps, and heels, and ankles—with chilblains all