For my own part I do not believe it to be a true story; they who please may. Was there one of the horsemen but would have said on such occasion, with the dancing Peruvians in one of Davenant's operatic dramas, Still round and round and round, Let us compass the ground. What man is he who feels Any weight at his heels, Since our hearts are so light, that, all weigh'd together, Agree to a grain, and they weigh not a feather. I disbelieve it altogether, and not for its want of verisimilitude alone, but because when I was young there was no tradition of any such thing in the town where the venue of the action is laid; and therefore I conjecture that it is altogether a fictitious story, and may peradventure have been composed as a lesson for some young spinster whose indefatigable feet made her the terror of all partners. The Welsh have a saying that if a woman were as quick with her feet as her tongue, she would catch lightning enough to kindle the fire in the morning; it is a fanciful saying, as many of the Welsh sayings are. But if Miss Maddox had been as quick with her tongue as her feet, instead of dancing an hundred horsemen down, she might have talked their hundred horses to death. Why it was a greater feat than that of Kempe the actor, who in the age of odd performance danced from London to Norwich. He was nine days in dancing the journey and published an account of it under the title of his “Nine Day's Wonder.”[3] It could have been no “light fantastic toe” that went through such work; but one fit for the roughest game at football. At sight of the aweful foot to which it belonged, Cupid would have fled with as much reason as the Dragon of Wantley had for turning tail when Moor of Moor Hall with his spiked shoe-armour pursued him. He would have fled before marriage, for fear of being kicked out of the house after it. They must have been feet that instead of gliding and swimming, and treading the grass so trim, went as the old Comedy says lumperdee, clumperdee.[4] [Footnote 3: Webster's Westward Ho. Act. v. Sc. i.—Anno 1600.] [Footnote 4: RALPH ROISTER DOISTER.] The Northern Lass was in this respect no Cinderella. Nor would any one, short of an Irish Giant have fallen in love with her slipper, as Thevenard the singer did with that which he saw by accident at a shoe-maker's, and enquiring for what enchanting person it was made, and judging of this earthly Venus as the proportions of Hercules have been estimated _ex pede_, sought her out, for love of her foot, commenced his addresses to her, and obtained her hand in marriage.