themselves with an active ingrown nail or so, and the poor man
goes out and drops an iron casting on his toe. Nearly every male
who lives to reach the voting age has a period of mental weakness
in his youth when he wears those pointed shoes that turn up at the
ends, like sleigh runners; and spends the rest of his life
regretting it. Feet are certainly ungrateful things. I might say
that they are proverbially ungrateful. You do for them and they
do you. You get one corn, hard or soft, cured up or removed
bodily and a whole crowd of its relatives come to take its place.
I imagine that Nature intended we should go barefooted and is now
getting even with us because we didn't. Our poor, painful feet go
with us through all the years and every step in life is marked by
a pang of some sort. And right on up to the end of our days, our
feet are getting more infirm and more troublesome and more crotchety
and harder to bear with all the time. How many are there right
now who have one foot in the grave and the other at the
chiropodist's? Thousands, I reckon.

Napoleon said an army traveled on its stomach. I don't blame the
army, far from it; I've often wished I could travel that way myself,
and I've no doubt so has every other man who ever crowded a number
nine and three-quarters foot into a number eight patent-leather
shoe, and then went to call on friends residing in a steam-heated
apartment. As what man has not? Once the green-corn dance was an
exclusive thing with the Sioux Indians, but it may now be witnessed
when one man steps on another man's toes in a crowd.

We are accustomed to make fun of the humble worm of the dust but
in one respect the humble worm certainly has it on us. He goes
through existence without any hands and any feet to bother him.