for a day by grass and struck by buttercups, as the feet are of those who
go barefoot; and the nostrils might be flattered to be, like them, so
long near moss. The face has only now and then, for a resting-while,
their privilege.

If our feet are now so severed from the natural ground, they have
inevitably lost life and strength by the separation. It is only the
entirely unshod that have lively feet. Watch a peasant who never wears
shoes, except for a few unkind hours once a week, and you may see the
play of his talk in his mobile feet; they become as dramatic as his
hands. Fresh as the air, brown with the light, and healthy from the
field, not used to darkness, not grown in prison, the foot of the
_contadino_ is not abashed. It is the foot of high life that is prim,
and never lifts a heel against its dull conditions, for it has forgotten
liberty. It is more active now than it lately was--certainly the foot of
woman is more active; but whether on the pedal or in the stirrup, or clad
for a walk, or armed for a game, or decked for the waltz, it is in bonds.
It is, at any rate, inarticulate.

It has no longer a distinct and divided life, or none that is visible and
sensible. Whereas the whole living body has naturally such infinite
distinctness that the sense of touch differs, as it were, with every
nerve, and the fingers are so separate that it was believed of them of
old that each one had its angel, yet the modern foot is, as much as
possible, deprived of all that delicate distinction: undone,
unspecialized, sent back to lower forms of indiscriminate life. It is as
though a landscape with separate sweetness in every tree should be rudely
painted with the blank--blank, not simple--generalities of a vulgar hand.
Or as though one should take the pleasures of a day of happiness in a
wholesale fashion, not "turning the hours to moments," which joy can do