practice. We see how violent it is when we run against a post in the dark,
and find with what headlong force we were hurling ourselves forward.
Holmes has well defined walking as a perpetual falling with a constant
self-recovery. Standing on one foot, we let the body fall forward, while
we swing the other leg ahead like a pendulum. Planting that foot on the
ground, to save the body from falling farther, we then swing the first
foot forward again to repeat the same operation. [Footnote: It is a
curious fact that one side of the body tends to outwalk the other; and so,
when a man is lost in the woods, he often goes in a circle, and at last
comes round to the spot whence he started.]

The shorter the pendulum, the more rapidly it vibrates; and so short-
legged people take quicker and shorter steps than long-legged ones.
[Footnote: In this respect, Tom Thumb was to Magrath, whose skeleton,
eight and one half feet high, is now in the Dublin Museum, what a little
fast-ticking, French mantel clock is to a big, old-fashioned, upright,
corner timepiece.] We are shorter when walking than when standing still,
because of this falling forward to take a step in advance. [Footnote:
Women find that a gown that will swing clear of the ground when they are
standing still, will drag the street when they are walking. The length of
the step may be increased by muscular effort, as when a line of soldiers
keep step in spite of their having legs of different lengths. Such a mode
of walking is necessarily fatiguing. (See p. 280.)]

In running, we incline the body more, and so, as it were, fall faster.
When we walk, one foot is on the ground all the time, and there is an
instant when both feet are planted upon it; but in running there is an
interval of time in each step when both feet are off the ground, and the
body is wholly unsupported. As we step alternately with the feet, we are
inclined to turn the body first to one side and then to the other. This