Page:Horses and roads.djvu/161

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HIGH HEELS INJURING A LADY'S EYESIGHT.
145

But how is it that Mr. Jennings stands alone amongst trainers in his ‘peculiarity’? It would appear as if he had thought the thing out for himself, and then had pluck enough to try it by experiment; he was evidently not a slave to routine and fashion. Will he take this ‘straight tip’ and lay out a piece of hard road, and let some of his unshod youngsters try their walking exercise upon it? This would just make his system complete and his horses’ feet perfect.

The foot that is inured to hard roads can but be perfected thereby, and a perfect foot can but stand upon better terms with a racecourse, or a training-ground, hard or soft as they may be at times. Qui peut le plus pent le moins.

In the Evening Standard of March 17, 1880, we find the following paragraph:—

‘It is a pity that nature and art should be so often, as they are, in opposition to each other, and that a theory of beauty which satisfies the demands of one should outrage the demands of the other. It was not natural that a girl’s waist should be immediately under her arms, yet in former times that was considered indispensable to true grace. In later years it was equally unnatural that waists should be compressed to a painfully-small circumference, but this again became a habit; and there exist others equally false and mischievous. Now and then, however, nature asserts herself, and gives a salutary hint that she is not to be maltreated with impunity. This, it appears, was lately the case at