on our best shoes in rainy weather, because they would very soon lose all pretensions to elegance by acquiring the form of the foot, which as we have seen is very different from the shape of a fashionable shoe.
Since, then, the structure of the foot is such that the point of the great toe, the middle of its root, and the central point of the heel, lie in one straight line, it is natural that the upper leather should assume a shape in which the reciprocal relation of these three points can be maintained; and this shape is actually obtained in one of the two following ways:—Either the point of the great toe pushes itself into a continuation of the line which can be drawn through the centre of the heel and its own root, and in this case the upper leather is pressed over the inner edge of the front of the sole:
Or (and this is more usual) the heel moves its centre into the line which can be drawn through the length of the great toe, and then the upper leather is forced over the inner edge of the heel.
In either case the shoes are said to be trodden on one side; and about this we grumble, while in truth this treading on one side is in reality a treading straight, the result of a victory gained by ill-used nature over unnatural constraint.
These two methods of treading on one side are the only examples of it which occur in walking with sound and
