Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1871-12-07
The Dignity Of Legs.

SUGGESTIONS have been made that legs
are going out that, by sort OF Darwin
an development process, men VINO rlde IN
street cars. and women who 60 In car
riages, will change into cherubs, all head
and shoulders, and that the coming race
will not walk at ALL but, like the gods OF
poets, glide" through space. Ana IL
must be admitted there is fearful neglect
of the lower eytremities. What with ele-
vators to obviate the necessity for climb
ing. and street cars to do away with walk
ing. and tight boots to complete the work
by the destruction of the feet, and awk-
ward Grecian bends to make locomotion
difficult, there is tendency, doubtless, to
a spindle-shanked degeneracy. But let us
not glorify it. Degeneracy is degener-
acy. Let us not delude ourselves into the
belief that it is road which leads toward
perfection.
For the legs are the keepers OF human
dignity. No man has commanding, a
dignitied, or even a respectable personal
presence who has not goodpillars beneath
him. An orators invectives can no more
be hurled effectively from bad footing,
than warriors javelins. In speech the
legs take the recoil from the discharge,
and if they are well planted the force OF
the utterance is greatly increased. there
is no dignity without them. When Solo
mon drew his wonderful picture OF tn
imbecility Of age. the palsied legs were
not forgotten "The keepers Of the house
shall tremble.n Shakespeare sends man
off the scene in the next act to the very
last one, clean and slippered panta-
loon Nothing can better express the
growing infrmity of mind and body, than
this touch of the lank legs and slipshod
feet.
There is as much character in mans
walk as in his face See how he plants
his feet. If he "put his foot down to
stav, you can depend upon him. If he
tread weakly, or hesitatingly, or creep
ingly like a cat, or overbearingly, that is,
in a rough-shod way, or energeticaliy, or
| languidly, or shufflingly or bustlingly, or
timidly, or recklessly, you can in any
event read the man by the tracks he
makes. And the legs and the feet he car
ries have much to do with this express
sion. This is why our great orators are
impatient of pulpits and rostrums. They
want to speak with the whole body.
Lowell understood how thoroughly the
honesty and dignity of man pervaded
his legs, when he makes Mr. Biglow de-
scribe some ones integrity as extending
from roots o hair to sole o stocking"
An honest pair of legs are as essential to
the presentableness of "A man as they are
to the salableness of horse. The French
describe a mans self-possession by saying
that he has great aplomb-great perpen-
dicularity if you please.
What shall we say, then, of all the mean
devices, the boots which turn the foot into
cornfield, the slipshods, the high heels
which make men and women walk on
stills, the Grecian bends that throw the
perfect and upright column of the human
BODY into distorted position? What
shall we say of the helplessness that does
not walk enough to keep the legs strong
and firm? What, but all these are evil
dences of mental deformity and imbecility
all these are only unhealthful uglinesses?
! -IiearM and H0me.