ecret. I know how you sometimes take them out and
wistfully gaze on the faded, worn, unlovely little things,--worthless to
everybody else, but, oh, so dear to you! I see the trembling tear which
you do not care to wipe away, as the image of the little darling who
wore them comes up in all its by-gone beauty before you. They will never
again be borne toddling to your side. The little feet, once encased
therein, will never tread the stony walks of men. They long ago rested
on their early march, never to be resumed.--Ah, how many of us would be
glad to have buckled on no other than the first sandals of infancy! How
many have fallen into the crevasses of the icy paths they trod! How
many have trusted to their bold footing, and fallen, when the step
seemed surest, down the treacherous steep!

There is Mademoiselle Joliejambe;--would one suppose that the pink
slippers, which terminate those silk-shod _mollets_, could be dangerous
_chaussures_? My dear Madam, they are worse than the torturing boots of
the old Spanish Inquisition. Better for her that she stood in a
postilion's jack-boots.--She could never dance in such things?--No! and
therefore were they the better; for no Swiss glacier is so slippery as
that gas-lighted stage. She is slipping, Madam, into a terrible abyss,
while you and I are gazing, delighted, at her entrechats and pirouettes.
She is gliding into a crevasse to which Mont Blanc can furnish none so
dread.--What do I mean?--Ah, my dear Madam, better, a thousand times,
that her young mother had stored away the soft little shoes of her
infancy to mourn over, as you do over your treasures, than have lived to
see her tie on those satin things, which have borne her into the gaze of
men for a brief, brilliant while, and are bearing her on into the
flower-brinked snare of ruin!

There is Vanitas over the way;--he once wore just such pigmy affairs.
See him walking down the street, treading with a dignified stride, as
though he moved a foot above the vulgar pavement. See that poor,
tattered wretch approaching. Down goes his coarse heel, crunch, upon the
aristocratic toes of our friend; and observe how Vanitas writhes and
limps, as the sudden contact with the lower animal has crushed all his
pride and dignity out of him. How gladly would he exchange his costly
models of modern skill for the sabots of the meanest peasant! Doesn't he
carry those twinges around with him all day, and moralize--if Vanitas is
capable of moral