SCARPOLOGY. Heading Character by Old Boots.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 3

SCARPOLOGY. Heading Character by Old Boots.

A few weeks ago I had : occasion to com'menf upon the case of; an ecceutric ' in^ivi(iual who had a mania for collecting the casttoff slippers of .operatic danseuaee.^ This person has been altogether distanced by a doctor named Garre, f) domicile^ at Basle, who collects old bootß and slippers and studies them. Carlyle has, of course, shown what an amount of philosophy can be extracted from pld clothes, -but it has been reserved for the ingenious Garre^to diecbver valuable properties in old boots. 'He hap designated the rosults of hid investigations into the secrets of discarded .leather as "Scarpology, "which like logic, as defined by Archbishop Whatelyt is both an art and a science, and according to its founder it gives a clue to the characters of mea from a study of then* superannuated leather. Dr. Garre has been good enough to furnish the public with what may be called the alphabet of scarpology, which will, no doubt, receive a grammer and syntax in time from its founder or his followers. According to this, a discarded buot, the traces of hard work after two months' use, denotes it wearer to be, if a man, an energetic, determined and practical individual, and if a woman, a faithful spouse and an excellent household manager A sole worn and broken on the outside denotes a fanciful, capricious and visionary irresolution, weakness and timidity. Boots whereof the outside soles and the edges of the toe-caps are worn away show their owners to be everything that is bad, and capable of any crime up to murder. Another elementary rule laid down by the soarpological savant is that young females who try to insert their feet into boots denominated in technical language " fours '' when their proper size should be numerically designated as •• sixes," are to be avoided by young men as if they had the plague. No trust, observes the doctor, in his own plain-spoken style, if to be placed in women with big feet who try to make people believe that they have got pieds miijnon by crushing aud cramping themselves into small boots after the fashion of the female inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. — " London Standard."