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His voice moved men, his acts more. His was a manly form. Broad-footed and full-boned, he stood nearly six feet high. He was alert, dignified, easily accessible, and responsive even to children. With him, acquaintanceship was quickly made, and friendship long preserved. Those who knew Charles Carleton Coffin respected, honored, loved him.
We were facing the river, as we talked about the shrinking limits of the village. She told me about the poverty-stricken white settlers, who lived in caves dug in the long ravines of the high hills across the river. A whole tribe of broad-footed white beggars had rushed hither to make claims on those wild lands. Even as she was telling this I spied a small glimmering light in the bluffs.
"The name Platypus is insulting," it remarked, looking at the child severely, "it means broad-footed, a vulgar pseudonym which could only have emanated from the brutally coarse expressions of a Human. My name is Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus. Besides, even if my front feet can expand, they can also contract; see! as narrow and refined as a bird's claw.
The feet are always swathed in white linen or silk, bound round with silk bandages and stuffed into pretty little shoes, with very high heels. To my astonishment these deformed beings tripped about, as if in defiance of us broad-footed creatures, with tolerable ease, the only difference in their gait being that they waddled like geese; they even ran up and down stairs without the aid of a stick.
"The name Platypus is insulting," it remarked, looking at the child severely, "it means BROAD-FOOTED, a vulgar pseudonym which could only have emanated from the brutally coarse expressions of a Human. My name is Ornithorhyncus Paradoxus. Besides, even if my front feet can expand, they can also contract; see! as narrow and refined as a bird's claw.
Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken; the black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little children must come home early from school and play, for he is an indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not come amiss when other game was wanting.
Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken; the black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little children must come home early from school and play, for he is an indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not come amiss when other game was wanting.
"You are going to leave me, then, my old playfellow," said the boy; "and there is an end of all our game at bo-peep with the cowardly lubbards whom I brought hither to have their broad-footed nags shed by the devil and his imps?"
These pictures have, too, an oriental flavour: there are brown Madonnas in the Russian churches, and such an one illustrates the statistics of infant mortality in India, while the Russian mother, broad-footed, in gay petticoat and kerchief, sits in a starry meadow suckling her baby from a very ample white breast.
"To my astonishment," says Madame Pfeiffer, "these deformed beings tripped about, as if in defiance of us broad-footed creatures, with tolerable ease, the only difference in their gait being that they waddled like geese; they even ran up and down stairs without a stick." She adds, that the value of a bride is reckoned by the smallness of her feet.
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