Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1899 — Barefoot Club. [ARTICLE]

Barefoot Club.

Boston is not the only town where the new is taken up with enthusiasm, for the other day a couple of dozen well-dressed ladles and gentlemen were to be seen solemnly walking down the Linden, Berlin’s great boulevard, not only hatless and sunshadeless, but without shoes or stockings. The extraordinary procession turned through the great Brandenburger Gate and proceeded eventually to the suburb of Schoeneberg. Most of them were barefooted, others wore light sandals. The reason of this extraordinary exhibition, inaugurated by what may be called the “Anti-Shoe-and-Stocking Club,” was to encourage the disuse of the modern stiff boot and bring back eventually the old days of Grecian simplicity. Grecian simplicity, so far as going barefooted is concerned, will do quite well here in the month of August, but will be hardly comfortatile during a North German autumn and w'inter.