10 OCTOBER 1868, Page 3

All bright-coloured socks are now pronounced perilous in the 'extreme.

Magenta socks are full of arsenic. Orange socks Are full of picric acid. Other socks, again, contain aniline. The chief danger is to those who get hot "when the Thespian sock is on," viz., ballet-dancers, as that soaks the dangerous substance into the skin. But the alarm is so great, that one gentleman actually exhorts us to go without socks. These, however, are, as Mr. Disraeli says, "transient efforts, vain And passing aspirations ;" we shall "set our foot down" on socks, to-morrow, as we do to-day. "The ultimate triumph, were socks to be abolished, would be to that power which would substitute for the soft, elastic woollen, the hard and oppressive supremacy of the galling and corn-engendering boot ; to that power with whose -obstinacy in inflicting anguish we have only been hitherto enabled to cope, by the interposition of the socks of a determined and -devoted people."