We "crush its delicately fashioned feet into hideous leather instruments of torture." That is the sort of phrase that is hurled at us! The picture conjured up is that of some fiend in human shape, calling itself a father, seizing some helpless cherub by the hair, and, while drowning its pathetic wails for mercy beneath roars of demon laughter, proceeding to bind about its tender bones some ancient curiosity dug from the dungeons of the Inquisition.
If the young gentleman fresh from College or the maiden lady Understander could be, if only for a month or two, a father! If only he or she could guess how gladly the father of limited income would reply, "My dear, you are wrong in saying that the children must have boots.

That is an exploded theory.

The children must not have boots.

I refuse to be a party to crushing their delicately fashioned feet into hideous leather instruments of torture.

The young gentleman fresh from College and the elderly maiden Understander have decided that the children must not have boots.