My mother, in her twenties during the 1920s, was a bookkeeper for the John T. Stanley Soap Factory in New York City. She often told me about those happy years “with the girls.” One circumstance persisted in her memory. There was a fad where young women would wear large, clunky galoshes with big metal clasps. But one did not close the buckles; the idea was to leave them unclasped so they would swing back and forth as you walked, making metallic noises. This was very chic.

I could not help but notice that Emilie Sandsten, in the “Readers’ Album” of your February/March 2000 issue, has her overshoes unclasped. Was she trying to impress her Chinese hosts or her fellow travelers with the clink clink of the metal buckles as she strode on the Great Wall of China?