in Thoreau’s Journal:

I frequently detect the track of a foreigner by the print of the nails in his shoes, both in snow and earth; of an india-rubber, by its being less sharply edged, and, most surely, often, by the fine diamond roughening of the sole. How much we infer from the dandy’snarrow heel-tap, while we pity his unsteady tread, and from the lady’s narrow slipper, suggesting corns, not to say consumption. The track of the farmer’s cowhides, whose carpet-tearing tacks in the heel frequently rake the ground several inches before his foot finds a resting place, suggests weight and impetus.