Walking in their shoes . . .

There's a chapter in my book "The Rose and the Whip" describing the humiliation of three Quaker women who were tied to a cart's tail, stripped from the waist up, then flogged through three villages in succession (there were originally twelve villages, but a large-hearted man stopped it at three and whisked the women away to safety). The walking was so strenuous that the three women were eventually walking barefoot . . . and this was during the winter. I felt I needed to understand what this might be like, so when I was on one of my visits to Hampton, NH, I found the area where the women likely started their trek, removed my shoes and started walking, I felt it wasn't advisable, in our day and time, to also remove my shirt, so I had to stretch my imagination on that. It wasn't winter, but it was rainy and chilly. I realized how soft we've become and I probably wouldn't have been able to last through one village let alone three.