The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-10-28
SOME STRANGE HANDS.
There is Great Deal of Character Ii
Them if We Only Knew 1t.


Hands reveal habits, occupations,
trades, says writer in CasselrS Family
Magazine. A crop of them rises at the
thought, like the show thrust up from a
crowd in honor of candidate after an
election speech. There is the carpen-
ter's, with the broad thumb, and those
of the fraternity of flour, ingrained,
mealy. and white; the musicians with
the powerful wrist and the fingers deli
cate, sensitive, and agile to the last de-
gree; the hand of the seamstress, with
an honorable little bit of nutmeg-grater
on the forefinger that works so hard; of
the scientific man, who lectures to ex
plain mysteries to lower mortals, and
whose exactitude of touch is the image
OF his mental precision, while the nerv
| Gus stretch of his fingers corresponds
with his tension of mind.
The slight-of-hand professor is a man
of long fingers. A conjurer with slow
and chubby hand would betray the aw-
full secrets of the plum pudding that is
taken from the depths of your best hat
But besides character and trade, the
hands tell the age. Soft and round, the
baby's pair of puff-balls, with their fat
wrists deeply ringed, appear as if they
never can do anything in this world.
Yet the girls hand will become treas
ure, and the boys hand will battle with
life and with his fellow-men for the
mastery. 1t is appalling to think of
what those helpless puff-balls have be-
fore them.
After the first dimples they become
the inky hands of school, then the awk-
| ward hands that don't know what to do
with themselves. Years pass, the boy s
hands ceases to grumble at gloves-yef,
he wears them in eXtravagant freshness,
in comparison as his collars grow up
ward, and his shoes tighten within an
| inch of his life. The result of these
phenomena is that a ring begins to
shine with charming strangeness on an
other hand, that seemed a child's but
| yesterday. The young wife tells by her
hands that it is not long since the we'd
ding, because she cannot let that new
| ring alone, but twists it around for the
novelty, and admires it with an uncon-
| scious knack of carressing it in idle mo-
| ments. Her dimples disappear, as the
children gather to make home circle;
| IL 10 lhC Hplu VI llC WOuldu IlOW, Will
| its very framework traceable.
Dimples, bones, and wrinkles mark
the three stages of life's progress. With
the wrinkled stage the steadiness of
| youth often remains in resolute charac-
| ters. When the Duke of Wellington
was a very old man he could still fill a
| glass of water to the last possible drop
and hold it up steadily brimful. The
helpful hands keep their youthful ac-
tivity, too, far into the whitening age
| And in nobly-loving natures there is a
sort of Immortality of youth; the warmth
of affection has given more than royal
prerogative; the hand is beautiful al
ways to the eyes that know it familiar
ly. The later years only stamp it with
the impress of a longer past of tender
| ness, falthfulness, and bounty. 1t is not
| the ''old'' hand but the dear" hand.
and it never grows older, but only more
dear. He who doubts the truth of this
last mystery has not yet found out that
hands as well as hearts have peculiar
place in our knowledge and love of one
another.