The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-10-23
THE HUMAN HAND,
1t Reveals Character and Exposes TIT
Owners Disposition and Habits.

1t reveals Character and Exposes Tt1
Owners Disposition and Habits.
Hands reveal habits, occupations,
trades. A crop of them rises at the
thought, like the show thrust up from
crowd in honor of a candidate after
an election speech. There is the car.
penter's. with the broad thumb, and
those of the fraternity of flour, in
grained, mealy and white; the musi-
clans, with the powerful wrist and
fingers delicate, sensitive and agile to
the last degree; the hand of the seam
stress, with an honorable little bit OF
nutmeg crater on the fore-fnger that
works so hard; of the scientific man,
who lectures to explain mysteries to
lower mortals, and whose exactitude
of touch is the image of his mental pre-
cision, while the nervous stretch of his
fingers corresponds with his tension of
mind.
The Straightforward professor is q
man of long fingers. A coniurer with
slow and chubby hand would betray
the awful secrets of the plum pudding
that is taken from the depths of your
best hat.
But beside the character and trade,
the hands tell the age Soft and round,
the baby's pair of putf-balls, with their
fat wrists deeply ridged, appear as if
they can never do any thing in this
world. Yet the girls hand will become
a treasure, and the boys hand will bat
tie forlife and with his fellow-men for
the mastery. 1t is appalling to think
of what those helpless little puf-balls
have before 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 8
hand ceases to grumble at gloves yes,
he wears them in eXtravagant fresh
ness, in comparison as his collars grow
upward, and his shoes tighten within
an inch of his life. The result of these
phenomena is that ring begins to
shine with charming strangeness on
another hand, that seemed child's
but yesterday. The young wife tells
by her hands that it is not long since
the wedding, because she can not let
that new ring alone, buttwists it around
for the novelty, and admires it with
an unconscious knack of caressing it
in idle moments. Her dimples disap-
pear, as the children gather to make a
home circle; it is the hand of the woman
now, with its very frame work trace
able.
Dimples, bones and wrinkles mark
the three stages of life's progress.
With the wrinkled stage the steadiness
of youth often remains in resoute
character When the Duke of yelling
ton was very old man he could still
fill glass of water to the last possible
drop and hold it up steadily brimful.
The helpful hands keep their youthful
activity, too, far into the whitening
age. And in nobly-loving natures there
is sort of Immortality of youth; the
warmth of affection has given more
than royal prerogative; the hand is
beautiful always to the eyes that know
it Familiarity. The latter years only
stamp it with the impress of a longer
past of tenderness and bounty. 1t is
not the "old" hand but the dear
hand, and ii 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. CaSSeW S
FaniiY Mn00zine.