The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1886-07-01
CHARACTER IN THE HANDS.

Suggestive Ideas from Leading English
DIagazine-A Brief List.
Our oriental friends, who are of a more
slow and dignified character, disapprove
of the western custom of taking hold of
the precious person Of an acquaintance
and shaking him for welcome. 1t may
be more dignified to bow, but if frank
ness and activity be our characteristics,
we like the trustful mystery of hand
clasp. 1t is an index in itself. The
formal and cold character offers straight
fingers for an instant; the dull and
apathetic let us take hold Of hand like
dead fish; the energetic business man
meets an old friend with a grip that
brings this water into his eyes; the warm
hearted takes our hand and holds it.
The nervous hand, with an affectionate
swiftness, comes out most readily and
longingly. And is there anything more
natural to a reverent love than the kiss
ing of the hand that has been bountiful
in love TO us See how far we have gone
among mysteries
Character, habits, and age are the
three things that are told by the hands.
When we draw the character of Heep,
the hypocrite-and, as schoolboys would
say, the "sneak"-Dickens did not neg
lect this tell-tale; 20 what a clammy
hand he was! as CHASTITY TO the touch as
to the sight; rubbed mine afterward to
warm it, and to rub his off. 1t was such
am uncomfortable hand that when went
to my room it was still cold and wet
upon my memory" Even if it be not
hot - kl,a hum llo
hand is apt to writhe and squeeze its
bending finger together.
The hand that little Jack Homer
made sticky with his own pie in his own
corner undoubtedly became with big
Jack Horner, a thick-fingered, puffy
index of mis- Partially for pies and
plums. Little does the swaggerer who
chinks his small change and cocks his
thumbs out of his pockets imagine that
thumbs and hands are as much his con-
demnation as the Dragging seals and the
chain that would anchor a ship.
The stingy man has a tight hand; his
fingers keep fast hold of sixpence, and
his palm makes a careful hollow out of
which it cannot roll, until he is quite
sure he is obliged TO part with It. The
rough and the refined hand are different
with difference like that of education
in the man. The lowest extremity of
roughness is the hand Of brute violence
"a colossal paw, of iron strength, huge
with muscle, vein, and sinew, but lack
ing all sensitiveness and flexibility-de-
faint in its attitudes human tool that
has been turned into a weapon.
There are refined hands that are Grim
inal also, but their character is the more
hateful because no trace is made upon
outward perfection, and their beauty is
a lie. One reads in the well-cared for,
or, as we might say, the educated hand,
not only its own refinement, but that of
other generations-the ancestors who
lived at leisure from bodily tell, whose
muscles were not stretched by labor,
whose fingers, little used went slender
to the tips, whose very finger-nails re- ,
vealed easy times, by their oval shape, !
not pressed and worn into hard-worked /
diminutive half-circles.
Yet one likes the strong Fundamentally
strong even if it has never been tasked I
with physical labor; the mans hand that
is not effeminate, the girls hand that is
not pretty waxwork, but part of a
helpful someone, who would be sweetiy
willing to do something for somebody .
else. Unless it be the weak hand Of
sickness which is a most piteous sight,
the hand of tho weak character is not
what anyone cares to clasp More and
more in this world we want the hands
that can do something. As Carlyle says,
the first doing would be for many a
evelation.-Cassells Family Magazine.