Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1886-06-10
STRANGE HANDS.
They Tell Their Owners Character, and
Trade, and Age.

Hands reveal habits, occupations,
trades. A crop of them rises at the
thought, like the show thrust up from
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 crater
on the foretinger 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 ofmind
The sleight-of-hand professor is a
man of long fingers. A conjurer with
a slow and chubby hand would betray
the awful secrets of the plum-pudd ing
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 any thing 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 what
those helpless little puff-balls have be
fore them.
Oh, little hands, that weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,
Have still 50 long to give or ask
]. who so much with book or pen
Have toiled among my fellow men,
Am weary thinking of your task
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
hand ceases to grumble at gloves yea,
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 phe.
nomena is that a ring begins to shine
with charming strangeness on another
hand, that seemed child's but yester,
day. The young wife tells by her hand;
that it is not long since the wedding
because she can not let that new ring
alone, but twists it round for its novel
ty, and admires it, with an unconscious
knack of caressing it in idle moments
Her dimples disappear as the children
gather to make home circle; it is the
hand of the woman now, with its very
framework traceable.
Dimples, bones and wrinkles mark the
three stages of life's progress. Will
the wrinkled stage the steadiness o
youth often remains in resolute char
acters. When the Duke of Wellington
was very old man he could still fill
glass of water to the last possible drop
and hold it up steadily, brimful. TIL
helpful hands keep their youthful ac
tivity, too, far into the whitening age
And in the nobly-loving natures there
sort of Immortality of youth; tn
warmth of affection has given more thai
a royal p-erogative; the hand is beauti
full always to the eyes that know
familiarly. The latter years may stam
it with the impress of longer past @
tenderness, faithfulness and bounty. !
is not the "old'' hand, but the ''dear'
hand, and it never grows older, hu
only more dear He who doubts tn
truth of this last mystery has not ye
found out that hands, as well as hearts
have peculiar place in our knowledg
and love of one another. CdsSel
Fdn,ilu MAGAZINE.