Nevada County picayune., 1889-09-04
USE BOTH HANDS.
They Were Certainly Intended for
 Like Service
People Are Right-Handed Chiefly From Education-Ths Left Hand May Bo Made Equally Expert ard
 Useful.

Useful.
 Until of late years the most of the world has believed that it was a se- rious error to allow a child to use It's left hand as much US its right one. It was Charles Reade who once said men were right-handed by habit, educa- tion and perhaps by inheritance. It is no more natural to be right-handed than left-handed, except that having two hands we get in the habit of using one of them more than the other. h. deed, every mother will tell you how she fought against Willie or Johnny or Jennie being left-handed, not that to have a left-handed son or daughter Is positive disgrace, but all pechan- ical appliances and every thing in- tended for the use of humanity is by common consent made right-handed
 Take child when it is first able to sit alone and it is neither right nor left-handed. Offer 1t an object and the chances are ten to one it will reach for 1t with the left hand. Every one has noticed this. How it worries the mother, and how she struggles for months, or until the child has got into the habit of using the right hand, to prevent it from being left-handed. The left hand Is the more sensitive of the two; 1t is noarer the child, it is nearer its being, its life and action. Offer to shake hands with it and 1t ex- tends the left
 Not that hand" says the mother; "giye the gentleman the other hand. :" And after being directed two or three times it extends the other, and tho mother apologies by saying she does not understand why it wants to give its left hand; that she is sure none of her people or her husbands are left handed Poor, deluded mother! And then when the little thing is put up to the table it insists upon taking it's fork In its left hand to eat. Every child does it, with hardly an excep- tion, as every mother can testify.
 It is not natural to use either hand; that is to say, both hands are certain ly mado to use, but until they have been trained both seem useless ap- pendages The child will ram its fists into its mouth, it's eyes, or into any thing that is within reach. It does not know what its little hands are for, and it has not the least idea what to do with them. They arc so many white elephants to it.
 Go into factory and watch the operators. How deftly they use their fingers; how accurate every move ment. The variation of an eighth of an inch in movement might cost them the price of a weeks work, so accurate must they be, and yet they continue, their fingers flying swiftly day after day without an error They arc not using tha right hand alone. The left is doing it's part. Perhaps at this machine, or at that table, the office the left hand performs is more important than that of the right, but it is trained, as the right is trained, in the performance of the ordinary af- fairs of life and it is true to its master.
 The factory operator was as awk- ward at his work the first day he be- gan at it as the child is in its efforts to hahdle material things, with the sim gle exception that the operator knew what his hands were for, and they had | been trained to respond to his will in the ordinary movements. But how long did it take him to become per fectP One year-two years. So can you train the left hand in the same length of time to perform any act accurately which can be done with | the right It is well known that per sons who lose the use of the right hand entirely learn to write more beautifully with the left than they ever did with the right. This is accounted for as stated at tho beginning of this article, by the fact that the left hand or arm is more sensitive in its nature than the right, and, therefore, more accurate in precision.
 Every person has certain things which they do with their left hand, and which, from never having done the same things with the right, they would be as awkward about, were they to at tempt it, as they are about doing things with their left hand which they have trained their right to perform.
 Nearly every one holds garment in the left hand 70 put it -on9 WhyP Well, they learned to do it that way because their mothers never taught them differently And in putting on a garment this putting the right arm in irst-the left hand performs all the work. It holds the garment, draws it on 10 tho right arm. and then, while the right arm crooks and the hand comes up and catches tho lapel of the coat, tho awkward left hand goes roupd behind you, catches the coat, strmightens it out, as it were,