The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-09-06
THE CHIN AS AN INDEX.
A Face Reader Tells What He Thinks
 of Some Mems Features.

A Face-Reader Tells What He Thinks
 of Some Mems Features.
 When a face-reader was asked for his opinion of an article, "The Chin as an Index" printed in the St. Louis Clin- ique he replied: )3
 'The thing is unscientific. The writer says the protruding chin marks the get there type of man; that the broad chin denotes dignity; that the dimpled chin indicates coquettishness; that the re- treating chin is the chin of failure, and that the other kinds of chin which he describes stand for the other traits of character which he associates with them. His statements are unsupported by proofs or illustrations from life or from pictorial or from pictorial art. Had he given the names of people, no- table historical persons, rather than contemporaries, having chins of the everal varieties spoken of his descrip- tion of the traits of their possession would have been more entertaining; for, in each case presented, one could have formed his own opinion as to the correspondence between the feature and the mental quality which he seeks to associate with it. Cortez, for exam pie, Cromwell and Peter the Great were certainly men of the get-there type, but he would hardly say that they had protruding chins.
 "So also in regard to the other kinds of chin from the dgnified and the CO., quettish to the executive and the hum- ble, I would say, let him show me the portraits of the parties whose chins give combinations to his theory. My own study of the pictured features of the eminent men of past and present times has led me to believe that a face reader must be very wary when he makes remarks upon the chin as an in- dex to character. ] could refer you to the features of plenty of men who are yet among the living. There was in New York last year famous Chinese statesmen of the get-there type, Ii Hung Chang, not very yielding or help less or easily discouraged; yet no one who saw him while he was here failed to observe that he has a retreating chin, one which retreats almost out of sight, so that not even his best friend would speak of it as protruding. What about that? Again, it will be admitted that Bismarck belongs to the get-there
 
 behind the frontal line and also the line of the molar bone; it is far from pro- trusive. Look at the chin of the pugil- ist, Fitzsimmons.
 ''I could take up all the kinds of chin described in the Clinique's article and show you that plenty of the people who have any one of the kinds do not pos sess the mental or moral character set down over against it by the writer in that periodical, who must be a very poor sort of face-reader.
 "There are physiognomists who, after studying a mans features from his chin and nose to his upper story, can make A pretty fair guess as to the nature of his invisible traits. But they cannot always be sure that they get things right, and everybody knows that they often get things wrong, more especially when they have not previously had any knowledge of the mans life or idiosyn- crasies I repeat that it is very hard to get at the characteristics of any ones mind by his chin; and, in truth, it Is not easy to get at them by any or all of the lineaments of his face Many a great man has had features which would very surely lead the sharpest physiog- nomist to draw erroneous conclusions from them. Who, upon seeing the face of Thomas Carlyle, without knowing of his works, would ever have taken him to be the great thinker that he was?
 "There have been plenty of heroes whose looks were misleading; and lots of poets whose features could not be made to rhyme; and some saints whose faces would never remind you of a