The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1897-01-27
HOW DO YOU SHAKE I
~ INDICATED w rhG
MANNER or CRASHING HANps.


pssring-Thsrs IL No Generally Observed
style Of Shaking Hands In This Country.
| Individual characteristics show them
| selves In the shape of the head the curve of
the nose, the style OF walking and in other
less noticeable ways, and perhaps the little
matter of handshaking may he considered
the trademark of gentility sort of door
card. ,as IL were. To let you know what
manner of man lives within
There are people who make their living
by reading the contour of the head, feeling
the bumps and then diving headlong into
an exhaustive dissertation on the subjects
past and future, with full and minute
description Of all his attributes
Then there are nomads and East Indi-
ans who read your palm and deduce or
nate accounts of your antecedents and
| your posterity. No one ever believes
them. But possibly no man has been bold
enough to try To discern character by the
shake of the hand. 1t would be rather
difficult job. Besides disclosing certain
traits of personality, handwriting figures
considerably in national characteristics.
1t is "a custom, just as sen bathing Is, or
talking, or eating, and, after centuries of
practice, molds itself into habit
The voluble, cffervescent French shake
hands as they talk and do everything else.
They come at you with a shaped wedge,
overwhelming You with whole oceans of
words md shake hands AS they would work
a pump handle.
Unfortunately, perhaps, no foreigner
can aspire tn the dignity Of the president
of the United States. But what president
n genuine French handshaker would makei
4 10,
few hundred palms more or less TO grasp,
your average Frenchman would make an
ideal chief executive for these democratic
states of ours
! With the English it is quite different.
The tendency to dignity and solemnize ev-
erything they do finds ample scope for ex-
preston in the daily incident of handshak-
ing. They do nothing enthusiastically nor
with unseemly haste. They veneer over
their smallest act with a magnificent Sc
dateness and respectablity which are APP
palling TO an uneven tempered American
and mean nothing short of "a total demoli-
ton of equilibrium for an excitable Gaul.
And thus il comes about that when you
shake hands with an Englishman or an
English woman you have an insinuating
suspicion that you are on the mourners'
bench and that some dreadful old woman
with green glasses and poke bonnet is
dolorously preparing you for the world to
come and IL giving you parting shake TO
speed you on your journey. That is the
way IL feels to II healthy man. The Eng
lish handshake isn't exactly corpselike,
but it gives you the shivers until you are
used TO it. And it is patronizing, too,
something dreadfully insular about it that
inpresses you with your inferiority.
Our English cousins have allowed the
matter of fact business of saying Howdy"
with the hands TO degenerate into a sort of
dissipation. They indulge themselves in
it, as they indulge in a b. and $. when
they have IA headache. 1t has even gone so
far as to develop at times into "A veritable
orgy.
In their refined, exclusive way they take
an infinite. almost childish, delight in
calmly folding their hand around yours
and raising il high in the air, To- stay there
until you both get tired The English
shake hands when they get up, shake hands
at the breakfast table when they leave the
house, ut luncheon, at dinner, when they
go 30 bed, and ! believe it is not improba
bic that-thcy indulge themselves i'm their
sleep.
The delicious and refreshing contrast to
both the French and English styles Is our
own. We are generally too busy-that is,
our men are-to waste much time in EN-
bellishing our handshakes OF prolonging
them beyond the period of decent civility.
Among men, indeed, the social habit
seems To have fallen into disusc for some
occult reason. IL Is hard TO say whether IL
| is considered effeminate and silly or mere
ly u waste of valuable time, which so often
| is money with us. Perhaps both figure
among the causes for the decline of hand
shaking. At any rate, you will find that,
generally speaking only ministers of the
gospel, women, clubmcn and cads, with
small sprinkling of real gentlemen who
have money enough to justify little indul-
gences, monopolize the handshaking bust
ness i'm America. OF course this statement
is qualified, because there are times when
every man is called on to undergo this
| tiresome imposition of society.
But among the handshaking classes If
America there is as wide difference as
can well be conceived
When the typical American-the bust
ness man, that isis obliged to shake
hands. he gets over it rs quickly as posi-
| BILE He suffers it as matter of necessity
and doesn't adorn it with any stuccO work
or has relief.
surprise for you and makes you very nerv
Gus, because you never know what is com
ing. Citizen George Francis Train IL u fair
example of the bizarre bandshaker. When
you are introduced to him, you put forth
your digits very modestly and are knocked
into heap figuratively when the distin
guished eccentric smiles draws back and
shakes his own hands, looking all the
| while as though he enjoyed it infinitely
more than though he had your hand in his
And perhaps there is method in his mad.
ness. Ask your family physician what he
thinks of the hygienic side of the question,
and il he Is a crank on the subject he may
tell you neither to shake hands with nor
kiss even your closest relative. Perhaps
Citizen Train Is right after ALL
Briefly, there Is Uriah Heep, who gives
you faint, seasck feeling about the stom-
ach when you take his hand. Ii Is wet
clammy is the conventional woodland
sticky and cold and altogether nasty and
revolving. You learn To know Mr.. Keep,
and you would rather walk around the
block than meet him face to face and have
TO undergo tho torture of contact with his
| dahbx- axvf,,1 hapds -Toledo Rlade