good-natured enough to be really desirous of responding to a request
for information, when he has exhausted his scanty stock of words will
eke them out by original gestures. While fully admitting the advice to
Coriolanus--

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears--

it may be paraphrased to read that the hands of the ignorant are
more learned than their tongues. A stammerer, too, works his arms and
features as if determined to get his thoughts out, in a manner not
only suggestive of the physical struggle, but of the use of gestures
as a hereditary expedient.



_GESTURES OF FLUENT TALKERS._

The same is true of the most fluent talkers on occasions when the
exact vocal formula desired does not at once suggest itself, or is
unsatisfactory without assistance from the physical machinery not
embraced in the oral apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary
common to both speaker and hearer undoubtedly tends to a phlegmatic
delivery and disdain of subsidiary aid. An excited speaker will,
however, generally make a free use of his hands without regard to
any effect of that use upon auditors. Even among the gesture-hating
English, when they are aroused from torpidity of manner, the hands are
involuntarily clapped in approbation, rubbed with delight, wrung in
distress, raised in astonishment, and waved in triumph. The fingers
are snapped for contempt, the forefinger is vibrated to reprove or