MEN AND MANNERISMS


There is a story of a politician who had acquired a mannerism of
fingering a button on his coat while talking to an audience. On one
occasion some friends surreptitiously cut the particular button off, and
the result was that the speaker when he stood up to address the audience
lost the thread of his discourse.

Gladstone had a mannerism of striking the palm of his left hand with the
clenched fist of his other hand, so that often the emphatic word was
lost in the noise of percussion. A common habit of the distinguished
statesman was to reach out his right hand at full arm's length, and then
to bend it back at the elbow and lightly scratch the top of his head
with his thumb-nail.

Balfour, while speaking, used to take hold of the lapels of his coat by
both hands as if he were in mortal fear of running away before he had
finished.

Goshen, at the beginning of a speech, would sound his chest and sides
with his hands, and apparently finding that his ribs were in good order,
would proceed to wash his hands with invisible soap.

The strange thing about mannerisms is that the speakers are usually
unconscious of them, and would be the first to condemn them in others.
The remedy for such defects lies in thorough and severe self-examination