that punctuates and enforces; the pleasantry of after-dinner talk may
need only the voice. So, one audience, not quick in grasping ideas, may
need, both in language and action, much clear, sharp indication of the
point by illustration, much stirring up by physical attack, so to
speak, while another audience would be displeased by this unnecessary
effort to be clear and expressive. Yet again, given a certain speaker
and a certain subject and a certain audience, it is obvious that the
occasion will determine largely how the speaker will bear himself. The
atmosphere of a college commencement will be different from that of a
barbecue, and the speaker would, within the limits set by his own
personality and his own dignity, adapt himself to the one or the other.
The general law of appropriateness and good taste must determine the
amount of gesture.

For the purposes of this work there is probably very little, if any,
value in a strict classification of gestures. It may, at times, be
convenient to speak of one gesture as merely for emphasis, of another
as indicating location, of another as giving illustration, of one as
more subjective, expressing a thought that reflects back upon the
speaker, or is said more in the way of self-communion, of another as
objective, concerned only with outer objects or with ideas more apart
from the person or the inward feeling of the speaker. But it can easily
be shown that one idea, or one dominant feeling, may be expressed by
many kinds of action, in fact, so far at least as prescribed movements
are concerned, in directly opposite kinds, and gesture is so largely a
matter of the individual, and is governed so much by mixed motive and
varying circumstance, that the general public speaker will profit
little by searching for its philosophic basis, and trying to practice
according to any elaborated system. The observing of life, with the
exercise of instinct, taste, sense, above all of honest purpose--these,