ightly
drawn in_]. By the time he becomes lieutenant he is used to authority,
and does not have to show it off so much [_elbows drawn in still more_].
As for a general, one whose rank is the highest in the army, he walks
with his arms hanging naturally at his sides.

Now let me tell you about the thumb. My father being the son and the
nephew of doctors, was interested enough in the science to enter, at one
time, the school of medicine. Here, while dissecting, he noticed that
the thumb of a dead man falls inward toward the palm. This led him to
study the attitude of the thumb in life. He would pass days in the
garden of the Tuileries watching the nurses and the mammas carrying
their babes, noting how their thumbs spread out to clasp the precious
burden, and how the mothers' hands spread wider open than those of hired
servants; so he called the thumb "the thermometer of life."

My father always used to say to his pupils: "Be warm outwardly, cold
inwardly." He wanted them to pass suddenly from one great emotion to
another. All great actors do so. He would point to a portrait of
Garrick, representing the great actor with one-half of his face
laughing, the other half weeping. He himself, in his lessons, after
having given expression to some pathetic sentiment, would become
immediately his own kind self again. He insisted on self-possession.
Often when I was a little girl, and would slip into the room during his
lessons, for I loved to listen to them, and would find him portraying
some terrible passion, he would stop suddenly, seeing the expression of
horror on my face, and would burst out laughing and catch me in his
arms, saying: "Poor little one, are you frightened?"

"The artist," said my father, "must move, interest and convince."
Gesture is the agent of the heart. Gesture must always precede speech.
"Make me feel in advance," he used to say; "if it is something
frightful, let me read it on your face before you tell me of it." To
illustrate the practice of gesture before speech, I will now recite the
fable of "The Cock, the Cat and the Mouse." [Here followed the
recitation of the fable.]

My father once held his whole audience under a spell, showing them,
through the medium of a little girl of eight, a hundred different ways
of saying, "That dog is pretty." I will show you one or two ways If I
really think the dog is pretty, I will say it in this tone, "That dog is
pretty." If the dog's coat is soiled, I will say in