ted.

[Illustration: Fig. 111.]

This somewhat lengthy but yet only partial list of Neapolitan
gesture-signs must conclude with one common throughout Italy, and also
among us with a somewhat different signification, yet perhaps also
derived from classic times. To express suspicion of a person the
forefinger of the right hand is placed upon the side of the nose. It
means _tainted_, not sound. It is used to give an unfavorable report
of a person inquired of and to warn against such.

* * * * *

The Chinese, though ready in gesticulation and divided by dialects,
do not appear to make general use of a systematic sign language, but
they adopt an expedient rendered possible by the peculiarity of their
written characters, with which a large proportion of their adults
are acquainted, and which are common in form to the whole empire. The
inhabitants of different provinces when meeting, and being unable to
converse orally, do not try to do so, but write the characters of the
words upon the ground or trace them on the palm of the hand or in the
air. Those written characters each represent words in the same manner
as do the Arabic or Roman numerals, which are the same to Italians,
Germans, French, and English, and therefore intelligible, but if
expressed in sound or written in full by the alphabet, would not be
mutually understood. This device of the Chinese was with less apparent
necessity resorted to in the writer's personal knowledge between
a Hungarian who could talk Latin, and a then recent graduate from
college who could also do so to some extent, but their pronunciation
was so different as to occasion constant difficulty, so they both
wrote the words on paper, instead of attempting to speak them.

The efforts at intercommunication of all savage and barbarian tribes,
when brought into contact with other bodies of men not speaking
an oral language common to both, and especially when uncivilized
inhabitants of the same territory are separated by many linguistic
divisions, should in theory resemble the devices of the North American
Indians. They are not shown by published works to prevail in the
Eastern hemisphere to the same extent and in the same manner as
in North America. It is, however, probable that they exist in many
localities, though not reported, and also that some of them survive
after partial or even high civilization has been attained, and
after changed environment has rendered t