em 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
threaten, and the fist shaken in defiance. The brow is contracted with
displeasure, and the eyes winked to show connivance. The shoulders
are shrugged to express disbelief or repugnance, the eyebrows
elevated with surprise, the lips bitten in vexation and thrust out in
sullenness or displeasure, while a higher degree of anger is shown
by a stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding the subject, however,
not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and intellect, but for
illustration and enforcement, becomes eloquent on the variety of
motions of which the hands alone are capable, as follows:

"The action of the other parts of the body assists the speaker, but
the hands (I could almost say) speak themselves. By them do we
not demand, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express
abhorrence and terror, question and deny? Do we not by them express
joy and sorrow, doubt, confession, repentance, measure, quantity,
number, and time? Do they not also encourage, supplicate, restrain,
convict, admire, respect? and in pointing out places and persons do
they not discharge the office of adverbs and of pronouns?"

Voss adopts almost the words o