Human Physiognomy : or the Art of Discerning the Mental and Moral Character of Man

HUMAN PHYSIOGNOMY. IS in the body by the passions of the mind. It is interesting, as it explains natural language. Man walks the earth—a mystery and mostly so to those who study him. To the ignorant and the superficial there is little mysterious about him ; but to the phi losophic, the most minute circumstance pertaining to him is an exhaustless fountain of wonder ! In walking the streets, the man who thinks of the future looks upward, the man who thinks of the past looks downward. If he look straight before him, he is occupied with the present: if he look right and left, he thinks, good man, of nothing. If he cast frequent looks behind him, lay it down as an infallible axiom that he is thinking then of his creditors. The man who walks leisurely is reflecting, meditating, calculating ; the man who projects, moves rapidly; while he who runs is full of some anticipated success in money, love, am bition. A simple style of dress, somewhat negligent, yet neat on the whole—a walk neither very rapid, nor very slow, a a turn of countenance neither soft nor hard, announce the serious, reasonable man, of good disposition. The man who takes short and mincing steps, contracts his eyes, thrusts forward his face, and moves the shoulders con sequentially, is boastful, captious, punctilious, and probably a cheat. If he rolls his body and jerks his arms, he is a member of the Legislature, or Congress, or a political orator. The man “ad unguem factus,” who appears to have just stepped forth from a bandbox—who smooths his hat with his hand, dusts his trousers with a cambric handkerchief, and rubs down the skirts of his frock coat with his sleeve, is petty-minded, susceptible, irascible. He who wears chains of gold very visible to the naked eye, cameos, rings, brooches, is a rich fellow just come from the country, a genteel pick-pocket, a Jew, a quack-doctori or an Italian count. The man who walks with perfect ease and grace is one man in ten thousand. A military carriage is perhaps the nearest approach to peripatetic perfection, but that it is almost uniformly marred by a military swagger. The tailor, like Iris, is known by his bow, and always appearing in misfits ; the drygoods man’s clerk, by his fidgety habit of drawing out his cane betwixt linger and thumb to the exact length of a yard. The ambitious bar-tender is also readily detected by his imitation of the newest fashions, in the most sordid materials; yet still more by the bla< k and stunted two-penny cigar, stinking and burnt (like the carriage of the smoker) all on one side. The stariugly dresl man, with u flaunting necktie, and an extravagant vest, is an actor in luck. The same, seedy, with a hole in his boot or trousers, is an actor out of luck. Coats buttoned high, and skin tight, w/'lh invisible eolian

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