Sleight of hand

“ See Plate I.—Fingers thick, and without flexibility, palm large, thick, and hard, thumb rudimentary, and frequently bent somewhat backwards, skin coarse in its texture, nails short and thick. In countries where such hands abound, the people obey habit and instinct rather than reason. The sensations are dull and inactive, the imagination is without force, and the character apathetic; for the extremities of the nerves being deficient in sensibility, the impressions conveyed to the brain are wanting in intensity, and70 the ideas to which they give rise are consequently neither clear nor vivid. ”

“ When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder; but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. ”

“ So you, who are untrained of touch, do not recognize a hand by the grasp; and so, too, any description I might give would fail to make you acquainted with a friendly hand which my fingers have often folded about, and which my affection translates to my memory. I cannot describe hands under any class or type; there is no democracy of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. ”

“ The finger nails are there and all the fine lines that can be traced on the inside of the hand and fingers. There are many lines on the surface of the human body that require the aid of a magnifying glass to discern ”

“ When, now, we pass from this light to very heavy work, it will be obvious that to hold a stone in the hollow of the hand, and to strike an object with it so that the reaction of the blow shall be mainly met by the muscular action of the back of the hand, and the thinnest section of the wrist, would be not only fatiguing, but might be injurious to the delicate network of muscles there found, and so damage this part of the hand. ”

“ The greater bulk and strength of the right arm resulting from its greater use, and the greater aptitude of the right hand, are instances in point; and that the relative incapacity of the left hand, involved by cultivating the capacity of the right hand, would become still more marked were the right hand to undertake all manipulation, is obvious. ”

“ Similarly, whoever considers his hand, with its five fingers of unequal lengths, four of them with three joints and the thumb with only two, and the way in which it can be used for grasping, or for carrying, or for smiting, will frankly acknowledge that no amount of human wisdom could better it by altering the number and arrangement of the fingers, or in any other way. ”

“ People control their countenances, but the hand is under no such restraint. It relaxes and becomes listless when the spirit is low and dejected; the muscles tighten when the mind is excited or the heart glad; and permanent qualities stand written on it all the time.
As there are many beauties of the face, so the beauties of the hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. ”

“ The slender, tapering fingers, with their pliant joints, together with the strong opposable thumb, enable the hand to mold itself upon and grasp a great variety of objects; so that great as are the delicacy and grace of the hand, it is not wanting in the elements of power. ”

“ Above the mean size, fingers with prominent joints, of an average length, and strong, thick, and bony, with a square tip; palm of a mean size, hollow, and tolerably firm; thumb large, with the muscular root strongly developed. This form of hand cannot exist without a strong, massive developement of the bony and muscular system. It is essentially the hand of man, as the sensitive is that of woman. ”

“ The man howls and breaks his lantern with a kick. My hand is partly in the man’s hand, but by a great miracle of the ebbing life in my wrist, my hand, at the moment it leaves my arm, has seized the hand of the man! ”

“ To begin: when you see an irregular hand with large, broad palm, strong wrist, but shapely, tapering fingers, you may know that hand betokens a duplex temperament, where opposite characteristics are constantly struggling for the mastery. The palm may denote strength and industry, but the fingers may overbalance these qualities by their love of ease or generous prodigality. ”

“ Your fingers already begin to develop a well-regulated flexibility; your touch and execution are no longer heavy and sluggish; the finger-exercises, the runs, and scale-passages go off tolerably quick, light, and equal ”

“ The hand and foot are usually the only lost parts very distinctly felt, the intervening tracts seeming to disappear. A man, for example, whose arm was cut off at the shoulder-joint told me that he felt his hand budding immediately from his shoulder. ”

“ Generally, except in precise pointing, there is a graduated curving, not too nice, from the bent little finger to the straighter forefinger. As the gesture is concerned with thought more delicate, the action of the hand is lighter and tends more to the tips of the fingers; as it is more rugged and strong, the hand is held heavier. ”

“ The bandages concealing them from view then fell off, and to my agonized sight were disclosed objects that struck me as strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked individuality, I never forget. No two persons’ hands are alike. And in these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue veins, I read a likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall. Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching the throat, the fingers set to work at once to remove the wrappings. ”

“ I read that a face is strong, gentle; that it is full of patience, of intellect; that it is fine, sweet, noble, beautiful. Have I not the same right to use these words in describing what I feel as you have in describing what you see? They express truly what I feel in the hand. I am seldom conscious of physical qualities, and I do not remember whether the fingers of a hand are short or long, or the skin is moist or dry. No more can you, without conscious effort, recall the details of a face, even when you have seen it many times. ”

“ It is the hand that binds me to the world of men and women. The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter. With the dropping of a little word from another’s hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began the intelligence, the joy, the fullness of my life. Like Job, I feel as if a hand had made me, fashioned me together round about and molded my very soul. ”

“ Look where we will, we find the hand in time and history, working, building, inventing, bringing civilization out of barbarism. The hand symbolizes power and the excellence of work. The mechanic’s hand, that minister of elemental forces, the hand that hews, saws, cuts, builds, is useful in the world equally with the delicate hand that paints a wild flower or molds a Grecian urn, or the hand of a statesman that writes a law. ”

“ It must hence be regarded as a primitive form of the member, as a rudimentary, and consequently an imperfect organ.
Transitions from the elementary to other forms of hand are frequently met with. Thus, when the fingers become elongated and somewhat thinner, and the texture of the skin finer, the hand may be said to be intermediate between the elementary and sensitive type, while long, hard, bony fingers indicate an approach towards the motive type. ”

“ It is not necessarily the right foot, but it is always the same. The unpremeditated action of hand or foot is uniform, as the reader will find by clasping his hands with the fingers interlaced, or inviting another to do so. ”

“ At first--a finger only, then a hand, then a nebulous figure attached to the hand, without backbone, without consistency.
'Lastly, a complete form, with consistency and with backbone, but the latter in a gelatinous condition, and the entire figure overweighted by the hand, just as hand and figure were previously overweighted by the finger. Simultaneously with this compacting and consolidating of the figure, came your degeneration and loss of vital force and, in a word, of health. What you lose, that object acquires, and what it acquires, it gains by contact with you. ”

“ At the extremity of the hands are five fingers, four of which are in a row, and some long and some short, so that when they take hold of anything, they may come equally together in the palm of the hand. The thumb, which is opposite to the four fingers, is shorter than any of them and stronger, that it may be a help to the whole and render them capable of retaining and grasping. ”

“ The hand is the channel through which life passes. It reveals to the physician all the mysteries of our organism. It exhales more than any other part of our bodies the nervous fluid, or that unknown substance, which for want of another term we style will. The eye can discover the mood of our soul but the hand betrays at the same time the secrets of the body and those of the soul. We can acquire the faculty of imposing silence on our eyes, on our lips, on our brows, and on our forehead; but the hand never dissembles and nothing in our features can be compared to the richness of its expression. ”

“ Any widely manifested difference in the sensitiveness of one of the hands, apart from its habitual use in all ordinary manipulation, and especially among uncultured races, would assuredly seem to indicate some congenital distinction leading to the preferential use of the right hand. ”

“ With respect to the texture of the skin—a hand possessing a delicate and highly-sensitive skin is accompanied by a similar structure of the tegumentary envelope of the entire body, and is always associated with an excitable organisation, with a highly sensitive, mobile disposition. A coarse, dry texture of the skin denotes a preponderance of muscular force over sensibility, and a character more remarkable for solidity and resolution than for imagination or vivacity of conception. The hand partakes of the nature of the whole body ”

“ The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many. It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many. ”

“ A nineteen-year-old girl and a man in the forties, who had each but one normal hand, the other, instead of fingers, having only little prominences of skin without bones or muscles, thought they bent their absent fingers when they bent the deformed stump. Tickling these eminences, or binding a string about the fore-arm, caused the same sensations as in amputated persons, and a pressure on the ulnar nerve made the outer fingers tingle. ”

“ Often a suspended action, with a fixed look of the face, will serve to arrest the attention of auditors and fix it upon an idea. One should cultivate first the look, then the supporting or completing action.
As to the movement of the arm and the form of the hand, one should be careful not to become stiff and precise by following exact rules. In general, it may be said that the beginning of the arm movement, being from the body, is in the upper arm; the finish of it is at the tips of the fingers, with the forefinger leading, or bringing the gesture to a point. ”

“ Delicate, exact, and finely coordinated movements, such as those of writing and using surgical instruments, I perform always with my left hand while grosser movements involving the whole hand or arm, I am rather likely to perform with my right hand. ”

“ When in the dark I lay my hand on a surface, or grasp a ball of three inches diameter, in either case the same parts of the hand receive the impression: but out of the different contraction of the hand in the two cases my Understanding constructs the form of the body whose contact caused the feeling, and confirms its construction by leading me to move my hand over the body. If one born blind handles a cubical body, the sensations of his hand are quite uniform on all sides and in all directions,—only the corners press upon a smaller part of his skin. ”

“ Harry guessed his thoughts, and made up his mind to profit by his discontent.
“Smithkin,” he whispered, “it’s rather mean not to give you anything to eat. I would treat you better than that if you were working for me.”
Smithkin scowled, and said nothing.
“Is any one in the room looking this way?” asked Harry.
The soldier glanced over the Hall, and shook his head slowly.
“Then,” continued Harry, “slip your hand in my left coat-pocket, and take what you find there.” ”

“ Before we can discuss the first point with advantage we must consider with some attention, and compare together, the structure of the human hand and that of the human foot, so that we may have distinct and clear ideas of what constitutes a hand and what a foot.
The external form of the human hand is familiar enough to every one. It consists of a stout wrist followed by a broad palm, formed of flesh, and tendons, and skin, binding together four bones, and dividing into four long and flexible digits, or fingers, each of which bears on the back of its last joint a broad and flattened nail. ”

“ A hand rather below the average size, and of which the skin is soft and delicate, the fingers long, and provided with numerous cuticular ridges, which are indicative of a large number of the sentient papillæ of touch, the bony portion but slightly developed, and the joints not prominent, is admirably adapted for an organ of sensation, but by no means suited for an instrument of motion ”

“ In man, the hand is admirably adapted to the exercise 379 of touch. “The fineness of the skin, its great sensibility, the species of cushion formed by the sub-cutaneous fat at the extremities of the fingers, the length and flexibility of these organs, and the capability of opposing the thumb to the fingers, like a pair of forceps, are so many conditions essentially favorable to the delicacy of this sense, and enable us to appreciate with exactitude the qualities of the bodies we may feel.” ”