Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1884 — Character in the Hand. [ARTICLE]

Character in the Hand.

A hand which is hard and stiff and has- a difficulty in opening to its full extension indicates obstinacy and stubbornness. A large hand indicates love of minutiae and detail; a medium hand takes in detail and also appreciates entirety. Among musical people the most correct and learned musicians have square fingers; instrumentation, whether it be the art of performing, or composing for instruments, is invariably found in spatulate fingers; while singers have nearly always the third phalange pointed. Thus it will be understood that while knots beautify and improve a spatulate or square fingered hand on account of their natural usefulness and aptitude for combination, to have the joints largely developed would be a deformity and misfortune to a pointed or conical-fingered hand, seeing that the latter are devoted to the finer and more liberal arts, which necessarily succeed best when they are the offspring of inspiration and spontaneity. The inherent natural shape of a hand never alters. Its concomitant conditions may be changed by the subject being forced into an occupation the opposite of his genius, inclination, and natural tendency, but the original aptitude, and the form of finger which donates it, always remain. Thus: If a subject obviously reclined toward, and born for, poetry or art be forced by circumstances to become an engineer, or to pursue any other practical employment, the hand will become hard, gross and mechanical, but the pointed smooth shape will still remain undisguised. Take the absolute rustic, free as air, without thought or mental cares of any kind, his hand will be spatulate or square, with large joints. Take the circus rider, juggler, gymnast, dancer, rider, and so on, his hand will be either spatulate and smooth or large and conical, and very hard, for these possess a kind of rugged, instinctive grace.— Frith and Allen, in “Language of the Hand.”