Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1888 — THE AMERICAS HAND. [ARTICLE]

THE AMERICAS HAND.

Analyzing Its Various Characteristic Features. • [Edward Heron-Allen, in America.] What shall I say of the distintive American hand ? For there is a distinctively American hand, just as distinctive as those of the Ethiopian, the Chinaman, the German, or the Hindoo. In his curious work, “La Science de.la Main,” D’Arpentigny quotes the strange description of “le Yankee,” contained in Michael Chevalier's “Letters sur l’Amerique du Nord” (of which a translation was published in Boston in 1839) and concludes: “In a nation such as this there can not exist any but hands which are spatulate and fingers which are square.” He was partly right and partly wrong. "When first I encountered the racially American hand I was almost alarmed. I thought I had found a new and unique specimen overwhelming in its contradictions. The specimen belonged to Henry Ward Beecher, whose hands I overhauled one sunny afternoon on the deck of the Etruria as we made for the States together at the close of his lecture tour in Great Britain. The hand, of which I have a drawing, was of medium size, inclining to large; the palm thick and heavy, the consistency firm, neither hard nor soft; the thumb rather long (i. e., reaching almost to the first phalanx of the forefinger), its two phalanges being of equal length, and the outer phalanx pointed. The fingers were large and very square, the joints not very prominent, the outer, or nailed, phalanges long, the nails round and inclined to shortness, the lower phalanx thick. Here was a surprising collection of anomalies for a chirosophist. So, presuming it to be a unique specimen, I made a very careful drawing thereof and notes thereon. But hardly had I settled down to a steady swing of hand-reading w hen I made a quaint discovery’ to wit: that this was the distinctly American hand —seven out of ten hands that were presented to me, whether male or female, presented this to me heretofore unknown collection of contrasting formations. This significance is interesting as a sketch of the American character. The size of the hand indicates a capacity for synthesis combined with analysis, a capacity to seize the meaning of an entire subject and analyze its details with equal rapidity; the palm gives sensuality and love of pleasure, the consistency gives mental activity and love of exercise—when other people are taking it; in a word, a love of the display of physical energy, which we do not ourselves practice. The thumb denotes an equal amount of will power and common sense, neither overriding the other. The fingers again show a love of pleasure and luxury combined with intense order, regularity and arrangement, and a spirit of impulsive calculation (if I may be allowed the paradox) a tendency to act promptly on an impulse and analyze the cause and 'effects of one’s action afterward, so as |to make one’s action, however hasty, inure to one’s good. Dominating the entire character is a keen intutition, and a good-natured spirit of critisism, shown by the long-pointed or conic tips, with the short, round nails. It took me a month before I could contrast and combine these characteristics so as to arrive at a clear comprehension of the average American personality, and during that month I made some grand enemies, who have never forgotten me. Indeed, had it not been that I had Henry Ward Beecher’s hand to ponder over before I arrived, I should probably have been so “rattled” by the type as to despair of ever properly diagnosing it.