Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1892 — The Secrets Revealed Through the "Windows of Character." [ARTICLE]

The Secrets Revealed Through the "Windows of Character."

The great engineer Stephenson was once asked the mightiest power in nature, and he said that it was a woman’s eye, for it would send a man to the ends of the earth, and that same eye would bring him home agaih. Some •eyes are so liquid and deep that Emerson fitly calls them “wells into wliich •one might fan.” Others, lie says, have no more expression than blueberries. Some are asking eyes, some assertive, some prowling, some full of bayonets. ■“The eves of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dietionary, but is understood all the world over. Each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. The reason why men do not obey ns is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.” It is said that gamblers rely more upon the expression of the eye of their opponent to discover the state of the game than upon anything else. Bushnell tells of a preacher he knew whose eyes were “six-shooters,” keen, gray, individualizing, loaded with thought and emotion, and leveled at each hearer in turn. There was no special merit in the style or substance of his speech, but his penetrating eye made every one feel that eye-bolts were shooting surely and swiftly into the very soul. Of some eyes Sliakspeare says: They are the books, the arts, the academies That show, contain and nourish all the world. Brutes are kept at bay by the eye. The tamer and trainer govern, by a glance, creatures that could easily crush them did they know their power. So tnat the human eye is a weapon of defense and assault of incomparable power. “Next to the voice in effectiveness, ” says Cicero, “is the countenance, and this is ruled over by the eyes.” In Delsarte’s system there are 729 expressions of the eye, grouped as follows: Normal, indifferent, morose, somnolent, contemptuous, deeply reflective, surprised and resolute. But, as in music, so here, the chromatic scales and gamuts of expression beggar all description.— E. P. Thwing, in Phrenological Journal.