Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1909 — Those Extended Fingers. [ARTICLE]

Those Extended Fingers.

A social philosopher has discovered that an act very commonly regarded as an affectation of gentility, as found in the manner of bolding a drinking glass when drinking from it, is not an affectation at all, out really an Unconscious, automatic act. This 'supposed affection consists in extending the third and fourth Angers of thd hand clear of the glass when it is lifted arid tipped forward with its brim to the lips vyhile the glass is' held there in the act of drinking. No doubt it would commonly be considered that people do this for the sake of greater elegance, or at least for an instinctive desire to give to the hand such an appearance, which U would not possess if they closed the en tire hand around the glass—df they clutched it, so to speak, a manner of holding that would seem to savor of rudeness. But tins observer says that really people hold those, two Angers clear of the glass in drinking because that is the way that is iriost convenient. If, he says, a person should grasp the grtUs with the wnole hand, closed anuitfy around it he, would And that the act of tipping the glass so held required more muscular effort, for the muscles extending from all the Angers would then be called into use. Whereas if the person drinking holds the glass between the thumb and the Arst two fingers he not only relieves entirely the tension on the muscles of the two other fingers, but also in a way he plvots.theglaas and makes It easier to tip on that account. This philosopher concedes that the act may be exaggerated; that fingers thus extended might even, be seen raised arid extended more than was really comfortable for the better display of rings adorning them, and he conoedes that, sometimes when we see our fingers thus raised as we lift our glass, in clear view of all, we may seek to crook fingers in attitudes or curves of greater grace, and so he oonoedes that in some casps the raising of the fingers in lifting the glass njay |haw affectations in some measure bjft his point is that its original lndQiUon and in its practloe by the many the elevation of these two fing«ve is not an affection, but an act quite unconscious and automatic.