ring that these
elegant idlers had nothing good to offer. "This class," I said to
myself, "is false from head to foot. They live an artificial, unnatural
life. I see in them only artifice, or an art dishonored by using it to
mask their insincerity and artificiality."

The happy idea came to me to mingle with mothers, children and nurses.

"Ah," said I, "in the midst of this throng, laughing and crying at the
same time--singing, shouting, gesticulating, jumping, dancing--here is
life! If the contemplation of this turbulent and affectionate little
world does not instruct me, where shall I find the solution I seek?"

I did not have to wait long for this solution.

I noticed nurses who were distracted and indifferent to the children
under their charge; in these the thumb was invariably drawn toward the
fingers, thus offering some resemblance to the adduction which it
manifests in death. With other nurses, more affectionate, the fingers of
the hand that held the child were visibly parted, displaying a thumb
bent outward; but this eccentration rose to still more startling
proportion in those mothers whom I saw each carrying her own child;
there the thumb was bent violently outward, as if to embrace and clasp a
beloved being.

Thus I was not slow to recognize that the contraction of the thumb is
inversely proportionate, its extension directly proportionate to the
affectional exaltation of the life. "No doubt," I said to myself, "the
thumb is the _thermometer of life_ in its extending progression as it is
of _death_ in its contracting progression."

Countless examples have confirmed this. I could even, on the spot, form
an idea of the degree of affection felt for the children entrusted to
their care, by the women who passed before my eyes.

Sometimes I would say: "There is a servile creature whose heart is dead
to that poor child whom she carries like an inert mass; the position of
the thumb drawn toward the fingers renders that indifference evident,"
Again it was a woman in whom the sources of life swelled high at the
contact with the dear treasure which she clasped; that woman was surely
the mother of the child she carried, the excessive opening of her thumb
left no room for doubt.

Thus my diagnostics were invariably confirmed by exact information, and
I could see to what extent the remarks which I had recorded, were
justified. I drew from them most interesting applications for my special
course of study.

Thus, s