, ably
assisted by Miss D. Craske, represented the ballet scene from _Nicholas
Nickleby_, between the infant phenomenon and the Indian.

There was no little discussion afterwards upon the question whether the
art of miming, one of the two main elements of the ballet, is or can be
serviceable to the ordinary stage. Several seemed to have the opinion
that the art of dumb show is almost useless to the player, the argument
being that, as far at least as modern comedies are concerned, so little
gesture is used on the stage that training in the mode of employing it
is superfluous. The introduction of trouser pockets was said to have
destroyed the need for gesture. In such views lie certain dangerous
fallacies.

The actor who thinks that by mode of speech and facial display, and
without carefully calculated gesture, he can carry through a part in a
modern comedy probably is misled by the thought that the English are
more sober in gesture than the Latin races: and his contempt for the
work of the mime is based on a belief that certain purely conventional
gestures, inapplicable save in wordless scenes, constitute the whole
materials of the mime's art. The mime certainly has a kind of dumb
language with a limited vocabulary, understood, unfortunately, by few
English people save those connected with the stage; part of his silent
speech has never crept into the common language; yet to sneer at it as
conventional is wrong, it is merely a case of certain conventional
gestures not having been generally adopted, and therefore remaining
unintelligible to the world.

For most of our gestures are conventional. Nearly all peoples understand
what the European means when he shakes his head and when he nods it;
nevertheless, there are races which use these movements in an exactly
opposite sense. The offer to rub noses as a sign of welcome employed by
some tribes was misunderstood by early explorers, and when, in friendly
spirit, certain tribes stroked the waistcoat of the missionary, he
guessed that they were cannibals.

Kissing (in one aspect a matter of gesture) is unused by whole nations,
and so, too, is handshaking. It has been said by a traveller that the
vulgar operation described by Barham in the line "Put his thumb unto his
nose and spread his fingers out" is a mark of courtesy and esteem in one
remote nation; nor is putting out the tongue a sign of contempt
everywhere. Certain of the gestures of ballet still strictly
conventiona