nd places the palms of his hands on the ground, one on
either side his feet, while the senior claps hands over him six or
seven times."

In the morning among the Walunga all the villagers turn out, and a
continuous clapping is kept up to the vocalisation of a shrill
"Kwi-tata?" or "How do you do?"

Two special signs for "good" are in the sign-vocabulary of the North
American Indians, and are worth recording. The person greeting holds the
right hand, back up, in front of and close to the heart, with the
fingers extended and pointing to the left. Another habit is that of
passing the open right hand, palm downwards, from the heart, towards the
person greeted. A stranger making his appearance on the frontier line of
an Indian camp seldom fails to recognise the true sentiment of the
chief's salutation, the extended fingers on the left side meaning--

"You are near my heart--expect no treachery," a most solemn surety;
while the hand sent from the heart towards the visitor seems to say--

"I extend hospitality to you."

The "attingere extremis digitis" of the Romans expressed the same
temperate conduct.

But greeting by gesture and hand-clapping still live, and are discovered
in the first lessons given by a mother to her babe.

"Clap hands, papa comes,"

and

"Pat a cake, pat a cake, my little man,
Yes, I will, mother, as fast as I can"

have a universal significance in Child Land. Unfortunately this survival
of hand-clapping, a vestige of a habit belonging to primitive people,
does not begin and end in our modern nursery.

"When I was a child I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put
away childish things," is a resolve daily forgotten.

In the theatre, when our sentiment is awakened by the craft of the stage
player, we show approbation by a round of hand-clapping not one whit
less savage than the habit of the Uvinza grandee or the good-morning
among the Walunga tribe.

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"

This demonstration of feeling may have more _corps d'esprit_ than the
feeble "hear, hear" of the educated or self-restrained man, but
sign-language, especially among the Anglo-Saxon race, is on the wane.
Its exodus is slowly going on, lingering anon in the ritual of
religions, yet in social life ever being expelled.

"It is rude to point," says the nursemaid to her little charge.

"Is it rude to shake hands, nurse?" once exclaimed a child cyni