atural, explicable recognition of the embossed character in your hand.
Not only is the hand as easy to recognize as the face, but it reveals
its secrets more openly and unconsciously. People control their
countenances, but the hand is under no such restraint. It relaxes and
becomes listless when the spirit is low and dejected; the muscles
tighten when the mind is excited or the heart glad; and permanent
qualities stand written on it all the time.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] The excellent proof-reader has put a query to my use of the word
"see." If I had said "visit," he would have asked no questions, yet what
does "visit" mean but "see" (_visitare_)? Later I will try to defend
myself for using as much of the English language as I have succeeded in
learning.

THE HAND OF THE RACE

III

THE HAND OF THE RACE

LOOK in your "Century Dictionary," or if you are blind, ask your teacher
to do it for you, and learn how many idioms are made on the idea of
hand, and how many words are formed from the Latin root _manus_--enough
words to name all the essential affairs of life. "Hand," with quotations
and compounds, occupies twenty-four columns, eight pages of this
dictionary. The hand is defined as "the organ of apprehension." How
perfectly the definition fits my case in both senses of the word
"apprehend"! With my hand I seize and hold all that I find in the three
worlds--physical, intellectual, and spiritual.

Think how man has regarded the world in terms of the hand. All life is
divided between what lies _on one hand_ and on the other. The products
of skill are _manu_factures. The conduct of affairs is _man_agement.
History seems to be the record--alas for our chronicles of war!--of the
_man_oeuvres of armies. But the history of peace, too, the narrative of
labour in the field, the forest, and the vineyard, is written in the
victorious sign _manual_--the sign of the hand that has conquered the
wilderness. The labourer himself is called a _hand_. In _man_acle and
_manu_mission we read the story of human slavery and freedom.

The minor idioms are myriad; but I will not recall too many, lest you
cry, "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I
have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is
_second-hand_. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my
well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing
me with natural _first-hand_ knowledge which is rightful