Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/496

480 Some gesture-signs to express friendship are simply symbolic of the actions of friendly greeting. In the remarkable speech of Noaman at Tinicum, on the Delaware River, in the middle of the seventeenth century, he stroked himself three times down his arm, as a greeting of peace, not being able to perform the ceremony to the arms of the auditors. The actions, above mentioned, of the Eskimos in stroking their own bodies and rubbing their own noses, may merely signify that, when they could not get at the proper subjects for nose-rubbing and stroking, they made the semblance of those motions as the sign for their usual physical demonstration of friendship. A case where actual contact and symbolizing appear to be mixed was reported in 1699 by DTberville of the Bayogoulas, who first stroked their own faces and breasts, then stroked the breasts of the saluted party, after which they raised their hands aloft, at the same time rubbing them together. The concept of intermingling personalities is indicated. A suggestion of the absorption of happiness through pressure and friction comes from the narrative of Sir John Franklin, as follows: "Whenever Terregannœuck (a Deer-Horn Eskimo) received a present, he placed each article first on his right shoulder, then on his left; and, when he wished to express still higher satisfaction, he rubbed it over his head" This is apparently more than mere taking possession of the article.

Next may be considered the mutual grasp of the hands in greeting. It is difficult to realize that the junction of hands by friends is not instinctive, a physical or sentimental magnetism being so commonly associated with it. Nevertheless, the mutual grasp of hands on friendly meeting, apart from ceremony and symbol, is comparatively recent, and the practice is even yet confined to a limited area. For instance, it appears in Captain Back's Narrative that in 1833 the greeting by union of hands was as strange to the dwellers in arctic lands as their rubbing of noses was to the visitors. Mr. Spencer has published his opinion that the "hand-shake," as the salutation is commonly entitled in English, originated in a struggle, first real, afterward fictitious, in which each of the performers attempted to kiss the hand of the other, which was resisted, thus producing a reciprocating movement. To verify this suggestion it will be necessary to examine into the antiquity and prevalence of the kiss in salutation, which will be considered in its order.

Instances are found for the identical friendly contest for kissing, or priority in kissing, hands, relied on by Mr. Spencer, but they are connected with the topic of precedence as affecting all forms of greeting. Far too much importance is given in the suggested explanation to the shake or motion of the joined hands. The ancient usage, and even that which is now general, is not