Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/337

Rh. By this medium we may convey most minutely and accurately the fact of a feeling and define its nature, without bringing it forward as a vivid and naked reality. It is highly disagreeable to see a look of disgust in another's face, but we do not quite so strongly object to a man's telling us the cause of such a feeling and leaving us to imagine by inference the nature of the emotion itself. Language, while defining the precise variety of sentiment, contains also, in its ever-varying modulation of voice, its changes of pitch, intensity, and timbre, a large apparatus of proper emotional expression. Moreover, it seems fully allowable to accompany speech with a variety of other emotional signs which are looked on as silly and weak if presented independently. We rather expect conversation to be brightened by the many subtile changes of the facial muscles and the refined and subdued gestures peculiar to our nation. If a person habitually wears a half giggle, we are probably struck by the imbecility of this meaningless display. So too when a man meets us in the street looking evidently soured and retaliative, we rather wish he would reserve these unamiable exhibitions for his sympathetic friends. We have, in a word, grown intellectual much faster than we have become emotional, and we cannot suffer feeling to exhibit itself without some explanation of its nature and causes being offered at the same time. If a man will unbosom to us his sorrow or his joy fully and intelligibly, we profess ourselves willing, provided he is not too wearisome and exacting, to lend him a patient ear and to endeavor to enter into his peculiar experiences; but, without this explanatory recital, the evidences of feeling are apt to appear unmeaning, if not actually offensive.

We may just point to another influence which still further complicates this question of emotional expression—namely, the growing demands made by social refinement on the expression of kindly interest in other people's concerns. While a man is judged to be inconsiderate if he is frequently intruding his personal feelings in social intercourse, rigid politeness requires us for the most part to lend an appreciative ear to the tale of woe, however dull it may happen to prove. This law calls into existence a very curious group of half-artificial expressions. The degree to which polite persons have nowadays to assume feeling may well alarm any one who cares much for the honesty of social intercourse. We all know probably the drawing-room smile of some of our lady friends. It is something quite unique, never appearing in other places and at other times, but presenting itself at the right moment with all the certainty of an astronomical phenomenon. So too we know persons whose voices undergo a most curious change when called on to converse with a stranger, especially one of the opposite sex. No doubt some slight part of the display may be set down to an unavoidable excitement, but the main features of it would seem to be deliberately assumed. In this way it