Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/400

384 countenance with, great distinctness. For the space of some twenty minutes, during which. I was her fellow-passenger, the dimples of that parting smile would ever and anon appear, but in so slight a degree that, unless the opportunities for observation had been exceptional, they would not have been noticed. The movements of the muscles were so subtle that it was absolutely impossible to analyze them, or even to discern them severally. They were

 ". . . like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place."

Yet one could gauge from moment to moment the depth, and to some extent the nature, of her thoughts of her lover.

Let me strongly recommend all physiognomists who travel by rail not to spend their time in the perusal of text-books, while they have before them a row of living documents inscribed all over with the very aphorisms of the art. The opportunities for observation afforded by the British traveling hutch are such as to make one forgive its manifold inconveniences. Take the instance of the old lady who is perturbed about the safety of her ticket and her luggage. Her totality of expression has a heavy groundwork of care, upon which start and flicker endless additional lines, as this or that possibility of trouble crosses her mind. It requires some self-restraint on the part of the enthusiastic student to refrain from making such a one the subject of physiognomical research by hinting various moving hypotheses concerning the perils of the journey or the fate of her numerous packages. Let him not forget, however, that although such experiments are not forbidden by the Vivisection Act, the methods of Parrhasius are out of harmony with the spirit of the nineteenth Christian century.

The incessant flow of involuntary nerve-currents to the facial muscles doubtless accounts for the odd similarity of expression among men of the same vocation. In many such cases the conditions are so complex that it seems impossible to lay one's finger upon the special items of environment which conduce to the facial characteristics exhibited by nearly all members of certain trades and professions. What, for instance, is there about the process of making shoes which evokes the unmistakable cobbler's visage? The portrait of Edward, the Banff naturalist, in Mr. Smiles's book, shows the type in a marked degree. As far as my own observation carries me, the cause must be looked for in the last, lapstone, and wax-end of old-fashioned cordwainery; since men who work the machines in modern boot factories, or who do ordinary repairing, do not exhibit the expression. It appears probable that the tailor's distinctive type of face may have