While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
If the scenic gestures are so seldom
significant, those appropriate to oratory are of course
still less so. They require energy, variety, and precision,
but also a degree of simplicity which is incompatible with
the needs of sign language. As regards imitation, they are
restrained within narrow bounds and are equally suited to a
great variety of sentiments. Among the admirable
illustrations in Austin's Chironomia of gestures
applicable to the several passages in Gay's "Miser and
Plutus" one is given for "But virtue's sold" which is
perfectly appropriate, but is not in the slightest degree
suggestive either of virtue or of the transaction of sale.
It could be used for an indefinite number of thoughts or
objects which properly excited abhorrence, and therefore
without the words gives no special interpretation.
Oratorical delivery demands general grace—cannot rely upon
the emotions of the moment for spontaneous appropriateness,
and therefore requires preliminary study and practice, such
as are applied to dancing and fencing with a similar object;
indeed, accomplishment in both dancing and fencing has been
recommended as of use to all orators. In reference to this
subject a quotation from Lord Chesterfield's letters is in
place: "I knew a young man, who, being just elected a member
of Parliament, was laughed at for being discovered, through
the key-hole of his chamber door, speaking to himself in the
glass and forming his looks and gestures. I could not join
in that laugh, but, on the contrary, thought him much wiser
than those that laughed at him, for he knew the importance
of those little graces in a public assembly and they did
not."
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
