We are entering upon a subject full of importance and interest. We
purpose to render familiar the _heart language_, the expression of love.
We learn dead languages and living languages: Greek, Latin, German,
English. Is it well to know conventional idioms, and to ignore the
language of nature? The body needs education as well as the mind. This
is no trivial work. Let it be judged by the steps of the ideal ladder we
must scale before reaching the perfection of gesture. Observe the ways
of laboring men. Their movements are awkward, the joints do not play.
This is the first step.
At a more advanced stage, the shoulders play without the head. The
individual turns around with a great impulse from the shoulders, with
the leg raised, but the hand and the rest of the body remain inert. Then
come the elbows, but without the hand. Later come the wrist-joint and
the torso. With this movement of the wrist, the face becomes mobilized,
for there is great affinity between these two agents. The face and hand
form a most interesting unity. Finally, from the wrist, the articulation
passes to the fingers, and here is imitative perfection. If we would
speak our language eloquently, we must not be beguiled into any _patois_
of gesture.
Gesture must be studied in order to render it faultlessly elegant, but
in such a thorough way as not to seem studied. It has still higher
claims to our regard in view of the services it has rendered to
humanity.
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