The following extract from Young's "Night Thoughts" will serve to illustrate further these points:

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,

The word poor, meaning humble, weak, naturally suggests a gesture below the horizontal plane. The word rich requires. a gesture a little higher. The word abject may have a low gesture, as if calling attention to the very ground. On the word august the look is elevated, and the hand may be raised to a position of about forty-five degrees above the horizontal. No gestures should be used here, unless the utterance is very slow. The elevation and depression of the eye and of the face may suffice.

How complicate, how wonderful, is man!

How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centered in our make such strange extremes,
From different natures marvelously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds,
Distinguished link in being's endless chain,

Midway from nothing to the Deity.

At nothing the eye, hand, and face are downcast. At He and at Deity they are uplifted.

A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt;

Though sullied and dishonored, still divine;
Dim miniature of greatness absolute;

An heir of glory, a frail child of dust!

An heir of glory requires the elevation of the eye and the hand. (Fig. 12). A frail child of dust requires that the look and gesture be depressed. (Fig. 13.)

Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

On the word helpless the gesture again is one of weakness and humility, a low gesture. On the word immortal, even if the hand remain low, the eye and the face should be raised. The utterance must all the while be very slow.

Abstract qualities, when successively enumerated, may be imagined to occupy different locations, and may be alluded to by corresponding gestures of place, thus:

What would content you? Talent? No. Enterprise? No. Reputation? No. Courage? No. Virtue? No. Patriotism? No. Holi

ness? No. The man whom you would select, must possess not one, but all of these.

On the word talent the gesture might be directly to the front, as if talent were located between the speaker and the audience in front of him. On the word enterprise the hand may gesticulate a little to the right of where the gesture was made on talent, as if enterprise lay beside talent and not far

distant from it. On the word reputation the hand may be carried still farther in the oblique direction, as if reputation were in the third place. On the word courage a similar gesture to the right of the gesture on reputation would mark out its locality as the fourth in the series. On the word virtue another gesture still farther to the right, making it the fifth place in the series. So with patriotism and holiness successively. (Fig. 20.) On the word one the gesture may be directly to the front, and with the index finger. On the word all a wave of the hand from the front around to the right, so as to include all the qualities that have been enumerated in their respective locations.

FIG. 20.

"Holiness? No." (pp. 65, 66.)

FIG. 21.

A Climax.

Perhaps, however, it would be better to locate the different qualities one above the other, marking talent by the hand at the height of the elbow or a little lower, and letting the hand rise successively on the other qualities, thus making a climax, holiness carrying the hand high toward the zenith. The positions of the hand in the consecutive gestures need not be in a vertical plane; they may better rise obliquely to the right.

It is well for one who has a set speech to deliver, to note carefully beforehand the words or passages where gestures of place are required; and to conceive, with as much distinctness as possible, of the appropriate situations which he may, for the purposes of his speech, conceive to be occupied by the things alluded to or described; just as a painter, in drawing a landscape, will select at the outset the points to which he wishes to give prominence, or which form the basis of his measurements, and will mark their relative positions on the canvas. Thus the prominent points of the picture which the orator has in his mind's eye will at once be reproduced by the audience.

The following piece illustrates principally gestures of place. Circumstances may modify their number, form, and extent.

Now rest for the wretched: the long day is past,

In this line there is no definite conception of any particular location, and no gesture of that kind is needed. The eye is "bent on vacancy," as in calm meditation. (See Conventional Gestures, p. 100.)

And night on yon prison descendeth at last.

The speaker should have determined beforehand, for the purposes of the speech, the imaginary direction and distance of this prison from himself and from the audience; and his face should be turned towards it, his eye should seem to see it, his arm may be extended, and his hand, if not his finger, point towards it.

FIG. 22.

FIG. 23.

Calm meditation.

"Yon prison," etc.

A speaker of great vividness of fancy might conceive of night as an atmosphere of darkness coming down. Perhaps he would, not inappropriately, follow that descending movement by lowering his face (which might have been elevated to an angle of about 45°) and his hand, bringing the hand, at the conclusion of the gesture, into the position in which it would seem to rest upon the imagined prison.