By Bassett Digby, ¥.R.G.8.
One of the strangest ways of talking in the world is the gesture language of Southern Italy and Sialy. There are persons who have acquired such proficiency in it that they can chat intelligibly for several minutes without once having opened their mouths, except, perhaps, to mention a name or two.
This fluency is acquired by so much practice that the eye and brain come to recognize the stereotyped gesture with as much speed and accuracy, as your eye and mine recognize stereotyped print. Movement follows on movement so quickly as to baffle any but the expert observer.
The language was particularly annoying to the Northern police, who were sent South to the disturbed areas after the revolution of 1860. Plotting went on under their very noses without their being able to grasp its details.
To shake the head, in the gesture language, signifies: 'What do you mean?" To beckon' with the finger tips on hand pointing downward. is: '"Comechere." An ordinary beckoning gesture, like ours, merely signifies a salutation. To say "today" you close all fingers of the right hand but the first, then, pointing downward, make a rapid slight movement o the hand, up and down "To-morrow" is the same gesture, made more energetically, and with the whole forearm, not merely the hand.
"Rich" or "money" is indicated by rubbing the tip of the thumb and the first finger; hunger, by putting the thumb and first finger to the mouth (the other fingers being closed) and making a motion like winding a clock.
The gesture for "no," though hardly perceptible, is yet unmistakable—a slight raising of the dhin and sticking out of the under lip. The emphatic "no," the "No! go to blazes!" is the same thing, accompanied by the gesture of scraping underneath the chin with the tips of the fingers of the right hand, holding the knuckles outward and the fingers slightly bent. A gesture of ominous import, which suggests t: if "No!" were not now taken for an answer there would be a throat-cutting or garotting one- dark night soon.
"Go!" is expressed by holding the open hand (the palm perpenticular) toward the ground and shaking it up and down from the wrist while extending it slightly in the direction desired for the departure. a Ilness or injury is indicated by placing a hand to the part affect-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.