of a material obstacle.  Simply refraining from holding out the hand in any responsive gesture is sufficient to indicate that the breach is not accepted, but that the party addressed desires to continue in friendship instead of resolving into enmity.  This weak and inactive negative, however, does not suit Peppino’s vivacity, who, placing his left hand on his bosom, makes, with his right, one of the signs for emphatic negation.  This consists of the palm turned to the person addressed with the index somewhat extended and separated from the other fingers, the whole hand being oscillated from right to left.  This gesture appears on ancient Greek vases, and is compound, the index being demonstrative and the negation shown by the horizontal oscillation, the whole being translatable as, “That thing I want not, won’t have, reject.”  The sign is virtually the same as that made by Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians (see EXTRACTS FROM DICTIONARY, page 440, infra.).  The conception of oscillation to show negation also appears with different execution in the sign of the Jicarilla Apaches and the Pai-Utes, Fig. 82.  The same sign is reported from Japan, in the same sense.

[Illustration:  Fig. 83.—­Coming home of Neapolitan bride.]

Tonno, in hopes that the quarrel is definitive, to do his part in stopping the ceremony, proceeds to blow out the three lighted candles, which are an important traditional feature of the rite.  The good old man Pasquale, with his hands extended, raised in surprised displeasure and directed toward the insolent youth, stops his attempt.  The veteran notary, familiar with such quarrels in his experience, smiles at this one, and, continuing in his quiet attitude, extends his right hand placidly to Peppino with the sign of adagio, before described, see Fig. 68, advising him not to get excited, but to persist quietly, and all would be well.

* * * * *

Fig. 83 portrays the first entrance of a bride to her husband’s house.  She comes in with a tender and languid mien, her pendent arms indicating soft yielding, and the right hand loosely holds a handkerchief, ready to apply in case of overpowering emotion.  She is, or feigns to be, so timid and embarrassed as to require support by the arm of a friend who introduces her.  She is followed by a male friend of the family, whose joyful face is turned toward supposed by-standers, right hand pointing to the new acquisition, while with his left he makes the sign of horns before described, see Fig. 79, which in this connection is to wish prosperity and avert misfortune, and is equivalent to the words in the Neapolitan dialect, “Mal’uocchie non nce pozzano”—­may evil eyes never have power over her.

[Illustration:  Fig. 84.]