[Illustration:  Fig. 99.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 100.]

Fig. 100 is the fingers elongated and united in a point, turned upwards.  The hand is raised slightly toward the face of the gesturer and shaken a few times in the direction of the person conversed with.  This is inquiry, not a mere interrogative, but to express that the person addressed has not been clearly understood, perhaps from the vagueness or diffusiveness of his expressions.  The idea appears to suggest the gathering of his thoughts together into one distinct expression, or to be pointed in what he wishes to say.

Crafty, deceitful, Fig. 101.  The little fingers of both reversed hands are hooked together, the others open but slightly curved, and, with the hands, moved several times to the right and left.  The gesture is intended to represent a crab and the tortuous movements of the crustacean, which are likened to those of a man who cannot be depended on in his walk through life.  He is not straight.

[Illustration:  Fig. 101.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 102.]

Figs. 102 and 103 are different positions of the hand in which the approximating thumb and forefinger form a circle.  This is the direst insult that can be given.  The amiable canon De Jorio only hints at its special significance, but it may be evident to persons aware of a practice disgraceful to Italy.  It is very ancient.

[Illustration:  Fig. 104.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 103.]

Fig. 104 is easily recognized as a request or command to be silent, either on the occasion or on the subject.  The mouth, supposed to be forcibly closed, prevents speaking, and the natural gesture, as might be supposed, is historically ancient, but the instance, frequently adduced from the attitude of the god Harpokrates, whose finger is on his lips, is an error.  The Egyptian hieroglyphists, notably in the designation of Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for “child.”  It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak—­in-fans.  This conjecture, however, was only made to explain the blunder of the Greeks, who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph of Horus (the) son, “Hor-(p)-chrot,” the gesture familiar to themselves of a finger on the lips to express “silence,” and so, mistaking both the name and the characterization, invented the God of Silence, Harpokrates.  A careful examination of all the linear hieroglyphs given by Champollion (Dictionnaire Egyptien) shows that the finger or the hand to the mouth of an adult (whose posture is always distinct from that of a child) is always in connection with the positive ideas of voice, mouth, speech, writing, eating, drinking, &c., and never with the negative idea of silence.  The special character for child, Fig. 105, always has the above-mentioned part of the sign with reference to nourishment from the breast.