264 HELPLESSNESS: Chap. XI. 



them outwards, with the fingers separated. The head 

 is often thrown a little on one side; the eyebrows are 

 elevated, and this causes wrinkles across the forehead. 

 The mouth is generally opened. I may mention, in order 

 to show how unconsciously the features are thus acted 

 on, that though I had often intentionally shrugged my 

 shoulders to observe how my arms were placed, I was 

 not at all aware that my eyebrows were raised and mouth 

 opened, until I looked at myself in a glass; and since 

 then I have noticed the same movements in the faces 

 of others. In the accompanying Plate VI., figs. 3 and 

 4, Mr. Rejlander has successfully acted the gesture of 

 shrugging the shoulders. 



Englishmen are much less demonstrative than the 

 men of most other European nations, and they shrug 

 their shoulders far less frequently and energetically than 

 Frenchmen or Italians do. The gesture varies in all 

 degrees from the complex movement, just described, to 

 only a momentary and scarcely perceptible raising of 

 both shoulders; or, as I have noticed in a lady sitting in 

 an arm-chair, to the mere turning slightly outwards of 

 the open hands with separated fingers. I have never 

 seen very young English children shrug their shoulders, 

 but the following case was observed with care by a 

 medical professor and excellent observer, and has been 

 communicated to me by him. The father of this gen- 

 tleman was a Parisian, and his mother a Scotch lady. 

 His wife is of British extraction on both sides, and my 

 informant does not believe that she ever shrugged her 

 shoulders in her life. His children have been reared in 

 England, and the nursemaid is a thorough English- 

 woman, who has never been seen to shrug her shoulders. 

 Now, his eldest daughter was observed to shrug her 

 shoulders at the age of between sixteen and eighteen 

 months; her mother exclaiming at the time, " Look at 



