368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the look of a number of " sandwich men " in the Strand who had 

 been dressed up in cast-off French uniforms. The men seemed all 

 of the feeble, woe-begone class from which sandwich men are usually 

 recruited, but under the shadow of the military caps their faces 

 looked stern and resolute, and their eyes had quite lost that watery, 

 vacillating look which is engendered by alcohol and despair. 



Sculptors and painters almost always exaggerate the brow and 

 the shadow it casts when representing idealized human figures. It 

 is an essential of the manly type of beauty to possess this certificate 

 of manly qualities. We all know how weak and unimpressive is the 

 prominent eye which is not shadow^ed by a lowered lid or brow. The 

 reason of this is that people w^ith such eyes have a startled look 

 similar to that of a frightened animal. It is one of the painful duties 

 of a physician to watch the facial changes which take place in vari- 

 ous diseases, and in one known as exophthalmic goitre the eyes tend 

 to become more and more prominent. The result is that the face 

 has an aspect which so exactly simulates the expression of sudden 

 fear that it is often difficult to believe that the patient is not feeling 

 great alarm. 



We are constantly influenced by the automatic tendency to form 

 judgments about the character from ocular expression when w^e 

 come in contact with those whose eyes are altered in appearance by 

 accident or disease. Thus when a person is suffering from the in- 

 voluntary to-and-fro shifting of the eyes known as nystagmus, it is 

 by no means easy to believe in his sincerity. Probably all of us feel 

 an instinctive prejudice against individuals who squint. The fact 

 that the two eyes are looking in different directions creates an invol- 

 untary suspicion of double dealing. This is especially the case 

 wdien the squint is an external one. Here obviously the fault is in 

 the understanding of the spectator, and not in the moral character 

 of the unfortunate who squints. It is the unreasoning " old man " 

 who is within every one of us who insists on disbelieving in the 

 virtues of a squinting vis-a-vis. Doubtless in those days of pristine 

 simplicity when the ancestral " old man " was in his prime, and as 

 yet incapable of articulate speech, the necessity of understanding 

 ocular language was so great that any being whose eyes were a com- 

 plete puzzle was justly regarded with distrust. ^Nearly all monkeys 

 become angry and suspicious when looked at by a person who 

 squints. When we reason the matter out we recognize that this 

 distrustful feeling toward strangers who have crooked eyes is per- 

 fectly absurd, and that obliquity of vision can be no possible index 

 of perverted morals. We all feel the prejudice, nevertheless! 



Probably the world-wide superstition concerning " the evil eye " 

 has arisen from the sinister aspect of a squint. Bret Harte, in The 



