XXTT.— GESTURE 



Gesture is a voiceless speech, a short-hand dramatic picture. The 

 Hawaiians were adepts in this sort of art. Hand and foot, face and 

 eye, and those convohitions of gray matter which are linked to the 

 organs of speech, all worked in such harmony that, when the man 

 spoke, he spoke not alone with his vocal organs, but all over, from 

 head to foot, every part adding its emphasis to the utterance. Von 

 Moltke could be reticent in six languages; the Hawaiian found it 

 impossible to be reticent in one. 



The hands of the hula dancer are ever going out in gesture, her 

 body swaying and pivoting itself in attitudes of expression. Her 

 whole phj^sique is a living and moving picture of feeling, sentiment, 

 and passion. If the range of thought is not always deep or high, it 

 is not the fault of her art, but the limitations of her original- endow- 

 ment, limitations of hereditary environment, the universal limitations 

 imposed on the translation from spirit into matter. 



The art of gesture was one of the most important branches taught 

 by the kumu. When the hula expert, the olohe, who has entered the 

 halau as a visitor, utters the prayer (p. 47), " O Laka, give grace to 

 the feet of Pohaku, and to her bracelets and anklets; give comeliness 

 to the figure and skirt of Luukia. To each one give gesture and 

 voice. O Laka, make beautiful the lei; inspire the dancers to stand 

 before the assembly," his meaning was clear and unmistakable, and 

 showed his high valuation of this method of expression. We are not, 

 however, to suppose that the kumu-hula, whatever his artistic attain- 

 ments, followed any set of formulated doctrines in his teaching. His 

 science was implicit, unformulated, still enfolded in the silence of 

 unconsciousness, Avrapped like a babe in its mother's womb. To 

 apply a scientific name to his method, it might be called inductive, 

 for he led his pupils along the plain road of practical illustration, 

 adding example to example, without the confusing aid of preliminary 

 rule or abstract proposition, until his pupils had traveled over the 

 whole ground covered by his OAvn experience. 



Each teacher went according to the light that was in him, not 

 forgetting the instructions of his own kumu, but using them as a 

 starting point, a basis on which to build as best he knew. There 

 were no books, no manuals of instruction, to pass from hand to hand 

 and thus secure uniformity of instruction. Then, again, it was a 

 long journey from Hawaii to Kauai, or even from one island to 



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