180 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bill. 38 



In the expression of unvoiced assent and dissent the Hawaiian 

 practised refinements that went bej'^ond our ordinary conventions. 

 To give assent he did not find it necessary so much as to nod the 

 head; a lifting of the eyebrows sufficed. On the other hand, the 

 expression of dissent was no less simple as well as decisive, being 

 attained by a mere grimace of the nose. This manner of indicating 

 dissent was not, perhaps, without some admixture of disdain or even 

 scorn; but that feeling, if predominant, would call for a reenforce- 

 ment of the gesture b}' some additional token, such as a pouting of the 

 lips accompanied by an upward toss of the chin. A more impersonal 

 and coldly businesslike way of manifesting a negative was by an 

 outward sweep of the hand, the back of the hand being turned to the 

 applicant. Such a gesture, when addressed to a huckster or a beg- 

 gar — a rare bird, by the way, in old Hawaii — was accepted as final. 



There was another method of signifying a most emphatic, even 

 contemptuous, no. In this the tongue is protruded and allowed 

 to hang down flat and wide like the flaming banner of a panting 

 hound. A friend states that the Maoris made great use of gestures 

 with the tongue in their dances, especially in the war-dance, sometimes 

 letting it hang doAvn broad, flat, and long, directly in front, some- 

 times curving it to right or left, and sometimes stuffing it into the hol- 

 low of the cheek and puffing out one side of the face. This manner — 

 these methods it might be said — of facial expression, so far as ob- 

 served and so far as can be learned, were chiefly of feminine practice. 

 The very last gesture — that of the protruded tongue — is not men- 

 tioned as one likely to be employed on the stage in the halau, cer- 

 tainly not in the performance of what one would call the serious 

 hulas. But it might well have been employed in the hula ki'i (see 

 p. 91), Avhich was devoted, as we have seen, to the portrayal of the 

 lighter and more comic aspects of daily life. 



It is somewhat difficult to interpret the meaning of the various 

 attitudes and movements of the feet and legs. Their remoteness from 

 the centers of emotional control, their detachment from the vortices 

 of excitement, and their seeming restriction to mechanical functions 

 make them seem but slightly sympathetic with those tides of emotion 

 that speed through the vital parts of the frame. But, though some- 

 what aloof from, they are still under the dominion of, the same emo- 

 tional laws that govern the more central parts. 



Man is all sympathy one part with another ; 

 For head with heart hath joyful amity, 

 And both with moon and tides. 



The illustrations brought to illuminate this division of the subject 

 will necessarily be of the most general application and will seem to 

 belong rather to the domain of oratory than to that of dramatic or 



