292 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
tion of the proposed delay, and his right hand gives-the modern sign of 
combined surprise and reproot. 
It is interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional gestures 
and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics. The Pulcinella, 
Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of Naples, has the 
same plianey and abandon of the limbs as appears in the supposed fool- 
ish slaves of the Vatican Terence. 
In close connection with this branch of the sttdy reference must be made 
to the gestures exhibited in the 
works of Italian art only modern 
in comparison with the high an- 
tiquity of their predecessors. A 
good instance is in the Last Sup- 
per of Leonardo da Vinci, painted 
toward the close of the fifteenth 
century, and to the figure of Judas 
as there portrayed. The gospel 
denounces him as a thief, which 
is expressed in the painting by 
the hand extended and slightly 
curved, imitative of the pilferer’s 
act in clutching and drawing to- 
ward him furtively the stolen ob- 
ject, and is the same gesture that 
now indicates the/t in Naples, Fig. 
74, and among some of the North 
American Indians, Fig.75. The 
pictorial propriety of the sign is 
preserved by the apparent desire 
of the traitor to obtain the one 
white loaf of bread on the table 
(the remainder being of coarser quality) which lies near where his hand 
istending. Raffaelle was equally particular in his exhibition of gesture 
language, even unto the minutest detail or the > 
arrangement of the fingers. It is traditional yee ™® 
that he sketched the Madonna’s hands for the C2 
Spasimo di Sicilia in eleven different positions ic BY 
before he was satisfied. Lay 
No allusion to the bibliography of gesture \e 
speech, however slight, should close without 
including the works of Mgr. D. De Haerne, who 
has, as a member of the Belgian Chamber of Fic. 74. 
Representatives, in addition to his rank in the Roman Catholic Church, 
been active in promoting the cause of education in general, and especially 
that of the deaf and dumb. His admirable treatise The Natural 
Language of Signs has been translated and is accessible to American 
si jh 
