MALLERY.] SIGN LANGUAGE IN SICILY. 295 
to man grow spontaneously; these, by care and culture, are found to thrive 
also in colder countries.” 
It is in general to be remarked that as the number of dialects in any 
district decreases so will the gestures, though doubtless there is also 
weight in the fact not merely that a language has been reduced to 
and modified by writing, but that people who are accustomed generally 
to read and write, as are the English and Germans, will after a time 
think and talk as they write, and without the accompaniments still per- 
sistent among Hindus, Arabs, and the less literate of European nations. 
The fact that in the comparatively small island of Sicily gesture lan- 
guage has been maintained until the present time in a perfection not 
observed elsewhere in Europe must be considered in connection with the 
above remark on England’s insularity, and it must also be admitted that 
several languages have prevailed in the latter, still leaving dialects. This 
apparent similarity of conditions renders the contrast as regards use of 
gestures more remarkable, yet there are some reasons for their persist- 
ence in Sicily which apply with greater force than to Great Britain. The 
explanation, through mere tradition, is that the common usage of signs 
dates from the time of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, who prohibited 
meetings and conversation among his subjects, under the direst penalties, 
so that they adopted that expedient to hold communication. It would be 
more useful to consider the peculiar history of the island. The Sicanians 
being its aborigines it was colonized by Greeks, who, as the Romans as- 
serted, were still more apt at gesture than themselves. This colonization 
was also by separate bands of adventurers from several different states of 
Greece, so that they started with dialects and did not unite in a common 
or national organization, the separate cities and their territories being gov- 
erned by oligarchies or tyrants frequently at war with each other, until, in 
the fifth century B.C., the Carthaginians began to contribute a new admix- 
ture of language and blood, followed by Roman, Vandal, Gothic, Herulian, 
Arab, and Norman subjugation. Thus some of the conditions above sug- 
gested have existed in this case, but, whatever the explanation, the ac- 
counts given by travelers of the extent to which the language of signs has 
been used eyen during the present generation are so marvelous as to de- 
serve quotation. The one selected is from the pen of Alexandre Dumas, 
who, it is to be hoped, did not carry his genius for romance into a pro- 
fessedly sober account of travel: 
“Tn the intervals of the acts of the opera I saw lively conversations 
carried on between the orchestra and the boxes. Arami, in particular, 
recognized a friend whom he had not seen for three years, and who re- 
Jated to him, by means of his eyes and his hands, what, to judge by the 
eager gestures of my companion, must have been matters of great interest. 
The conversation ended, I asked him if I might know without impro- 
priety what was the intelligence which had seemed to interest him so 
deeply. ‘O, yes,’ he replied, ‘that person is one of my good friends, who 
has been away from Palermo for three years, and he has been telling 
me that he was married at Naples; then traveled with his wife in 
