THE EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE. 323 



guage. By this medium we may convey most minutely and accu- 

 rately the fact of a feeling and define its nature, without bringing it 

 forward as a vivid and naked reality. It is highly disagreeable to see 

 a look of disgust in another's face, but we do not quite so strongly 

 object to a man's telling us the cause of such a feeling and leaving us 

 to imagine by inference the nature of the emotion itself. Language, 

 while defining the precise variety of sentiment, contains also, in its 

 ever-varying modulation of voice, its changes of pitch, intensity, and 

 timbre, a large apparatus of proper emotional expression. Moreover, 

 it seems fully allowable to accompany speech with a variety of other 

 emotional signs which are looked on as silly and weak if presented 

 independently. We rather expect conversation to be brightened by 

 the many subtile changes of the facial muscles and the refined and 

 subdued gestures peculiar to our nation. If a person habitually wears 

 a half giggle, we are probably struck by the imbecility of this mean- 

 ingless display. So too when a man meets us in the street looking 

 evidently soured and retaliative, we rather wish he would reserve 

 these unamiable exhibitions for his sympathetic friends. We have, in 

 a word, grown intellectual much faster than we have become emo- 

 tional, and we cannot suffer feeling to exhibit itself without some 

 explanation of its nature and causes being offered at the same time. 

 If a man will unbosom to us his sorrow or his joy fully and intel- 

 ligibly, we profess ourselves willing, provided he is not too wearisome 

 and exacting, to lend him a patient ear and to endeavor to enter into 

 his peculiar experiences ; but, without this explanatory recital, the 

 evidences of feeling are apt to appear unmeaning, if not actually 

 offensive. 



We may just point to another influence which still further com- 

 plicates this question of emotional expression — namely, the growing 

 demands made by social refinement on the expression of kindly inter- 

 est in other people's concerns. While a man is judged to be incon- 

 siderate if he is frequently intruding his personal feelings in social 

 intercourse, rigid politeness requires us for the most part to lend an 

 appreciative ear to the tale of woe, however dull it may happen to 

 prove. This law calls into existence a very curious group of half- 

 artificial expressions. The degree to which polite persons have now- 

 adays to assume feeling may well alarm any one who cares much for 

 the honesty of social intercourse. We all know probably the draw- 

 ing-room smile of some of our lady friends. It is something quite 

 unique, never appearing in other places and at other times, but pre- 

 senting itself at the right moment with all the certainty of an astro- 

 nomical phenomenon. So too we know persons whose voices undergo 

 a most curious change when called on to converse with a stranger, 

 especially one of the opposite sex. No doubt some slight part of the 

 display may be set down to an unavoidable excitement, but the main 

 features of it would seem to be deliberately assumed. In this way it 



