give an answer to an interrogation, tacit or expressed, a slight gesture, made by raising the band with the palm outward, put an end to all questioning on that topic.
Trained from childhood to respect this sign, none ever thought of inquiring for which of a hundred possible reasons the question might be inopportune. Far from acting as a restriction, this convention tended to promote freedom of social intercourse. Less anxious consideration was requisite as to whether a given inquiry would prove embarrassing, seeing that the person addressed possessed a ready means of putting it gently aside. A small hand, of a material resembling ivory, was an invariable adjunct of the desk or workbench. The palm turned outward indicated that the person engaged at the table or bench desired his attention not to be distracted for any slight cause: the contrary position showed that he or she might be freely addressed. These are but examples of a number of conventional signs, which not only effected a considerable economy of words, but also obviated much of the friction of social intercourse.
As may be supposed, a tone of insincere or exaggerated compliment was utterly foreign to the mental habits of people trained in such a way. Indeed, the habitual use among us of that style of address towards woman was regarded by writers upon our times as an evidence of the incompleteness of our civilization; since it showed, that, to a certain extent, we were still under the influence of the old savage idea of the comparative inferiority of the female sex. "Just as in the history of man," commented an author already quoted, the moral only by slow degrees gained an ascendency over the physical; so
