The Complete Character-Reader

— Where have I seen a stout pamphlet volume entitled The Complete Character - Reader ? Though I recall it but hazily, I have a strong impression that, from the mere perusal of its contents, the wayfaring man, though a fool, need no longer err regarding his traveling companions, however accomplished in roguery. Certainly, an almost incredible amount of information of a diagnostic order would seem to have been compressed into this admirable book, and yet it appeared in all the desiccated distinctness of a table of logarithms. To obtain the character corresponding to a given individual, or the individual corresponding to a given character, involved no least difficulty. Instead of depending upon deductions formed from the laborious, gradual, day-by-day acquisition of knowledge regarding one’s neighbor as a significant human digit, you had but to select a few of his most “salient features,” and then to refer them to The Complete CharacterReader, where the aggregate of his traits had received the proper and distinguishing label. In the world of practical affairs you were enabled to determine the profession of any stranger ; and not only this, for there were supplied also the indubitable indices of the more delicately shaded and often unavowed professions, as that of The Flirt, The Casuist, The Parasite, The Arch-Destroyer of Button-Holes. To give a further idea of this succinct and well-indexed work, two illustrations are subjoined : —

Character of Blunt, Honest Man, The :

1. Carriage erect, aggressive, movements abrupt, step firm.

2. In shaking hands gives a strong grip.

3. Steady eye, which never wavers in a prolonged encounter with your own.

4. Laughs much, loudly, often boisterously.

5. Voice harsh and unconciliating.

6. Chooses the nearest word, calls a spade a spade, and never shuns expression of his convictions.

Character of Habitual, Hardened Hypocrite, The :

1. Servile inclination of the head, step soft, movements sinuous and graceful.

2. Does not shake hands, but touches your palm lightly, or gives you his finger tips.

3. Eye restless and evasive ; unable to gaze steadily into your own for any given time.

4. Never laughs out loud, but smiles often, a frequent, flitting, and subtle smile.

5. Voice exquisitely modulated, and ingratiating in quality.

6. In speech suaviter in modo, preferring always the softer to the more emphatic word, and to conciliate rather than to antagonize the listener.

So much I seem to remember from the pages of The Complete Character-Reader. These two diagrams, in point of social use, are invaluable, chiefly for their interchangeableness, all the indices given under the head of Blunt, Honest Man serving just as well under the caption of Habitual, Hardened Hypocrite.

On second thought, I am obliged to confess that I cannot be sure that I have ever seen the excellent thesaurus above described. I do not even know that it is in process of making, or that it has yet occurred to the mind of the gifted author to be. I incline to think it is numbered among the books of the future, — the possession -of the future, the great desideratum of the present. When, however, it does appear, much floating testimony will finally be sifted, and the good grain thereof will be gathered into the garner. At present the number and kinds of character-gauges are infinite, and infinitely confusing by reason of their mutually conflicting corollaries. The palmister, the physiognomist, the phrenologist, sit not alone in the synod of human nature’s shrewd discerners. We are read offhand by other adepts, who find their argument in our chirography, penchants in dress, tastes for food, manner of walking, etc. There are those, even, who, not content with the time-honored test, ex pede Herculem, assume to discover Hercules in the wrinkles of his cast-off boot. I have indeed read somewhere of an illuminated cobbler who could detect a thief by a peculiar attrition of the latter’s shoe leather in a certain part of the shoe, and who also was able to discern genius by a characteristic “ wearing down at the heel ” !

Character-gauges often turn upon some trivial point of local social usage, and then, though not in themselves to be found fault with, they may be arraigned for their sweeping severity of judgment. The lady of my acquaintance who (herself having been reared in the warmest days of the antislavery agitation) declared that “no gentleman or lady would say ‘ nigger ’ ” cannot be exact in the verity of her observation, else were excluded from the court of the gentle many a good citizen below Mason and Dixon’s line, by whom the word is employed without thought of contumely in its application.

In conclusion, is there not something very youthful in this our insistence upon some final and infallible test for character ? For youth divides between evil and well doers by the mere automatic actions of each, — voice, gesture, gait. Everything the. good man does is definitive of the good man ; everything the had man does is definitive of the bad man. With the maturing mind and with growth of experience comes the perception that many personal actions and characteristics are identical in the good and the bad man. Or, certain criteria usually applied to the good man may find him lacking, while not so the bad man. He whose account is clear may laugh no more cheerily than does his moral antipode, or the good man may speak in dull, couftised, and obscure tones which in him are no indication of furtiveness of soul, while the base and crafty may utter himself in ringing and confident tones which give no clue to his real nature. “We are not always even what we are most ” is the baffling element that confounds, or should confound, the over-zealous “reader of character.”