How to Use
Different Hand Gestures in Speech

The hands should be carefully trained for flexibility and expressiveness. The fingers should be slightly apart and curved. A gesture has three divisions:

1. The preparation, made in an opposite direction from that which the gesture is to take.

2. The gesture proper, which must be precisely upon the word intended.

3. The return, in which the hand should be dropped gently and slowly without slapping the sides of the body.

The supine hand, palm upward, is used to express good-humor, frankness and generalization.

The prone hand, palm downward, shows superposition, or the resting of one thing upon another.

The vertical hand, palm outward, is used in warding off, putting from, and in repugnant and disagreeable thought.

The clenched hand is used in anger, defiance and great emphasis.

The index finger is used to specialize and indicate.

Both hands are used in appeal and to express intensity, expansiveness and greatness. Usually one hand should slightly lead the other. The hands are clasped in prayer and wrung in grief.

EXAMPLES

1. Freedom calls you! quick, be ready.
Think of what your sires have done; Onward, onward! strong and steady,-
Drive the tyrant to his den;
On, and let the watchword be,
Country, home, and liberty.

"Polish War Song." JAMES G. PERCTVAL.

2. Therefore, I pray and exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear, by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you, I warn you, I implore you,-yea on my bended knees I supplicate you,-reject not this bill!

LORD BROUGHAM.

The Retired is used in fear, defiance, horror and indignation.

EXAMPLES

1. Thy threats, thy mercies I defy, And give thee in the teeth the lie!

2. My lords, I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!-That God and nature have put into our hands! What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity.

EARL OF CHATHAM .

For Repose practise a strong dramatic passage without making any visible movements.

SUGGESTIONS