HAVING carefully noted the indications given in the previous chapter, you are now ready to begin the examination of the hand itself. In order to secure the best results from this investigation, it will be of material help if you have arranged your surroundings so that the client will be comfortable when he seats himself. One of the matters to which you should give most careful attention is the proper arrangement of light. No rule can be fixed in this matter, as the sight of all palmists is not equally strong. It is, however, indispensable that you have the clearest, whitest light possible, and for this purpose nothing is so good as a strong northern exposure of pure daylight. To find the apex of each Mount will require a keen eye and good light, especially if the texture of the skin be very fine. Nothing short of daylight will suffice, and even with this help you will often have to resort to a magnifying-glass. I should advise that you be provided with a strong, clear reading-glass, about six inches in diameter, large enough to cover the palm of the hand; this will bring out any markings which may be only faintly indicated.

If your eyes be strong, you will not have to use this glass for the larger and more prominent details, but with a highly strung, excessively lined hand, it is advisable to use the glass. In this way you will often discover faint lines just beginning to form in outline, and these will show you emotions just starting to develop. If you intend to go deeply into your client's life, this minute inspection is necessary. Daylight is indispensable to you also in judging the color of the hand. Many palmists absolutely refuse to read by gaslight, and this is a safe rule to adopt, as daylight is an absolute essential in readings covering great attempts at detail.

Now, having comfortable seats, good light, a glass, to use if needed, the temperature at the proper point, say 700 F., you take the hands of your client. In all examinations you should consult both hands, and should never attempt specific statements, unless they are based upon a thorough knowledge of the information which can be gleaned only from the hands considered separately, and then together. Many failures are recorded in palm-readings when one hand only has been used, due to the fact that men change as they grow older, and these changes are recorded in the right hand. If you have read from the left hand, you have looked at the man only as he was originally constructed, not as he has developed. To gain a knowledge of him as he is, and thus better to tell whether he is progressing or retrograding, you must read from both hands. This is a matter to which I have given most careful study, and in the course of many investigations have often read in the separate hands how weak people have grown strong, and strong people deteriorated. The left hand is the infallible index to the natural being, the right hand records unmistakably what has been done with the talents.

All that has been said about using the left hand because it is nearest the heart or because it has more lines, grows from a false conception of the matter. The heart no more controls nor feeds the left than the right hand, and it is not for this reason that both hands are used. The left hand is the passive hand, the right the active. There are instances in which the subject is left-handed. In this case reverse the order and consider the right as passive, the left as active. Invariably the hand which does the work is the one which records the present, the hand which is passive shows the natural endowments. Thus, if you see the passive hand showing one condition, the active hand an improved state, you know that the course has been upward, and vice versa.

The first matter that should receive your attention in examining the hand itself, is the texture of the skin. We sometimes forget that the human skin is not merely the thin cuticle that peels off when one is sun-burned, but is as thick as the leather from which a pair of calf-skin shoes are made, that it is capable of much coarseness or fineness, and will be covered either with large capillaries, or with capillaries so fine they can hardly be seen. This coarseness or fineness is what we call texture. In considering it you should largely confine yourself to the back of the hand. The matter of consistency of the hand, a wholly different quality, and one which will be discussed in the next chapter, is to be determined by an examination of the palm; in this way you will not get the two qualities confused.

Texture is the key to a knowledge of your client's natural refinement. If the texture be fine, soft, and delicate (16), the greatest fineness being seen in a baby's hand, you have a refined sensitive person, who is influenced by these qualities in everything he does. He is one to whom coarseness and commonness give actual pain, and it will not be possible for the person with this fine texture of skin to do things in a coarse, common, brutish way. This quality of texture will aid you in estimating character, for it is a softening influence on all the coarser qualities seen in any subject; it makes a Saturuian less morose, melancholy, moody, and less inclined to shun society; it will make his cynicism less cut-ling : it will make a Jupiterian less of an overeater, less domineering, less tyrannical, for it will refine him. It will add to an Apollonian a new and quieter love of beauty and harmony, and will make his nature more elevated : it will refine a Mercurian, taking away much of the dishonest side of his character : it will subdue a Martian, refining his brusque-ness, his fighting qualities, his warlike spirit, and making liim less pugnacious; it will lead the imagination of a Lunar subject into higher channels, and will refine a Venusian, so that base, low passions will not dominate him.

In this as in all other matters there are different degrees of development, and this question of degree is said to be one of the things that students cannot easily acquire. Palmistry is frequently met by the criticism that "everything modifies everything else"; there is not the slightest need of any confusion or difficultv on this score.

No. 16. FINE-TEXTURED SKIN.

No. 17. COARSE-TEXTURED SKIM.

With a picture in your mind of a baby's delicate skin one extreme of texture - let us look for a moment at the opposite extreme. There is the skin which feels rough, coarse, and common, as you rub your fingers over the back of the hand. It has big capillaries, and is hard, rough, and unsympathetic to the touch. It is like sole-leather as compared to soft flexible kid, and shows by the coarseness of its grain that refinement and delicacy are unknown to its owner (17). This hand you will often find in the gas trenches, shovelling dirt. There is no knowledge in the mind of its owner, that the employment in which he is engaged is not of the most elevating character. To put this hand in the same surroundings as the hand with delicately soft texture, would make it as miserable as to consign the delicate texture to the gas trenches. This coarse skin you will not so often meet, but you should hunt a subject who has it, so that you will be able to have in your mind the opposite of the baby's hand. The coarse texture will show the lack of refinement, delicate sensibility, or fine quality of nature, and will modify all things in the hand by coarsening them.

Coarseness will add the tyrannical spirit to Jupiter, will make Saturn dirty, stingy, superstitious, and a pessimist: it will make Apollo the vulgar blatherskite, and Mercury only a low schemer : it will make Mars insufferable in its aggressiveness, and the Moon will give forth low imaginations: Venus, instead of deaiing in love, grace, and sympathy, will stand only for the gratification of vulgar passions. Refined texture softens everything; coarse texture animalizes it.

No. 18 Elastic-textured Skin.

No. 19. SENSITIVE PADS OH FINGER TIPS.

The medium development will be most often met. It is the elastic skin, not showing the delicate capillaries of the baby's hand, nor the coarseness of the trench-digger's, but a medium between them. The skin will feel elastic, not soft, firm, not hard (18). It is the texture found on the hand of the active business man, the lawyer, the doctor, or the clergyman. It is a texture which shows refinement, yet not effeminacy in men; it shows fineness without idealism in women. It is the balance between two extremes, and will give to all the qualities of the mounts normal support. By examining the extremes I have given, you will have no trouble in recognizing the medium grade.

Before concluding your examination of skin texture, observe the inside aspect of the first phalanges of the fingers; on many hands you will note a little pad of flesh (19) which in some cases is quite prominent. This pad is composed of a large number of nerve filaments and shows the great sensitiveness of the subject. He is keenly alive to all surroundings, easily wounded by slighting treatment, and knowing how such things jar upon himself, he is most careful of the feelings of other people. He would himself suffer intensely, rather than wound another. These sensitive pads are, in a word, indicative of an extremely fine organism. The degree of their development will gauge the degree to which the subject is possessed of this quality.