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Show Mannerisms Mark the Man They All 'Perform' Off Guard NEW YORK. Al Smith' jingles coins in his left pocket and the duke of Windsor Wind-sor straightens his necktie. Franklin D.-Roosevelt jerks his head, sideways. Call them habits, mannerisms manner-isms or just plain nervousness, nervous-ness, but they're among the distinguishing features you've noticed no-ticed when famous men make speeches or appear before the news-reel news-reel camera. Most of us, great or little, are thumb twiddlers, button twisters, arm swingers or fist clench-ers clench-ers in our forgetful moments. This Is thei Point.' A widely known Boston professor used to enter his classroom holding a short, well-sharpened pencil which he twirled as he talked. "Now this," he would say at intervals, in-tervals, "is the point." Each time he would jab the pencil at the class, until his amused students finally made up sweepstakes on how many times he'd do it each hour. The late William Jennings Bryan combined his mannerism with practicality. prac-ticality. Before his platform appearances ap-pearances he would have someone bring an old-fashioned dishpan with a piece of ice to the rostrum. As his fiery speech-making warmed him, Bryan would run the palm of his hand over the ice, then over his forehead. To break this routine he would occasionally step to the front of the platform, weaving back and forth while the audience gasped for fear he would topple into the front row. A Monocle Swinger. Bertha Wells of Boston, who was formerly in Chautauqua work with Bryan, recalls the platform gestures of many other speakers. Dudley Crafts Watson, director of music at the Chicago art museum, went through a repeated routine of taking tak-ing off his monacle, swinging it around in his hand and replacing it to the eye. "One woman speaker asked me for a handkerchief just before she went on," Miss Wells remembers. "All through her lecture she stood twisting it in her hands. When she returned it, the handkerchief looked like a cruller." Sen. James Reed of Missouri used to have a habit of chewing tobacco in the courtroom, while Sen. David I. Walsh of Massachusetts can never speak without thrusting his left thumb into the corner of his trousers' trou-sers' pocket Ex-Gov. John G. Wi-nant Wi-nant of New Hampshire used to hang his arms straight down his sides and walk sideways across the stage like a small boy reciting his "piece." Emerson Had It Too! Such mannerisms are not exclusively exclu-sively a modern device. Many years ago the highly intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson had a habit of placing plac-ing the thumb and forefinger of one hand between the thumb and forefinger fore-finger of the other, moving them gently while speaking. Henry Ward Beecher would emphasize the climax cli-max of his speech by rising to his toes and throwing his arms over his head, virtually pulling the audience audi-ence up with him. Psychologists who have watched such carryings-on from the spectator's specta-tor's seat don't believe it's necessarily neces-sarily a matter of nervousness. Sometimes the speakers are merely throwing off excess energy. Or, as one psychologist suggested, it may not be so much the energy or the audience as what the speaker had for dinner. |