THE STORY OUR FACES TELL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 8

THE STORY OUR FACES TELL.

(By Robert Erstone Forbes).

A few days ago, a London magistrate was rather plaintively wondering why wife-beaters so invariably look like wife-beaters. Well, I expect that few men meet more wife-beaters, or, indeed, other unpleasant folk, face to face in a day'swork than he does; but I question very much whether he was right. You hear repeated talk of the "criminal face" or "the mark of the degenerate," or on the other hand, of "the good, honest face, with its frank, open look;"'but are they always, or even very often, .there—l mean, where you would naturally expect to find them ? A learned American lady, 1 see. is lecturing just now in London on the story our faces are supposed to tell. 1 daresay she has many interesting things to tell us, but modern scientific research, I am afraid, will not bear her out if she discovers too many fixed traits in our faces, nor will it agree with the magistrate's dictum. Now, nobody will deny that, in any score of convicted criminals a lair proportion of unpleasant or even "terrible" faces will be found. No one will want to deny that signs of physical degeneration may he found often enough amongst the criminal fraternity. But it is surely unfair to base theories on a sight of poor wretches, who are viewed, to say the least of it, under unfortunate conditions; and ill point of actual fact, if yon trouble to take a. thousand criminals and. a thousand honest law-abiding citizens, you will find equal numbers of pleasant and unpleasant, faces amongst both the groups. ~ Why, you have only to look round amongst your own acquaintances! Was there ever a man who looks more like poisoning his wife than your old friend Jones, with awful jaw and those thin, "cruel" lips? Yet you know well enough that .Jones, who is devoted to bis wife, would not even poison a rat. And Brown, your next-door neighbor, who can' never look you straight in the face—he, surely, is the typical thief? But you know that poor'little Brown is the honestest fellow even born to pay rates; it just happens that he is too shy and nervous to look up from the ground. And Robinson, with his crooked mouth—of what horrors is he not capable? All. yon might think from a. mere glance at his unfortunate face, but in reality none. 7 . No, this belief in a story-telling face is just one of those mistakes into which superficial observation has led us. The one man of all others whom I would have trusted with all I had in the world, a man who stood proud and erect, and looked you full in the face with his "honest" grev eves— where did I see him? In the dock, found guilty of the meanest form of robbery and embezzlement. And the judge, whom I happened to know, looked, when bereft of his wig, like the worst ot Madame Tussaud's underground tenants.

There is no .such thing /as an "holiest" or a "criminal" face. And any story that tine human fate 'tells" is the merest fancy of those who look only skin-deep upon it.