THE WAY A MAN SMOKES

Evening Star, Issue 23745, 28 November 1940, Page 2

THE WAY A MAN SMOKES

It is still true that you have to live with a ilian or work with Kim to know his true character, but it is possible to make a snap judgment by watching a man’s mannerisms and training yourself to read them correctly, states a London journal. A man may be the type' who stubs a cigarette so forcibly that the stub is broken. This shows that his mind is full of interests, none of_ which ever really develops. Every individual effort he makes is thwarted. The natural reaction to this is to develop destructive tendencies. Being a civilised man, he buries these tendencies deeply, but they come out in tho destructive way he stubs his cigarette. Another man puts out his cigarettcu and, while still conversing, plays with it in the ash tray. Ho either makes patterns in the ash, sticks pins or matches in tho stub, or something like that. He is a man who hates wasting his time, who likes getting things done. Although ho is listening or even talking, half of his mind is* on something else. The man who is inclined to forget details, cannot concentrate for any length of time, and is never really efficient, is the man who invariably leaves a burning cigarette balanced on tho edge of the tray. For the moment it is safe, and that is as far as ho can see. Ho forgets that as it burns down it will overbalance, and as this typo always places tho cigarette with the burning end inward, it is sure to overbalance on to the table.

His opposite is the man who places his cigarette the other way round—with the burning end outside the ash tray. Ho knows that if left long enough the cigarette will overbalance inside the tray. This man is generally brilliant because he works everything out in detail beforehand. He would make a dangerous criminal. The way a man handles his spectacles is another good way of judging his character. You have seen the man who constantly plays with his glasses while they are' on his nose, adjusting them and readjusting them. He needs time to make his mind up, so ho pulls them a little this way and a little that way. The man who sits his glasses in such a way on his nose that he can see through them or over them whenever ho wants, is warning you that you can’t take him in.

He will look first at you through his glasses, and then in a flash stare at you above 'them. This sudden trick disconcerts many people, and they come away from an interview with the feeling that they would hate to lio to a man like that.

Which was just tho impression ho wanted to create. It is a trick to give the other person an inferiority complex, ami it frequently succeeds.