How D'ye Do?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 9, 3 March 1906, Page 42

How D'ye Do?

It is a queer world. Everybody does everything in a different way to everybody else, from borrowing half-a-crown or sitting on your hat to shaking iiaiidy. Being a commercial traveller —a gentleman on the road, as thpy say—l naturally meet a great many people: being also a person of affable demeanour and generous disposition, it need not be mentioned that many people meet me. On an average I shake hands with a hundred people every day, here, there, and everywhere. This is how I have acquired experience. Of course, you have to kuoiv ladies rather well before they say “’How do you do?” with their hands held out. But when the privilege of shaking hands with them is yours, you at once notice a difference in the style, quality, and finish, so to speak—if you are observant, that is. All the nicest girls and ail the most gracious women lay their hands in yours as if they were lending you something rat her precious — something between a piece of soft velvet and a quarter of a pound of best flour. I once knew a girl whose hand, whenever it was laid in mine with a delightful “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening.'' used to flutter like a bird in a cage. But I won't say any more about, it, for that is the hand I married. But not all ladies have the shake do luxe. Some have the two-finger shake; others offer you the corkscrew tips of their gloves, and freeze you with their smile. I know one lady whose shake I have always to catch on the drop, and it is a thumb catch more often than not; to get four fingers at once is a superb shot. There is another shake feminine which I have to climb up to —a haughty, highfalutin' sort of a greeting, which I have ■to grab out of the skies or leave it. Its owner is the wife of my best customer, or I should certainly leave it. It is not fair to ask a man of thirty-six to start in life as a toe-balance artist. Sometimes at the club, and often m the street, I meet an eminent financier—a gentleman who promotes things and floats things in the City. His smile of greeting is a beautiful, artistic creation; it earns him pounds a week. But at the “How d’you do?” the handshake is flabby and subtle —all palm and no fingers. If I did not coil riiy own fingers round it, the hand would swing away like a pendulum. It may be that he shakes hands like that because he has never had anything out of me yet. You never know.

When I shake hands with a man I like to feel that I have got hold of ■his heart and he hold of mine. Not

merely a “hail-fellow-well-met** aort ah a shake, but a shake -with the warmth of sympathy and feeling in it. ; “I’m glad to see you!” often contains' five of the most shocking stories which ran be crowded into any sentence of equal length in the English language! but a handshake like that is a truthful thing—a thing that, has a richer and a deeper language than any tongue can' utter. Another handshake of the genuine sort is the grip' of iron—genuine, but rather bone-cracking; one that on the whole you "would rat het take for granted. One of my customers is a biglimbed, big-hearted, free-born Amurric’n citizen. “Alo'nin’. sonny!” is his invariable greeting. ‘'Put it thar!” And out comes the hand. In good fellowship 1 put it “thar.” He stands straight as a. post, beaming aud joyful, while I dance and wriggle in my pain. The other day he held out his hand to clinch a £5O bargain. “Put it thar,' sonny!” said he, as 1 prepared to depart. “Not for as much as tuppence more,” I said. “One of yours once a month will do for me.” Next month I know I shall have to take that hand again' willy-nilly, and in his joy at seeing me once again he will keep me on the dance and wriggle longer than ever. -- The handshake of the Yorkshireman is perhaps one of the heartiest in the kingdom: it hurts, too, sometimes. But there is genuine good-feeling and staunch fellowship in it when once given. The bluff, big-voiced “How art tha, lad?” accompanied by the warm enclosing fingers round yours is worth all the elegant conventional hand-shakes of a, London dra wing-room. Strange as it may appear, some men ; do not shake hands because they have a conscientious conviction against the multiplication of microbes. Some years ; ago one of the more remarkable savants- , threw out the. suggestion that a great, deal of epidemic disease evas due to the. pernicious practice of shaking hands. At once (here arose in the ’and a number of persons whom Professor Lombroso calls mattoids—people.with bees in their bonnets, in the.vernacular—who resolved' never to shake hands with anybody any more. And they kept their word.