The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage,
that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the
world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a
practised man relies on the language of the first. If the man is off his
center, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion,
whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it.
There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a good thing,
and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine
offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye.
How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by
the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen,
he has said nothing, and no important remark has been addressed to him,
and yet, if in sympathy with the society he shall not have a sense of
this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from
him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more
admission into the man than blue-berries.
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