A very interesting statement of one of our contemporaries is that any person, to one degree or another, is both a psychologist and a philosopher - they say, life forces him to. On the one hand, the main driving force of every person is the craving for knowledge, the desire to reach certain social heights, the desire to be wise in any everyday situations - and this is the philosophy of life. How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict (best contemporary novels txt) 📖
- Author: Elsie Lincoln Benedict
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The Handsomest Man
¶ The Thoracic is also the handsomest man of all. He is tall, high-chested, wide-shouldered and has the masculine face resulting from his high-bridged, prominent nose and high cheek bones.
¶ The Thoracic has more of that quality we call "charm" than any other type. Charm is largely self-expression by tactful methods. Since this type is the most self-expressive and the most tactful it possesses naturally this invaluable trait.
Both men and women of this type have an elusive, attractive something in their personalities that others do not have—a very personal appeal that makes an immediate impression. It pierces farther beneath the surface of strangers than other types do on much longer acquaintance. The Thoracic does not seem a stranger at all. His own confidences, given to you almost immediately upon meeting you, remove the barriers.
¶ There is about the Thoracic person a lure that others seldom have. You do not attempt to describe it. You say "he is just different," and he is. No other type has his spontaneity and instantaneous responsiveness.
So while the Alimentive is always liked, it is in a more mild, easy, comfortable way. The Alimentive does not stir the blood but has a strong, tender, even hold on people. The Thoracic, on the other hand, intrigues your attention, impales it, and holds it.
¶ The Thoracics fall in love at first sight much more often than other types. They also cause others to fall in love with them without preliminaries, for they pursue the object of their affections with a fire and fury that is almost irresistible.
¶ Hundreds of persons marry each year who have known each other but a few days or weeks. In every instance you will find that one of them is a Thoracic—and usually both. No other type can become so hopelessly in love on such short notice.
¶ The Thoracic is a born philanderer.
He does not mean to mislead or injure, but flirtation is second nature to him. This comes from the fact that flirtation, more than any other human experience, contains that adventurous, thrilling element he desires.
¶ We overheard the following conversation in the street car the other day between two young women who occupied the seat in front of us: "I was sorry to hurt him," explained the Thoracic. "I did love him last week and I told him so, but I don't love him any more and I do love somebody else now." She really loved him—last week!
Thoracics can have a severe case of love, and get just as completely over it in a week as the rest of us get over the measles.
¶ A joy in living expresses itself in almost everything the Thoracic does, especially when he is young. Such people appear almost electrical. These are traits of great fascination and the Thoracic uses them freely upon others throughout his life.
¶ His over-developed circulatory system causes the Thoracic to blush easily and often. This tendency has long been capitalized by women but is not so much enjoyed by men.
¶ Because of his supersensitiveness the Thoracic's feelings are more easily hurt than those of other types, as every one who has ever had a florid friend or sweetheart will remember.
They forgive quickly and completely, but every little thing said, looked, or acted by the loved one is translated in terms of the personal. Bony people especially find it difficult to understand or be tolerant of this trait in the Thoracic, because it is the exact opposite of themselves. They call the Thoracic "thin-skinned," and the Thoracic replies that the bony man has "a skin like a walrus." And each is right from his own viewpoint.
¶ With his keen intuitions, his sense of the fitness of things and his trigger-like adeptness, the Thoracic man easily becomes an attentive and chivalrous companion.
Where the bony man is often oblivious to the fine points of courtesy, the Thoracic anticipates his friend's every wish and movement, picks up her handkerchief almost before she has dropped it, opens doors instantaneously and specializes in those graces dear to the heart of woman.
He is likely to do as much for the very next lady he meets just as soon as he meets her. These ready courtesies cost the Thoracic husband as many explanations as the caressing habit costs the Alimentive.
¶ More bona fide breach of promise suits are brought against the Thoracic man than any other. He thinks rapidly, speaks almost as quickly as he thinks and about what he thinks.
Consequently many an honorable man has awakened some morning to find he has to "pay the piper" for an impulsive proposal made to a girl he would not walk across the street now to see.
Many a girl, too, when she is "in love with love" promises to marry, and the next day wonders what made her do it.
This is the type of chameleon-like girl whose vagaries and "sweet uncertainties" form the theme of many short stories, in most of which she is pictured as "the eternal feminine."
¶ Nevertheless, many a man prefers this creature of "a million moods" to the staid and sedate girl of other types. So the Thoracic girl seldom lacks for attention. She does not have as many intimate friends as the fat girl, for she is less comforting, and comfort is one of the first requisites of friendship. But she has a longer line of beaux dancing attendance upon her, sending her flowers, candy and messages.
¶ Another reason why the Thoracic girl has more attention from men is that she is the most smartly-gowned of all the types. The new, the extreme, the "very latest" in women's clothes are first seen on the Thoracic girl. She is the type men call "stunning."
Men prefer companions who appear well—whom other men admire. The Thoracic woman demands the same of the men she goes about with, and for these two reasons many Thoracics marry those in whom their own type predominates.
¶ Make a note of the "dashing widows," you have known—those who were called "the merry widows"—and you will recall a large Thoracic element in each.
For this type of woman, unlike the home-keeping Alimentive, enjoys being a widow and remains one. She usually has many chances to remarry but her changeable, gaiety-loving nature revels in the freedom, sophistication and distinction of widowhood.
The appearance of endless youth given by her alive, responsive personality deceives the most discerning as to her age. The woman of fifty who enthralls the youths of twenty-five is usually of the Thoracic type.
¶ This woman refuses to grow old, just as the Alimentive refuses to grow up. She clings to her beauty as does no other type. She it is who self-sacrificingly starves herself to retain her slenderness, who massages and exercises and "cold-creams" herself hours a day before the shrine of Eternal Youth. Her high color, "all her own," is a decided asset in this direction.
This woman devotes as much attention to her grooming at sixty as the Alimentive does at twenty. For this reason you may any day see two women of forty together, one an Alimentive and the other a Thoracic—and take the plump one to be several or many years older than the florid one.
¶ Thoracic men and women care more about "the bright lights" than other types. The Alimentive likes what he calls "a good time"—with fun and plenty of "refreshments"—but the Thoracic's idea of a good time usually includes a touch of "high life."
This all comes from his love of thrill and novelty and is innocent enough. But it leads to misunderstandings and broken homes unless the Thoracic marries the right type of person.
¶ The Osseous, for instance, has nothing in his consciousness by which to understand the desire for excitement which is so strong in the Thoracic. We have all known good wives and loving mothers whose marital happiness was destroyed because they could not compel themselves to lead the drab existence laid out for them by their bony, stony husbands. In many cases the wife, who only wanted a little innocent fun, was less to blame than her unbending spouse.
¶ One day several years ago we drove up to a lonely farmhouse in Montana just as a tragedy was enacted. The mother was being taken to the state asylum for the insane. The seven little children watched the strange performance, unable to understand what had happened. The father, a tall, raw-boned, angular man was almost as mystified as the children.
"Crazy?" he said, "I don't believe it. Say, what did she have to go crazy about? She hasn't seen anything to excite her. Why, she's not been off this farm for twenty years!"
¶ The same thing happens every day between severe, bony wives and their florid, frolicking husbands. "She is a perfect housekeeper and a good wife" exclaim her friends—"why should her husband spend his evenings away from home?" These questions will continue to be asked until we realize that being "a good housekeeper and a good wife" does not fill the bill with a Thoracic man. A wife who will leave the dinner dishes in the kitchen sink occasionally and run away with him for a "lark" on a moment's notice is the kind that retains the love of her florid husband. A husband who is willing to leave his favorite magazine, pipe, and slippers to take her out in the evening is the kind a Thoracic woman likes. She even prefers a "gay devil" to a "stick"—as she calls the slow ones.
¶ The Thoracic man wants his wife to look well and be pleasing but no husband wants his wife to be irresistibly attractive to other men. So it often happens that the Thoracic woman causes her husband much jealousy.
Her youthful actions and distinctive dressing make her a magnet for all eyes. If he happens to be too different in type to understand her naturalness and pure-mindedness in this he often suffers keenly. Sometimes he causes her to suffer for it when they get home.
Human Analysis makes us all more tolerant of each other. It enables us to know why people act as they do, and, best of all, that they mean well and not ill most of the time.
¶ The Thoracic, you will remember, dislikes monotony. Everything savoring of routine, sameness—the dead level—wears on him.
Three meals a day three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, with the same person, in the same room, at the same table, is unspeakably irksome to him. He may love that other person with completeness and constancy, but he occasionally demands what Bernard Shaw calls "domestic change of air."
"My Wife's Gone to the Country," was the biggest song hit of its year because there were so many florid men who understood just how that man felt!
¶ The florid wife is as loving as any other but she heaves a sigh of relief and invites her women friends in for a party when John goes away on business.
¶ Thoracic husbands or wives are not as easy to live with as the Alimentive. They are too affectable, too susceptible to sudden changes of mood. They live alternately on the crest of the wave and in the depths, and rob the home of
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