Perhaps a little
self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression
requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to
know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.
I confess, for my part, that I HAVE been taken in, over and over
again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been
taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any
other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite
misread their faces?
No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on
face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in
suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.
II.
The partition which separated my own office from our general outer
office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see through
it what passed in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had
it put up in place of a wall that had been there for years, - ever
since the house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did
not make the change in order that I might derive my first
impression of strangers, who came to us on business, from their
faces alone, without being influenced by anything they said.
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