With some who apparently have
unusually strong pyramidal muscles, the contraction of the central
fasciae of the frontal muscle, although it may be energetic,
as shown by the quadrangular furrows on the forehead,
does not raise the inner ends of the eyebrows, but only prevents
their being so much lowered as they otherwise would have been.
As far as I have been able to observe, the grief-muscles are brought
into action much more frequently by children and women than by men.
They are rarely acted on, at least with grown-up persons,
from bodily pain, but almost exclusively from mental distress.
Two persons who, after some practice, succeeded in acting on their
grief-muscles, found by looking at a mirror that when they made
their eyebrows oblique, they unintentionally at the same time
depressed the corners of their mouths; and this is often the case
when the expression is naturally assumed.
The power to bring the grief-muscles freely into play appears
to be hereditary, like almost every other human faculty.
A lady belonging to a family famous for having produced an extraordinary
number of great actors and actresses, and who can herself give this
expression "with singular precision," told Dr.
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