Note 310 — Chapter VII · THE ART OF COUNTING.

The Eastern brokers have used for ages, and still use, the method of secretly indicating numbers to one another in bargaining, ‘by snipping fingers under a cloth.’ ‘Every joynt and every finger hath his signification,’ as an old traveller says, and the system seems a more or less artificial development of ordinary finger-counting, the thumb and little finger stretched out, and the other fingers closed, standing for 6 or 60, the addition of the fourth finger making 7 or 70, and so on. It is said that between two brokers settling a price by thus snipping with the fingers, cleverness in bargaining, offering a little more, hesitating, expressing an obstinate refusal to go farther, &c., comes out just as in chaffering in words.