I have told you that there are some parts besides bones that are moved by muscles. Different parts of the face are moved by them, and it is this that gives it its different expressions. Thus, when you are pleased and laugh, the muscles pull up the corners of the mouth. If you laugh very hard, they pull them up very much, as you see in the face drawn here. See how this face is wrinkled under the eyes. This is because the muscles pull at the corners of the mouth so hard as to push up the cheeks.
The muscles used in smiling and laughing.
What do you think the difference is between laughing and smiling? It is this. In laughing, the corners of the mouth are drawn up a good deal, but in smiling they are drawn up only a little. Most people think that the eyes have a great deal to do with laughing and smiling, and they talk about a laughing eye and a pleasant eye. But this is not correct. It is these muscles, which pull up the corners of the mouth, that make the eye look pleasant and laughing; indeed, laughing and smiling can be done with the eyes shut. We often see a beautiful smile in the face of the sleeping infant. It is because some pleasant dream in his mind plays on the nerves that go to his smiling muscles.
The sad muscles.
There are muscles to pull the corners of the mouth down, and these make the face look sad; and if the muscles that wrinkle the eyebrows act at the same time, the face is both sad and cross, as you see here. Observe just what the difference is between this face and the laughing face on the opposite page. The difference is merely in the corners of the mouth and in the eyebrows. In this face the two wrinklers of the eyebrows are in action, and so are the two muscles that pull down the corners of the mouth. Four small muscles, then, make this face sad and cross. But in the laughing face the eyebrow-wrinklers are quiet, and the corners of the mouth are pulled up instead of being pulled down. It is the two little muscles that pull up the corners of the mouth that do all the laughing in the face.
“Down in the mouth.”
You have often heard the expressions, “He had a down look,” and “His countenance fell.” These refer to the effect produced by sadness on the corners of the mouth. This explains also the meaning of the common expression, “Down in the mouth.”
The proud muscle.