The nails

Nails fall into four classes in Cheiro 1897: long, short, broad and narrow. He makes a point of saying that care does not change the class. A nail broken by work and a nail polished by care both stay the same type.

Most of his chapter on nails is about health, and that part is left out here. For temperament he reads long nails as calmer, gentler, more impressionable and fond of the arts, with a lean toward the visionary. Short nails he reads as critical, logical and fond of debate, quicker in temper and doubtful of what they cannot understand. Nails broader than long he reads as a quarrelsome disposition, and nails short from biting as a nervous, worried temperament.

The Chinese encyclopedia text used on this site has a short passage on nails too. It reads slender, long nails as a sign of cleverness and hard, thick nails as a sign of a long life, a classical claim and not a forecast. It is a separate system from Cheiro's, and the two do not line up point for point.