Daily globe., 1883-08-28
CHIROGRAPHY.
Some of the PecWliarities of HdstdtCritin1.
From the Spectator

| From the SPECTATOR
Handwriting bears much blame that
does not belong to it. Of course q
| mans writing ought to be legible, but
allowance must be made for idiosyn-
Grassy, fatigue, illness or haste. A hand
writing without peculiarities is a hand
writing without landmarks or checks
upon false reading, and, as absolutely
good writing is not to be looked for in
business life, the dull school-boy hand,
with no special character in it, is not
without its dangers. The very worst
manuscript may be made out by a
reader who can and will analyZe, but
readers who can and will analyze are
few. Here, as elsewhere, there are not
many who find pleasure in taking
trouble and applying obvious general
| rules. Take the subject of spelling, for
instance. The rule which decides in
certain words whether, when the sound
is ee, the word shall be spelled eli or lie,
is so short and easy that any one who
| had no previous knowledge of human
| dullness would think it utterly impos-
| slble that a mistake should ever be
| made by writer who had once cast his
eye upon the rule; but what the fact is,
we have some of us melancholy reasons
for knowing. Now take the case of a
badly-written manuscript. You will
find whole group of people fumbling
at a sentence, and making as to one
particularly obscure guesses upon
guesses, all of which are simply absurd.
When it, is demonstrably clear that the
missing link must be an adverb, you
hear six sane men trying nouns or
verbs. 1t may be clear that the dark
word must be one of strong praise of
given kind, the dictionary possibilities
of the case lying within narrow COM
pass; but scores of false shots will be
made, because nobody has the brains or
the will to say for himself, "Whatever
this word may be, we can positively de-
termine what it is not, and so limit our
range of guessing"
There are here and there human be-
ings who are by nature incapable of
writing good hand, just as there are
others who cannot draw a straight or
true circle, or even recognize one. But
the ugly manuscript of the clumsy -fsted
struggler after form is usually very
clear. Haste, uneasiness, excessive work,
nervous preoccupation-these are the
chief causes of obscure handwriting
| with most of u.s. But when mans
manuscript has once made for itself a
fixed character of its own, neither print
ers nor expert copyists would like to
have it come round again tame to sim
plicity> and correctness. It would be,
In another way, the case of the lover
with squint, who ruined his suit by
going to the occulist and getting his eye
put straight; the lady could no longer
meet his eyes in the old affectionate
way, and she dismissed him. Still,
there are faults of handwriting which
are inexcusable in themselves, and which
neither compositor nor copyist can pos
sibly like to see. One of the worst of
these is the lax practice of putting the
strokes to such letters as m and n.
There is no harm in cutting down GER
| tain syllables, such as ment and ing, to
| mere lines or twirls; but where an at
tempt is made to express the characters,
the number of strokes ought to be uni
form. Another practical observation is
that furried handwriting gains no time
for the writer. A downright lazy scrawl
is another matter, and so is that kind of
handwriting in which we can see in the
badness egotistic self-assertion or disre-
gard of the eyes and wits of others. It
may be laid down that there is as much
egotism (associated it may be with much
kindness) in the man who writes a bad
hand which never strives to pick itself
up. But, of course, the rule must be
applied with greater or less stringency,
according to the amount of work that
presses On the producer of the manu-
script, his health, his preoccupation,
and the activity of his self-conscious-
| ness.
! WASHINGTON NATIONAL MONUMENT
According to the original design the
monument was to consist of a circular,
colonnaded building, $50 feet in diane
ter, surmounted by a shaft 70 feet at
the base and 500 feet in height. The
colonnade should consist of thirty col
umns, each IL feet in diameter and IS