The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-02-25
SCALLOPED PENMANSHIP.
A Man Should Not Study How Il
Build His Letters.

l have just been looking over a circu-
lar from one of these schools of pen
manship. The circular says i. is great
thing to make birds that look as if they
were full of fish bones and have palm.
leaf tan for a tail. 1t hints that nc
person ever succeeded in life unless he
could make picture of wire mattress
with pen. 1t says the man who can't
stand his capital letters up on spiral
springs is going to get lost in the
shuttle.
1t must have a very depressing effect
on one of those bird fourishing gentle
men to look over collection OF the au-
tographs of distinguished and successful
men. How it must pain one of these
penmanship fireworks artists to find
that he can't read half of such q collec.
ton.
Shakespeare, for instance, wrote a
hand which is calculated to worry one
of these men who think that the great
aim in life is to know where to lean on
a pen hard. Shakespeare's autograph
looks as if common domestic hen
had started to walk across the page,
stopped to scratch up an angle-worm
when part way, found several, left
them, and went on, walking little
lame. Shakespeare never went to the
Stratford business college and school
Of typewriting and learned to erect a
capital Il with feathers on its legs.
Still Shakespeare was something OF q
success mentally. Jay doesn't write q
signature which you can pull out and
/ rxyilt hon int oh be
commercial college professors. He can't
construct An autograph all mixed up in
bird with wing growing out of the
back of his neck. In fact, his auto
graph hath no wing at all, but, to quote
from the poet. it gets there just the
same on bank check. Colonel Gould
is all right financially. Then there's
John L. Sullivan. When he puts On
four ounce glove and places his sigma
ture in an autograph album there is
nothing pretty about it, but notwith-
standing he has made remarkable pro-
gress 10 his particular field of study.
DR.. Sullivan is all right physically.
1t wouldn't be very hard to name
three or four thousand others who
have succeeded without being able to
make pen act as if il had q hard
attack of insanity. In fact, no man ,un-
less he was running business college,
ever got go he could earn his living
with reasonable certainty who could
make a penmanship dove to save his
life. No man ever yet made success
who padded all of his capital WIS in just
the right place and fringe on his NJ s.
No man who can make dove with a
scroll in its bill can become a president.
Besides, there is nothing pretty about
this business college writing. There is
nothing pleasing to the we'll regulated
eye in the effect produced in capital
o of practicing frightful economy in the
i * nearly all the way round, and then
getting up on the pen and riding for q
short distance. There is also lots of
writing that Is easier to read than this
style. Just suppose all wrote the bug
mess college way and stopped to con-
struct dove every time they wrote
of the result. But they |
don't-that's the great redeeming feat
ure of it--they DON'T and never will.
The young man who goes to the pen
school spends the first three |
months after he gets home in making |
q deer with 200 ribs, jumping over a |
bush, and after that he |
gradually lapses into a style of pen
which would have made |
Horace Greedy call him brother.-Car-
nth, in Chicago Tribune.