Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-03-05
lLlEGIBLE WRITING
The Chirography of Many Famous Men Of
Letters.
Amusing Tales Of the Perplexities Of
Correspondents and Prfntiag
once Quidnuncs.
From the London Globe.

1t is the perversity of human nature that
people who ought to do one thing do an
other. Men who write a legible hand (no
one can accomplish more than that now)
VIII use a typewriter, and others. who
ought never to be trusted with a pen, order
them by the gross and take the discount.
Rudyard Kiplng writes a neat. delicate
hand, and Conan Doyles is as plain as the
proverbial pikestaff, but both use ma
chimes. 1t would have saved a deal of
misery and helped to perpetuate a useful
art If other writers of eminence could have
been prevailed upon TO type" Cnfortu-
nateIy the typewriter was tSo belated an
invention to affect many of the best bad
writers. Carlyle would not have struggled
with a keyboard, but it would have pre-
vented that miserable compositor fleeing
from Edinburgh to London out of his way
If he had. Carlyle's. however was a cop
perplate to others that could be mentioned.
HGgoS manuscripts, We are told, presented
the appearance of a sort of battlefield on
paper, in which the killed words were well
stamped out and the new recruits pushed
forward in anything but good order. Ma
poleon was unique in everything, even in
his handwriting. His letters from Ger
many to Josephine were at first taken for
maps of the seat of war. And his sigma
ture was an indistinguishable hieroglyphic.
Byron and Dean Stanley wrote atrocious
fists" and it is said that Sydney Smiths
was no better, although he used to chaff
jeffrey badly. He used to say that he
read JEFFREY from left to right, and his
wife from right to left, but neither could
make out a syllable. Jules Janin would
rather rewrite than attempt to read over
again what he had written. and Montaigne
could never read what he had written The
acute thinker mended matters by employ
ing secretary, whose writing was abso-
lutely undecipherable. Balzac was as big
a sinner: and Dickens microscopic charac-
ters. written on blue paper with blue ink.
appalled, many seasoned compositors A
terrible hand had Henry Ward Beecner
his daughter once declared that she had
three guiding rules in copying tiff let
J., Ter was dotted 1t was not an a." and If
Is was crossed 1t was not IT. and a
word with capital letter did not begin a
sentence Jacob Bryan said Of Archdeacon
Coxes caiiSraphy that it could neither be
c can hand nor fist. but foot, and
"a clumsy. tangled black skein that ran
across the paper in knots, which 1t was
impossible to unite into a meaning.
HoId Eioon used to tell of John Bell,
great chancery luminary Of his time, that
ne mad three different methods of putting
ms wisdom on paper-one Ineligible to
himself only, another which his CLERK
cCuld READ and he could not, and the third
which neither he nor his clerk nor any
one else could read. The funny letter of
T. B. Aldrich to Professor Morse stands
alongside Of Tom Hoods facetious reply to
Aauy HeorSiila FullertonS as protest
against learned illegibiity. AIdrich as
serted that he could decipher nothing in
the professors missve but the date, which
he knew. and the signature, which he
81 essed at.
The story of the Duke of WELLINGTON
writing to Bishop Bloomfield when he had
received letter from J. c. Loudon. III,
eminent landscape designer, asking to see
the waterloo beeches at Strathtieldsaye. is
q chestnut, but it makes us laugh iaI-
though, perhaps, we ought mott to picture
the CONSERVATION OF the bishop (an5
through him the shock to the whole Epis-
copal bench on receiving permission to
view the dukes Waterloo breeches Also
q classic is the tale OF Macready's admis-
sion Ticket being solemniy made up by the
apothec2ry into a cough mixture, ITO be
taken thr.e times a day" The name Of
Horace Greeley has. in this connection. to
be mentioned with a chastened respect
He Undoubtedly, was the great master OF
lIegibllity. 1t. was of him the compositcr
averred that 1T Belshazzar had seen his
handwriting on the wall Ire would have
had cause to he terrified. A common story
attributed to Greeley belongs, however, to
one Brooks, some time president Of the
New York Central railroad 1t is best. in
all things to be just. And Greeley can well
spare it. 1t was Brooks notice to quit
that tenant used for two years as a rail-
way pass. Greeley wrote to some press
men: With a weight of years. | feel
Obliged TO decline any invitation that takes
me a days journey from home,'' and this
Is all they could make OF it: IF cells are
DliShted, dig them early. Any insinua ton
gives me the horrors. This is the way
the moderns have juggled with the pen, so
can We wonder that Its time of usefulness
Is welinlgh spent?