Page:Hill's manual of social and business forms.djvu/17



PREFACE

O enable the individual to write with ease, and to do the right thing in the right place in many of the important positions in life, is the object of this book.

There have been many excellent works heretofore given to the world treating on Penmanship, that admirably served their purpose in their specialty; but the student when done with their study, though proficient in chirography, was yet ignorant of how to use the same in the transaction of business.

Good books in abundance have been published on Grammar, Letter-writing, Composition, and various Business Forms, but, though proficient in a knowledge of their contents, the student, often left with a miserable Penmanship, shrinks from making use of this knowledge, because of the disagreeable labor attendant upon a cramped and detestable handwriting.

The result sought to be accomplished in this book is to combine both a knowledge of penmanship and its application in the written forms which are in most general use. Added to these are the chapters on collection of debts, parliamentary rules, etiquette and other departments of action, which are calculated to teach how to do in many of the important social and business relations of life.

The Teacher of Penmanship will find its pages replete with information pertaining to the art of writing. As a treatise on Penmanship, it is more profusely illustrated than any work of the kind now before the public; and though condensed, it is yet sufficiently explicit in detail, and in the consideration of principles, to make the analysis of letters thoroughly understood by the student. The programme of exercises for a course of writing lessons, together with suggestions relating to the organization and management of the writing class, will be welcomed by young teachers, whose penmanship is sufficiently good to enable them to teach the art, but who fail of success through lack of knowledge of the course to be pursued in order to interest and entertain the class after it has assembled.

The Teacher of the public or private school will find abundant use for a manual of this kind in the school-room. The subject of letter-writing—an art almost universally neglected—should be a matter of daily exercise in the recitation-room. The correct form of writing the superscription, the complimentary address, the division into paragraphs, the complimentary closing, the signature, and folding of the