Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/831

 is no single system of mécanique for writing, and that a child belonging to the educated classes would be taught much better and more easily if, after being once enabled to make and recognize written letters, it were let alone, and praised or chidden not for its method, but for the result. Let the boy hold his pen as he likes, and make his strokes as he likes, and write at the pace he likes—hurry, of course, being discouraged—but insist strenuously and persistently that his copy shall be legible, shall be clean, and shall approach the good copy set before him, namely, a well-written letter, not a rubbishy text on a single line, written as nobody but a writing-master ever did or will write till the world's end. He will make a muddle at first, but he will soon make a passable imitation of his copy, and ultimately develop a characteristic and strong hand, which may be bad or good, but will not be either meaningless, undecided, or illegible. This hand will alter, of course, very greatly as he grows older. It may alter at eleven, because it is at that age that the range of the eyes is fixed, and short sight betrays itself; and it will alter at seventeen, because then the system of taking notes at lecture, which ruins most hands, will have cramped and temporarily spoiled the writing; but the character will form itself again, and will never be deficient in clearness or decision. The idea that it is to be clear will have stamped itself, and confidence will not have been destroyed by worrying little rules about attitude, and angle, and slope, which the very irritation of the pupils ought to convince the teachers are, from some personal peculiarity, inapplicable. The lad will write, as he does anything else that he cares to do, as well as he can, and with a certain efficiency and speed. Almost every letter he gets will give him some assistance, and the master's remonstrance on his illegibility will be attended to, like any other caution given in the curriculum. As it is, he simply thinks that he does not write well, instead of thinking that not to write well is to fall short in a very useful accomplishment and to be pro tanto a failure.

We are not quite sure that another process ought not to be gone through, before writing is taught at all. Suppose our boys and girls were taught to read manuscript a little? They are taught to read print, but manuscript is not print, or very like it, and they are left to pick up the power of reading that the best way they can; they never devote half an hour a day for six months to manuscript-reading. If they did, it would be easier to them all their lives, and they would learn to believe in legibility as the greatest, or, at any rate, the most useful, quality that writing can display—an immense improvement, if our experience can be trusted, in the usual youthful ideal on the subject. The business of life, no doubt, soon teaches children to read manuscript; but many of them never read it easily, and retain through life an unconquerable aversion to the work, from the fatigue and vexation which it causes them. We have known men so conscious of this defect that they always have important letters read aloud to them; and others