Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/96

88 and other devices, if nothing more is said about the slope, he lapses back to his natural inclination to write straight. From this it would seem that the present mode of teaching penmanship is contrary to Nature, and therefore a great waste of energy. How much easier and pleasanter, too, it would be to adopt the vertical writing from the start, and thereby avoid that continual friction necessary to get the artificial slant!

I know not how to make clearer the second point—that straight writing is plainer to read than slanting—than by placing before



the reader actual specimens of the same pupil's work, written twelve weeks apart. The pupils selected are twelve and thirteen years old. (It may be well to state here that the class to which these pupils belong had but four weeks' regular instruction of thirty minutes a day, using the above copy-slips, printed on gummed paper, so that they could be readily pasted on the desk immediately in front of the pupil, or on cardboard, as suited the