Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/290



CURRENT TOPICS.

. — It is strange that when the Chairman was lately speaking of his cherished correspondents who write or wrote good hands, he should have omitted one, who fortunately is still in the land of the living, and who writes the best hand of all — Horace Howard Furness, of Philadelphia, the most celebrated of living Shakespearian scholars. His is a noble and monumental chirography, as regular as a Philadelphia block of houses, grandly legible and elegantly fluent — a John Hancocky hand. It is a distinction to receive one of these magnificent letters. Let us pray that the great editor may never have pen-paralysis and be reduced to the humiliation of a typewriter!

Philosophers have made various and ingenious attempts to define the animal Man. At first thought it might seem that a perfect definition would be, an animal that forms collections. But it must be ad mitted that the magpie also does this. What has not the animal Man collected? Clocks, watches, snuff-boxes, canes, miniatures, paintings, prints, fans, laces, precious stones, china, coins, paper money, spoons, tulips, orchids, hens, horses, match boxes, postal stamps, books, book plates, violins, show-bills, play-bills, swords, buttons, shoes, slip pers, spools, lead-pencils, birds, beetles, butterflies, saddles, skulls, wigs, death-masks, knockers, lan terns, crystal balls, shells, penny toys, teapots, armor, pipes, rugs, arrow-heads, locks of hair and key-locks, hats — these are some of the most promi nent subjects in search of which the animal Man runs up and down the earth and spends time and money without thought or stint. The most impor tant item in this list is books; next to that comes paintings, and then autographs and manuscripts. A Boston (or at all events a Massachusetts) man, who died a few years ago, left a collection of auto graphs, which he had valued at ten thousand dollars, but at which valuation his friends skeptically smiled. On his death his executors inventoried them at this sum; but by putting them up at auction — having been persuaded to issue a catalogue in considerable num bers — they brought fifty thousand dollars! What sum would not an authentic autograph of Shake speare bring?

The Chairman never had this craze for acquiring autographs, but he did once own four autographs of celebrated Americans, two very good and two very bad men, and it so happened — to the confusion of those sapients who read character in handwriting — that the bad men wrote the finest and most candid hands. To take the good ones : First, there was a letter from President George Washington to John Hancock, governor of Massachusetts, asking that commonwealth for the loan of a ship to carry Colonel Laurens as minister to France — "a very interesting specimen," as the collectors would say, in admirable preservation, and characterized by some of that invaluable misspelling that marked nearly all the writings of the father of our country — "corrispondent," for example. The other good one was a school composition, written by Master Edward Everett, at the age of eleven, on "The Advantages of Public Instruction." Experts would read in this youthful production the characteristics of the man — it was precocious in handwriting, in rhetoric, in thought, in scholarship; in short, it was wondrously like and would not have disgraced the grown-up Edward. It was prefaced by a quotation from Cowper's "Tirocinium," or Praise of Schools — how many of our readers have ever heard of that? It was sophomorical, but the mature Edward was always rather sophomorical. It was probably in spired by the refusal of Master Edward's father to let him go to boarding or public school, and his per sistence in the old fashion of private tutors. Neddie predicted all sorts of bad luck and disgrace to the victims of this unwise parental rule. Then the bad ones : First, a fragment of a letter from Benedict Arnold, partly destroyed by fire, in which he com plained of "unjust and cruel aspersions upon my character." The handwriting was superb —•bold, fluent, legible — the perfection of a commercial hand — much superior to the formal and precise hand of the good George. Then came a letter from Aaron Burr to his daughter Theodosia, introducing Colonel Brandt, "the indian {sic) chief," "not one of those indians who drink rum, but a gentleman," who " writes and speaks the english (sic) perfectly," "a man of education," etc. He desired Theodosia to buy him some gift for his daughters — say, a pair 263