Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/139

Rh to erect healthy postures has been verified and confirmed to the fullest extent, whilst as to speed both Drs. Bayr and Scharff testify to the greater rapidity with which Upright Caligraphy can be produced. “My best vertically writing scholar requiring 24 minutes whilst the best oblique writer required 30 minutes to write off a certain prescribed poem.”

The results obtained by Miss Seidl municipal teacher at Vienna are identical and equally gratifying.

Her letter on the point is so interesting that we reproduce a translation of it. “My female pupils whose instruction I directed from the first class onwards till they passed over into the City middle class school (i .e. for five years) during the four school years from 1885–6 to 1888–9 wrote the usual sloping writing with oblique middle position with a 30° to 40° angle of inclination of the copybook marked on the desk before them.

“At the beginning of the school year 1889–90 I introduced some of my pupils to Vertical Writing whilst the others kept to Sloping Writing. In this way it was possible to ascertain in the course of a year by personal inspection what were the essential advantages which Vertical Writing offers over Sloping Writing.

“During the whole of my nine years’ experience in the School I contended with all conceivable means against the crooked sitting and oblique vision of the children in the writing lesson, but I must honestly admit it without the desired result, and in the cases where I obtained a good bodily posture, the Caligraphic outcome did not correspond to the demands hitherto made by Sloping Writing, that is to say it was too steep or too near the Vertical.

“What I with Sloping Writing obtained only in an imperfect way in spite of long and tiring effort, Vertical Writing made possible even in a few weeks of its use–viz. a fine upright position of body, avoidance of the harmful inclination of the head, and of the no less injurious leaning of the chest on the desk.