Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/21

Rh all: many advance by small steps others by wide and long gradations and so on, no two series possessing any features in common.

Now if Handwriting can be reduced to a rational or scientific system this infinite diversity is not only undesirable it is pernicious and unsound. For granted that one style can be formulated and projected which is absolutely superior to all others in construction, angle, &c., then unless that style be universally inculcated, an unfortunate section of the community is being taught to write a style which, according as it deviates from the acknowledged standard, is to that extent objectionable and inferior.

And this hypothesis—viz. of a standard system of penmanship—is not chimerical, it is logical and practical. Whilst however the present custom obtains, and in our schools every teacher exercises his own independent and uninstructed mind, teaching from any one of the multifarious headline Copy books that may strike his fancy or what is far worse from his own peculiar style and the black-board, what wonder if the caligraphycalligraphy [sic] of the age is the laughing-stock of the age! What wonder that our abound in their countless hosts and that our "writers" exist only in their isolated units by contrast! In the absence of any harmony or uniformity in the essential elements and principles of the so-called systems of writing now in vogue who can expect the grand result to be anything but a "mixed medley," a promiscuous jumble of caligraphic contradictions and contortions?

And passing from the schoolroom where such an anomalous and chaotic state of things prevails into the world outside, this is exactly what meets us. We can only describe the penmanship of the present age as a dreary waste of slightly variegated illegibility relieved here and there at long intervals by welcome exceptions of readable writing. In view of what reaches one continually by the post we may denounce the writing that obtains now-a-days as miserably poor and painfully illegible. The mistakes that are made, the money that is lost, the time that is wasted, the peace of mind that is disturbed, the annoyance and delays that are caused by undecipherable sprawls might make the angels weep, and