were given to them.

Dreyfus' friends sent engraved reproductions of standards and disputed
documents to the best-known experts all over the world, and without
exception these reported that Dreyfus was not the writer of the
disputed papers. On the side of the French government were a few
so-called "experts," headed and dominated by a man with no experience
whatever. The experts of skill and experience in France and the world
over were practically unanimous in favor of Dreyfus. A critical
examination of the documents in question produced an absolute
conviction that they could not possibly have been written by Dreyfus.

Unless the individual is fitted by nature and inborn liking for
investigations of this character, no amount of education and
experience will fit him. But, given natural equipment and inclination,
it is necessary first of all that the expert have a good general
education. He should have a sufficient command of language to make
others see what he sees. He should have a good eye for form and color,
and a well-trained hand to enable him to describe graphically as well
as orally what his trained eye has detected. A few strokes on a
blackboard or large sheet of paper will often make a clouded point
appear much plainer to court, jury and lawyers than hours of oral
description. The ability to handle the crayon and to simulate well the
writings under discussion is a great aid.

A very interesting case was involved in the will of Miser Paine in New
York in 1889. Here a deliberate attempt to get away with something
like $1,500,000 was made, which was frustrated by a handwriting
expert. When quite a young man, James H. Paine was a clerk in a Boston
business house. He absconded with a lot of money and went to New York,
where all trace of him was lost. He speculated with the stolen money,
and everything he touched turned to gold. He soon became a
millionaire. Then he became a miser. He went around the streets in
rags, lodged in a garret with a French family on the West Side, who
took him out of pure charity, and lived on the leavings which
restaurant-keepers gave him. There was only one thing that he would
spend money on; that was music. He was passionately fond of music, and
for years was a familiar figure in the lobby of the Academy of Music
during the opera season. He would go there early in the evening, and
beg people to pay his way in. If he didn't find a philanthropist he
would buy a ticket himself, but he neve