le recognize one
another are the play of the features, the gait, talking and writing.
Of these evidences the last named is the most infallible, for by a few
hasty lines we may recognize again a person whom we neither see nor
hear, and enjoy in addition the advantage of being able to compare
quietly and at our leisure the traits of one individual thus expressed
with the characteristics of another. There are not many men to be
found in any walk of life who do not endeavor to conceal to some
extent, however slight, their true views and emotions, when brought
into close contact with their fellow-beings. But the mind photographs
itself unsuspectingly in the movements of the hands, by the use of pen
and ink away from all alien observation, and with the rigid
unchangeable witness in our possession the character of the author of
the manuscript lies open to the gaze of the intelligent reader.

In this way handwriting becomes much more individual than any other
active sign of personality. It varies more, it is more free, it
represents the individual less artificially than voice or gesture.
There must exist between the form and arrangements of letters in words
and lines, on the one hand, and certain individual peculiarities of
the writer, on the other, some kind of connection. It is strange that
no scientific writing has ever yet been undertaken, for it seems
conclusive that handwriting is a kind of voiceless speaking,
consequently a phenomenon, and therefore an operation which lies
within the province of physiology.

Yet there are no books or studies on the subject of disputed
handwriting up to the present time, short newspaper and magazine
articles and sketches being the only contributions the public has been
favored with up to the publication of this work.

There is as yet no physiology of handwriting formulated, and that the
further question of the relation of handwriting to the moods of the
writer has not ever been touched upon scientifically. The history of
science teaches us that in case a fact, which is theoretically and
practically important, has been neglected for decades and even
centuries by trained scientists; but the subject will now be taken up
and a place made for it among the prominent and leading studies of the
day. Interest in disputed handwriting and writing of all kinds is
rapidly coming to the front in the United States, and is a study and
research that the business man of the future will be perfectly
fam