from the signatures of the same person, executed under the
influence of normal surroundings.

In the process of evolving a signature, which must be again and again
repeated from an early age till death, new ideas occur from time to
time, are tried, modified, improved, and finally embodied in the
design. The idea finally worked out may be merely a short method of
writing the necessary sequence of characters, or it may present some
novelty to the eye. Signatures consisting almost exclusively of
straight up-and-down strokes, looking at a short distance like a row
of needles with very light hair-lines to indicate the separate
letters; signatures begun at the beginning or the end and written
without removing the pen from the paper; signatures which are entirely
illegible and whose component parts convey only the mutilated
rudiments of letters, are not uncommon. All such signatures strike the
eye and arrest the attention, and thus accomplish the object of their
authors. The French signature frequently runs upward from left to
right, ending with a strong down nourish in the opposite direction.
All these, even the most illegible examples, give evidence of
experience in handling or mishandling the pen. The signature most
difficult to read is frequently the production of the hand which
writes most frequently, and it is very much harder to decipher than
the worst specimens of an untrained hand. The characteristics of the
latter are usually an evident painstaking desire to imitate faulty
ideals of the letters one after the other, without any attempt to
attain a particular effect by the signature as a whole. In very
extreme cases, the separate letters of the words constituting the
signature are not even joined together.

A simulation of such a signature by an expert penman will usually
leave enough traces of his ability in handling the pen to pierce his
disguise. Even a short, straight stroke, into which he is likely to
relapse against his will, gives evidence against the pretended
difficulties of the act which he intends to convey. It is nearly as
difficult for a master of the pen to imitate an untrained hand as for
the untrained hand to write like an expert penman. The difference
between an untrained signature and the trembling tracing of his
signature by an experienced writer who is ill or feeble, is that in
the former may be seen abundant instances of ill-directed strength,
and in the latter equally abundant instances of well-