Frazer.] 438 [Jan. 16, 



parts resemble more or less the letters in the body of the writing in differ- 

 ent people. This symbol usually occupies very nearly the same part of 

 the page— at least as to its distance from the right or left hand edge of the 

 paper—and this tends to fix it as a distinguishing sign. All these facts 

 lead to a distinction between a signature, and that writing by the same hand 

 which accompanies original composition. 



There are, of course, peculiarities in every hand which can be traced 

 both in the signature and in the body of the text. Such are very appar- 

 ent when the writer labors under a physical disadvantage, such as a 

 maimed or deformed hand or arm, but in lesser degree these peculiarities 

 are present in every handwriting and constitute the general constant of 

 "will-power, nerve sensitiveness and muscular force" employed by a 

 given individual In this perfunctory habit. 



I say general constant to imply that this relation must be regarded with- 

 out paying too much attention to detail, for probably on no two occasions 

 of a man's life do these factors exist in him in absolutely the same proportions, 

 and even if they did, the least change of environment would alter the results 

 thus accomplished. But the signature of a man being divested as much as pos • 

 sible of the accidents due to his outside influences, it follows that the sig- 

 nature is the production of his hand least likely to yield an insight into 

 his condition when writing it. On the other hand, the fact that he selects 

 one particular way of expressing his identity bestows upon it something of a 

 resultant of the various motives which actuate him, and makes it a sort 

 of digest of the points of his character called into play in the perform- 

 ance of the act. We may look for the same sort of character in a signa- 

 ture that we find in a photograph or a picture, and the same causes may 

 prevent either the one or the other from faithfully representing the peculi- 

 arities of the individual, by representing that individual as he appears when 

 conscious that he is being observed ; or, in other words, a character is as- 

 sumed which corresponds to the taste of the individual and represents more 

 or less how he would like to be seen by the public. When the character is 

 observed to exist throughout the entire mass of his writing, it may be as- 

 sumed that it represents accurately the man, for no amount of patience and 

 study would enable one to retain such peculiarities under all the varied cir- 

 cumstances attending the act of writing, if it were not inherent in the indi- 

 vidual himself. In any case, however, the result is a likeness which all who 

 know the original will recognize, even though one or two features may be 

 made more prominent in pose than in repose, and that constitutes the chief 

 value of the analysis of signatures for identification independently of what 

 we may learn from them of the mental attributes of their signers. 



It is not swe ylaantirely obvious how signatures with many light flour- 

 ishes, or accompanied by intricate lines connecting their several parts, 

 should be superposed, for these appendices are so easily affected by minute 

 causes that it seldom happens that two will cover each other exactly. It is 

 not to be expected that such parts will survive in the resulting type signa- 

 ture, but the breadth of the space covered by the blur and parallelism of the 



