On Short-hand Writing. 23 
sonants alone—the simplest vowel characters devisable being 
subsequently applied, whether in the beginning, the middle or 
the end of words, as the writer shall consider them expedient. 
Thirdly, As to the reading of an extensive manuscript in which 
these or any other short-hand characters are solely used, with 
satisfactory readiness, at a glance, when the subject itself is al- 
together or very nearly forgotten by the writer: although some 
of our stenographic bookmakers may insist on the facility of so 
doing, after a few months or even weeks of application; yet I 
eannot by any means hold out so fallacious an expectation. On 
the contrary, years are indispensable: nor is it likely that any 
one gentleman in a thousand (I speak not of the professional 
stenographist) shall ever attain this ultimate object by any other 
process than that which I have seen successfully adopted ;—the 
intermixing, with his common writing, the pronouns, auxiliary 
verbs, conjunctions and other minor parts of speech expressed 
in short-hand; and proceeding from thence, step by step, slowly 
yet. systematically, to encroach upon his long-hand. 
Lastly, With respect to the possibility of ever. following a 
speaker, verbatim, by the apparently slow method I have sug- 
gested—the sequel shall determine. In the mean time let the 
literary gentleman reflect, that even if no other object be attain- 
able than that of expressing all our ordinary words in short- 
hand, with about four times his usual expedition, by which means 
more than one-third of his whole time shall, in a few weeks, be 
saved ;—let him, I say, reflect, that these few weeks devoted to 
such an attainment will have been very judiciously employed. 
Were I in the least disposed, tediously to engross the pages of 
your Journal, and consequently to exhaust the patience of its 
readers, I should enter into a long detail of the history of short- 
writing taken from the voluminous works of our very learned 
English authors upon this art, to which, not satisfied with the 
generally understood name of Short hand, they have assigned the 
very lofty appellation: of brachygraphy, cryptography, steno- 
graphy, tachygraphy, zeitography, semigraphy, or ‘* the world’s 
rarity,’ with a numerous train of eteederas all dignified by the 
title ‘of “ systems :” I should literally carry my reader to China; 
from thence to Egypt, and from Egypt to Greece and Rome— 
where I should leave him no wiser than I found him, unless it 
be deemed worthy of our notice that, in addition to the methods 
of abbreviation practised by the Romaus, and of which even 
Ainsworth’s Dictionary has given us most copious specimens, 
there were also used by some of their notarii, certain arbitrary 
characters called not in opposition to liter@, by which not only 
certain terminations but several thousand Latin words were ex- 
peditiously expressed. 
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