88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and other devices, if nothing more is said about the slope, he 

 lapses back to his natural inclination to write straight. From 

 this it would seem that the present mode of teaching penman- 

 ship is contrary to Nature, and therefore a great waste of energy. 

 How much easier and pleasanter, too, it would be to adopt the 

 vertical writing from the start, and thereby avoid that continual 

 friction necessary to get the artificial slant ! 



I know not how to make clearer the second point that straight 

 writing is plainer to read than slanting than by placing before 





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the reader actual specimens of the same pupil's work, written 

 twelve weeks apart. The pupils selected are twelve and thirteen 

 years old. (It may be well to state here that the class to which 

 these pupils belong had but four weeks' regular instruction of 

 thirty minutes a day, using the above copy-slips, printed on 

 gummed paper, so that they could be readily pasted on the desk 

 immediately in front of the pupil, or on cardboard, as suited the 



