It was more or less a matter of trial and error, disappointment, and repeated effort until something happened several years later. I had quali­fied as a shorthand teacher, not of one system but several, but the idea of learning anything about my problem from shorthand never occurred to me at that time-and then I actually stumbled onto the answer.

An employment agency had sent me to teach shorthand in a business college in Shawnee, Oklahoma. About the second day it was plain that I had made a mistake. The head of the school was drunk half the time, in­deed he was drunk the afternoon he found that the local business people were talking about running him out of town, and taking over his business school for me to manage. They did get rid of him as a menace to the morals of the town, and I started to Chicago, but stopped in Wichita be­cause I had met a business college man there who looked progressive.

Actually he was just about broke, but there was a little money in my watch pocket and we made a deal whereby I would stay and teach short­hand for at least a few weeks. Possibly he hired me expecting me to stay until he vvent broke, but that summer he began advertising me as the only shorthand teacher in captivity who could write and teach seventeen systems of shorthand. Those seventeen systems and that advertising was the answer to my question. Handwriting Analysis Samples from students who had been exposed to shorthand in high school or other business colleges, came flocking into school. There were Gregg, and Spencerian and Dougherty shorthand writers. All the shades of the Pitman systems, Benn Pitman. Issac Pitman, and a dozen variations all were enrolled in my dictation classes. All I had to do was dictate, and walk around looking over their shoulders and watch for inaccuracies. It was a scatterbrained bunch for most stenographers will agree that only a handful of people ever write shorthand as it is taught.

The why of this became a consuming thought. After all they had said, why did I seemingly obstinately continue to add those long strokes which did not belong there?, Although I was not very alert mentally, (my hand­writing  from  those  days  shows  that  I  was  mentally  about  as  nim-com-poopish as the average, maybe more so) I came up against the problem of finding why I put those pesky tag ends on there. Monkeys had long tails, but I studied myself in the mirror and did not find any more resemblance than there was between other people and the simian.

Was I putting those tag ends on there because there was something wrong with me mentally, or was it because I liked graphoanalysis instead of base­ball, and had a morbid fear of snakes? There was nothing else to do. The reason had to be found, and I set out to find it. No young fellow ever wrote more love letters and joined more correspondence clubs than I did in those days. Now and then I found a writer who put on long tails to the words, but their photographs all looked like nice girls, or fairly decent young fellows. When they did it, however, we certainly had one thing in common.  What was it?

From that time on I studied shorthand. When other young fellows were chasing baseballs I was writing shorthand outlines and loving it. One system followed another until I had managed to learn at least in a passable way almost twenty different systems, and if you are starting to grow grey, you will recall that in the early part of the twentieth century there were almost as many shorthand systems as there arc ways of getting a home permanent wave today.

One other subject was essential although I did not know it then. I analyze handwriting. Not just ovals, but Palmcrian, Zanerian, Ransom-erian, and half a dozen other muscular movement systems. One teacher after another must have added a grey hair here and there because of my papers. Only a few weeks ago I ran onto an old letter I had written back in those days, and just at first I thought it was the work of some successful penmanship teacher, until my eye caught one weakness.

I put long finals on almost every word. Very long finals, and the teachers said “No” and meant it. My papers would be all right for a day or two, and then I would slip back into my original penmanship sin, and would get the papers back with red ink strokes slashed across the tails on the words.

You may have such experiences provided you the basic handwriting analysis, as you will find it in the following pages. You may be skeptical, and there is nothing that the profession of graphology will like better than for skeptics to be convinced.

This benefit and protection for you is after all the justification for writing this book, and because I began the research and stumbled onto the key that makes scientific handwriting analysis possible, it is necessary for me now and then to talk about myself.   Forget that part, will you, and keep in mind that we are both devoting our time to graphology, and what it can do for you in increasing your happiness, your cash in the bank, and your happiness in getting along with people while you earn your living.

You may have noted that I frankly admit that I stumbled onto the key that made graphology possible. Actually, the start came simply because I got to Sunday school ahead of time. The little one room school house served as the church, and there was a long blackboard across one end of the building. On this particular Sunday one of the older boys who had graduated from the eighth grade had come back over the week-end and was writing strange symbols on the blackboard.

All of the early arrivals were properly impressed at how those mysteri­ous strokes could mean words. That was my introduction to shorthand, and when I went home after services it was with the deep-rooted determination that if anyone else could make those strange curlicues mean words it would be equally possible for me. Somehow that resolution made when I was eight stuck until I was sixteen and could get my hands on the first short­hand book.

Another instance of a similar nature was successfully handled by the credit manager of a big corporation where he used his knowledge to deter­mine the responsibility of customers. This particular credit manager was invited to talk on his experiences before a large business group. After the talk one of the business men pushed forward and asked for a few minutes of the speaker’s time. “You may be able to help us with our son,” he said. “My wife and I feel that we may have to send him either to a military school, or let the juvenile court send him to a state school. We simply can­not manage him.   He’s not a fool, but he has outgrown us.”

As a result of that few minutes conversation, the father sent the lad’s writing to the credit manager for handwriting analysis test. Then he asked for the writing of both parents. He studied those two specimens, and then visited the troubled family. It was a long and a serious interview, but graphology had found the explanation of the trouble. Both parents had become in­volved in many personal and social activities. They were providing a good residence, good furniture in the residence, but they were not making a home for the boy. They were busy attending social functions, bridge clubs, busi­ness conferences.

The lad had become a problem because he resented being shoved to one side. He thought his parents did not care about him, but about their social and business lives. He had come to hate and fear them, and was merely striking back. Fortunately the parents accepted the revelations made from their own writing, the boy admitted that was the way he felt. Today that family is well adjusted, the parents are happy and proud of their son, and he in turn is making good and is fond of his parents, whom he now recog­nizes as something more than a source of money. He has found that they do love him, and he in turn is a wonderful son.

You will be able to do a vast amount of good. A well known medical man told me this story of how he helped a mother who was his patient. The mother had a son in high school. He was just squeezing by, sometimes was not even making a passing grade. The mother was exceedingly worried, and this worry affected her as a patient. Worry has such effect, you know.

Finally the doctor suggested that she provide him with the boy’s hand­writing, with the thought that he might find the answer. He did. The youngster was so self-conscious that he did not dare to stand up among the young folks of his own age and tell what he knew. He thought they knew more than he did, and between under-rating his own ability and the self-consciousness he was making his high school days agony, not only for him­self, but his mother and his teachers all suffered.

This doctor, who uses graphology frequently to understand handwriting personality of the patients , had a visit with the boy. He showed the young man from his own handwriting that he was equal and possibly superior mentally to some of his classmates. He convinced him that there was no reason for either fear or self-consciousness, then convinced the mother that she could aid by having her son recite to her.   When the bov discovered for himself that he knew and was able to hold his own with other students his own age, his problem was whipped. The boy gained, the mother showed better results from her medical treatment, and the teachers found that they had a near-honor student.

At this point there is one point that must be emphasized. Do not approach the graphology free online just to find out about people.   There is a vast difference between learning to understand people, and finding characteristics that you may feel will be juicy bits of gossip. When you ex­amine a handwriting you are certain to find some traits that you do not like, but you are not judge nor jury.

You may find unusual talent for dancing or painting and you may believe the dancing is sinful. That is your right, but you still have the knowledge that the writer has natural talent for dancing. Or you may find evidence that a writer is likely to steal. There are many potential thieves possibly who have never been caught, and possibly some of them have never actually stolen. Handwriting does not reveal that a man has done any certain thing, any more than it reveals that he has cancer or tuberculosis. It does show the individual who, given an opportunity, will steal. But if you know this, and protect yourself against his doing so from you, then you have had protection.

However, learn discretion in keeping what you learn to yourself. If you were a professional grapho analyst you would be bound by a code of ethics as binding as the ethics of any medical man. You should tell the person whose handwriting you examine the truth, but that does not mean telling all of her or his family, and the neighbors. Gossip is one of the most reprehensible things in civilization and has broken more homes than any other single human weakness. Analyze handwriting truthfully, but do not repeat to others what you have found.

It gives you unexpected protection. At the start of World War II when air mail was not so common as it is today, a letter reached me late one afternoon. It was from a woman who had been trained in graphology, and it contained a number of sheets of a love letter. I do not have any right to analyze this writing,” she wrote. “It is my daughter’s fiance and she wants you to give a thorough analysis. We both feel that because she is my daughter I might be influenced, and this is important.’*

Examination of the handwriting showed that the writer was a scoun­drel, and might easily be a murderer. It was not an opinion. The hand­writing revealed the picture as clearly as an x-ray could have done. So the report was made, mailed, as requested, air mail and special delivery.

A few days later another letter brought the rest of the story. The young man was a stranger in the community, but he and the young woman had met, fallen in love, and were to be married almost at once. Then, as a matter of possible curiosity, the daughter let her mother read a letter and the mother was appalled by what she found. Result, the mother and daughter agreed to submit the handwriting to another analyst, and quite naturally selected the mother’s teacher. That analysis undoubtedly saved the young woman’s happiness, and possibly her life, for shortly after the engagement was broken the police from another state arrested the fellow as a criminal and took him back to the scene of his crimes.

You will get such protection for your life as you are a handwriting expert. You will not get it by merely skimming through these pages, getting some of the rules in mind, and confusing others. Study the rules, and the example of handwriting, and then use what you learn. For more than thirty years students of graphology undertaking professional train­ing have been advised not to believe what they have found in lesson books just because it is in print. When you learn something, test it, prove it and then you have it even if your books are destroyed.

You may find that some of your friends cannot be trusted. This is entirely possible. However, that docs not mean that you need to discard them as acquaintances-which, after all, is all they have been. You are not learning personality types in handwriting to set yourself up as judge. You are not learning to analyze handwriting just to find “bad” things in others. Graphology is not a science to use in finding either “good” or “bad” but the truth. For instance, you may think that deceit is “always a bad trait. Instead it is merely a trait. It may be used for the good of others, or it can become a dangerous trait. Its value depends on how it is used.

You will gain one other advantage. If you are shy, afraid of people and what they say, you will find that knowing handwriting gives you free­dom from fear. The reason is rather simple. The child that fears the dark is afraid because he does not understand the dark. You are timid, afraid because you do not understand people. When you actually know them you will have no reason for fear unless you have done something to injure others. Even then you may have only yourself to fear.This promise that you will lose fear is a lesson that I learned during the first few years of my research. Audiences from coast to coast now tell me that there could not have been a time when I was afraid. They do not know. As a young man I was timid, fearful, hesitant to use what I knew. I could get along all right in a play or something I had memorized but to stand on my feet and talk off the cuff was unthinkable.

Then one day Albert G. Burns, founder of the Inventors of America, told me to go out and talk to a group of inventors from all parts of America. I refused. I could not. Al Burns looked at me and said. “If you know anything about it and believe in graphology you can.” I talked. He had brought me to a realization that when I knew and understood people there was nothing to fear. So as you go along with your study of these rules you will be gaining knowledge that others do not have. You will under­stand them, and there is no knowledge as valuable.

So free handwriting analysis, as you master rules in the following pages, may help you identify a murderer or a thief. One thing is certain. As you examine your own handwriting, you will get a new understanding of yourself. You will suddenly find that some traits you have considered “bad” are not bad at all. Take for instance the lady who wrote me after getting her analyses pointing out that she was proud. “Every night I ask God to help me overcome pride,” she said in her letter. You will learn how to recognize pride from handwriting, and you will see what an im­portant trait it is in making your own life happier, and more successful.

You will be sure of one other gain. You will no longer feel there is any value to gossip. You will not need to have what others think about someone to guide you, for you will be able to take a page of handwriting and know how the writer feels, thinks, and acts.