As for the number of handwritings and people, there were not hun­dreds but thousands of them. My daily mail from magazine readers who were kind enough to read the stuff I wrote-and I wrote ceaselessly except when I was exploring handwriting, ran from fifty to two and three hun­dred letters a day. I read their letters, their confidences, and I studied their handwriting. Frequently our correspondence ran into a dozen or more letters. Every letter I wrote to my distant correspondent was worded to get a reaction. Aside from this the railroads and buses and cars took me over more than a hundred thousand miles, checking on individuals.

You may say, “the man did not have time to do anything else.” You are correct. Many of my pieces of fiction and other magazine copy were written on portable typewriters in the caboose of a freight train. Other writing was done late at night. During the day I followed the job that provided my traveling expenses, and gave me a chance to talk to people, get their example graphology, study them, and their surroundings.

One other point was important. My explorations in order to answer my own question about the tails of my handwriting began when I was young. As years went by I was able to follow through «on cases where I had been puzzled.

If I had been sports-minded there would have been no graphology. If the one and only girl had not married someone else, there would never have been any graphology.