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.