PURE FABLE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 16

PURE FABLE

DEATH OF A DISTINGUISHED

LEGEND.

Another pleading \ myth exploded! There has long been a tradition in America that Horace Greeley~'a handwriting was more difficult to decipher than that of any other man who ever put pen to paper, states a. correspond.* ent of the "Manchester Guardian." According to one' story, »»' employee discharged frpim the " Tribune''lojfice used his letter of dismissal tot a •whole year'is a free railway pass on a line of wbiofr Greeley :waa:a director. Another taleCJs*" told of • a/'cqiipositor ■who annoyed, :~,.t?iq other members of the printing staff by Ilia constant boasts that he;could easily read the editor's, copyrV-Th'ey attempted to play a joke,ottEim' by inking the feet of two cockerels \'ftnd setting: them to iight on some^sUejtS Of copy paper.. The papers thu^- marked. were nun}'' bered, a heading,' " The Plain Duty I of Congress," was scrawled on the first one in imitation. Of Greeley's' hand, and ike whole batch wan hung'on the copy-hook Over thjs':man's case. He calmly proceeded to set it up, and i it was not until he reached the lastpage that^ho found awerd that bftf» fled him. He took it to the editor's ; room, and Greeley promptly declared that the word on which he was stuck was "unconstitutional."

And 'ribw"we' le"arn that all this is pore.; fable. Writing in one of tho American magazines, Mr. Don C. Seiti, tho business manager - of tho New!.' Tori"."'''. World, "and biographer of Josegh",Pulitzer, says that (Jreejey's much-abused' 'penmanship was, after all, not bo; bad.' He has some of it in his own. possession,'and he finds it by no means illegible. The letter^ it is true,, push forward and the Jinea slant uphill, but- they are easily read. Mr. Seita suggests, that the common belief is due to, the fact that for the last two decades pf his lif9 Greoley wrote. in a* J^Spencarian' 1 age, i.e., at 3, time wKen'tie "pdptjlar script was in the copperplate style which was then the ideal of all schools of penmanship in the United;, ,stateg. Perhaps, too, Greeley would 1 naturally epwe ant bet' ter in a comparison with writers of to-day than with those of his own time,?for the standard of penmanship in America has sadly deteriorated sineo '■ the introduction of the typewriter. "Why is it," said a: New Yorkjeditor to an English contributor the'other day, "that we cannot teach our sobs in America to write as you Englishmen...do/? I am always struck by the number, of manuscripts th»t we get from England t&ftt can be set up without previously being copied into typewriting. That almost sever happens .with an Amerjcae.".