Handwriting is fascinating. Did you know script is absolutely unique to a person, like a fingerprint or a DNA profile? Graphology has always been a shadowy science, never super popular, but recognized enough to be used as evidence in court cases, and for organizations like the CIA and FBI to employ forensic document specialists. You can tell a lot about a person by their handwriting – for instance, whether they are optimistic, intense, introverted, or impulsive.
Apart from giving us a glimpse into the psyche of those who lived before us, there’s a romance in old letters that is completely absent in today’s world of instant correspondence. My cousin teaches middle school history, and he has to remember not to write in cursive, since the kids can’t read it. They were never taught, since only printing and typing are necessary now.
“there is not a day but what I think of you…”
In October 1904, an Englishman wrote a thank you letter to a kind American host…
Lovingly
a letter from home in 1898
and a very fine signature!
I found these letters in an antique store. Some of the messages are fascinating, and some are mundane. I will post more soon, but there’s no additional information about their writers in any instance, so each letter is its own mystery. So grateful they were somehow preserved!
