This method, I am bound to say, is too
frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers
are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially
ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be
deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, who write
between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running this way
and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts inserted
here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps
of closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds to the security for
failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher's reader or the
editor.
The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, often
overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. typewritten,
this gives them a chance of being read with ease and interest, and this
must be neglected by all who have really set their hearts on failure. In
the higher matters of education it is well to be as ignorant as possible.
No knowledge comes amiss to the true man of letters, so they who court
disaster should know as little as may be.
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