in the background of your mind all the time you are writing.  It will be always intruding and pushing in its face, and you will be able to give only half your mind to your subject.  But frankly and naturally use the I, and the remembrance of yourself vanishes.  You are grappling with the subject; you are thinking of it, and of nothing else.  You use the readiest and most unaffected mode of speech to set out your thoughts of it.  You have written I a dozen times, but you have not thought of yourself once.

You may see the self-consciousness of some men strongly manifested in their handwriting.  The handwriting of some men is essentially affected,—­more especially their signature.  It seems to be a very searching test whether a man is a conceited person or an unaffected person, to be required to furnish his autograph to be printed underneath his published portrait.  I have fancied I could form a theory of a man’s whole character from reading, in such a situation, merely the words, “Very faithfully yours, Eusebius Snooks,” You could see that Mr. Snooks was acting, when he wrote that signature.  He was thinking of the impression it would produce on those who saw it.  It was not the thing which a man would produce who simply wished to write his name legibly in as short a time and with as little needless trouble as possible.  Let me say with sorrow that I have known even venerable bishops who were not superior to this irritating weakness.  Some men aim at an aristocratic hand; some deal in vulgar flourishes.  These are the men who have reached no farther than that stage at which they are proud of the dexterity with which they handle their pen.  Some strive after an affectedly simple and student-like hand; some at a dashing and military style.  But there may be as much self-consciousness evinced by handwriting as by anything else.  Any clergyman who performs a good many marriages will be impressed by the fact that very few among the humbler classes can sign their name in an unaffected way.  I am not thinking of the poor bride who shakily traces her name, or of the simple bumpkin who slowly writes his, making no secret of the difficulty with which he does it.  These are natural and pleasing.  You would like to help and encourage them.  But it is irritating, when some forward fellow, after evincing his marked contempt for the slow and cramped performances of his friends, jauntily takes up the pen and dashes off his signature at a tremendous rate and with the air of an exploit, evidently expecting the admiration of his rustic friends, and laying a foundation for remarking to them on his way home that the parson could not touch him at penmanship.  I have observed with a little malicious satisfaction that such persons, arising in their pride from the place where they wrote, generally smear their signature with their coat-sleeve, and reduce it to a state of comparative illegibility.  I like to see the smirking, impudent creature a little taken down.