GENUINE—­FORGED TRACING—­FORGED FREE-HAND

[Illustration:  The first signature is the original.  The second is a bungling traced forgery and the third is a forged freehand.  Taken apart from one another they are clever enough to deceive, but studied together here the fraud and deception is readily apparent.]

ORIGINAL SIZE—­GENUINE—­FORGED TRACING—­FORGED FREE HAND.

[Illustration:  We give above a genuine signature with a forged tracing and a forged free-hand.  You can readily detect the forgeries when these signatures are placed together and explained.  It gives one points on how to study forged and disputed signatures.]

SOME THUMB AND FINGER-PRINT SUGGESTIONS

[Illustration:  We show herewith two enlarged finger-prints.  These are taken from the index finger and are used in many cases instead of thumb-prints.]

[Illustration:  The above illustrations are fac-simile impressions of the dermal furrows of the right and left thumbs of four different persons.  The left thumbs are in the top row, the right thumb being below.  These are enlarged to bring out the distinctive points.  You will note that no two are alike and it is absolutely impossible to forge or duplicate the thumb-print of any person.  “Thumb-prints Never Forged” on page 115.]

[Illustration:  Promiscuous thumb-prints taken at random, easily distinguishable in the original impression but not enlarged as in above illustration.  A photographic reproduction showing the lines without enlargement almost impossible.]

INTERESTING AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES

[Illustration:  Kaiser’s signature published in book sanctioned by him is the writing of an extremely erratic and nervous man.]

[Illustration:  This is a facsimile of Capt.  Myles Standish’s handwriting found on the fly-leaf of one of his books.  Capt.  Myles Standish, known as the human sword blade, whose valor saved the Pilgrims at Plymouth from utter destruction at the hands of hostile Indians went back to England in 1625 on business for the colony.  Before his return, in 1626, he bought this book and carried it back to America with him.]

[Illustration:  In this signature of the great Liberator of Italy, we have indications of energy in the angular form of the letters, and in the hasty and irregular dot to the small letter “i,” and originality in the curious angularly waved line below the signature.  It denotes tenacity of purpose.]

[Illustration:  In this signature of Napoleon Bonaparte, which appears on a letter written by him when only a captain in the French army, we have the “vaulting ambition” which made him all but master of Europe.  There is the dominant will in the strongly marked “t,” and in the hard, thick line which terminates the flourish; his egotism and self-assertion are evidenced in this flourish, his originality in the peculiar form of the capital letter “B;” but ambition is here “still the lord of all.”]